The Newport NewWorks Musical Theater Festival has announced its 2026 lineup, bringing three original musicals to Newport this summer as the two-year-old festival continues to build the city’s reputation as a destination for new theatrical work.
Co-founders and co-artistic directors Peilin Chou and Jeanne Hagerty announced Tuesday that this year’s festival, set for Aug. 2-16, will feature Stupid, a musical by brothers Benjamin Scheuer and Simon Scheuer; The Debutantes, with book and lyrics by Sam Norman and music by Eliza Randall; and A Life Worth Living, written by Jeffery Chen.
Each production will undergo a two-week residency development process, with all artists living in Newport during the festival. Public presentations will be held at the Casino Theatre, a 300-seat venue — an upgrade from last year’s space, chosen to accommodate greater audience demand following the festival’s inaugural season.
“Last year’s Newport NewWorks Festival exceeded every expectation,” Chou and Hagerty said in a statement. “Watching those musicals come alive, seeing audiences lean in and fall in love with stories they had never heard before, was everything we hoped for.”
Stupid follows two geniuses who meet and find things getting complicated. Benjamin Scheuer’s previous musical, The Lion, won a Drama Desk Award for outstanding solo performance, while his musical Hundred Feet Tall was produced by The Old Vic in London.
The Debutantes is set in wartime Britain in 1940 and centers on the female codebreakers of Bletchley Park. The show previously received development support through the Manhattan Musical Theatre Lab and earned a Newport NewWorks Award.
A Life Worth Living tells the story of a high school senior navigating a residential treatment facility while confronting grief and broken relationships. Writer Jeffery Chen, a Princeton graduate in neuroscience and musical theater, drew on his own experience in adolescent treatment for the show, which premiered at Princeton in 2024.
The festival’s growth follows a successful debut season last August, which showcased two musicals. One of them, Ink & Paint — a documusical about the overlooked women artists of Disney’s golden age — went on to an invitation-only industry reading at Roundabout Theater Company’s Black Box Theatre in New York City in January, headlined by actors Sierra Boggess, Jason Gotay, Gizel Jiménez and Ashley Spencer.
More information is available at newportnewworks.org.
