STRAY CAT THEATRE UNLEASHES 2025-2026
24th ANNIVERSARY SEASON
THE COMEUPPANCE
by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by Seth Tucker
Tempe Center for the Arts Studio Theatre
September 26 - October 11, 2025
From the author of GLORIA and the current Broadway hit PURPOSE - When a group of old classmates meet to pre-game their twentieth high school reunion, everyone is nervous for the night ahead. As alcohol and pot help the self-declared “Multi-Ethnic Reject Group,” let their guards down, they begin to reminisce about their teenage selves and reveal how their lives have unfolded since graduation. Brilliantly witty, theatrical, and moving, THE COMEUPPANCE focuses on millennials and their reckoning with the world they will soon inherit.
“…truly takes us to a new theatrical level in content as well as form. This penetrating work explores so many layers that it is best to let the experience take you where it will.” - Broadway World
REYKJAVÍK
by Steve Yockey
directed by Ron May
Tempe Center for the Arts Studio Theatre
December 5 - 20, 2025
James is in Reykjavík for the Northern Lights, but they’re not here. So he ventures into the 24-hour dark of the Icelandic winter and finds himself entangled with dangerous strangers, malevolent birds and the mysterious Huldufólk. Playwright Steve Yockey (SLEEPING GIANT, MERCURY, PLUTO, WOLVES, OCTOPUS), a genre-bending master of suspense, takes us to the end of the Earth to experience a dark, supernatural-tinged world populated with haunting characters who defy expectations at every turn.
“…a phantasmagorical parable…if you’re 18 or older—and if you wish to be transported to a stunningly original world of mystery, sensuality, passion, and menace—book your passage now…Reykjavík is a magical trip.” – DC Theatre Arts
HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF
by Liliana Padilla
directed by Elizabeth Broeder
Tempe Center for the Arts Studio Theatre
February 13 - 28, 2026
Seven college students gather for a DIY self-defense workshop after a sorority sister is sexually assaulted. They learn how to “not be a victim,” how to use their bodies as weapons, how to fend off attackers. The form of self-defense becomes a channel for their rage, trauma, confusion, anxiety and desire – lots of desire. With sharp humor and brutal honesty, HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF explores what we want, how to ask for it, and how to heal in an impossibly violent world.
“Profound, funny and shocking.” – The Daily Beast
ANGELS IN AMERICA PARTS I AND II
by Tony Kushner
directed by Ron May
Tempe Center for the Arts Studio Theatre
May 1 - 16, 2026
Arguably the most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that travels from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least the absconding of God…and we’re finally taking our swing at it. We’re doubly thrilled to announce our Associate Head Kitty Louis Farber will be taking on the role of Roy Cohn.
F 5.1 - 7:00pm - PART I
Sa 5.2 - 7:00pm - PART I
Su 5.3 - 2:00pm - PART I
F 5.8 - 7:00pm - PART II
Sa 5.9 - 7:00pm - PART II
Su 5.10 - 2:00pm - PART II
T 5.12 - 7:00pm - PART I
W 5.13 - 7:00pm - PART II
Th 5.14 - 7:00pm - PART I
F 5.15 - 7:00pm - PART II
Sa 5.16 - 12:00pm - PART I & 7:00pm - PART II
“A vast miraculous play … provocative, witty and deeply upsetting … a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama … PERESTROIKA is not only a stunning resolution of the rending human drama of MILLENIUM APPROACHES, but also a true millennial work of art, uplifting, hugely comic and pantheistically religious in a very American style.” - New York Times
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