Asian American stories missing from Boston theater season

Major Boston theaters have no plays focused on Asian American life scheduled for the 2026-27 season.

The season began in September. Two months have passed. Not one production at the region's largest stages centers on the experiences of this demographic.

Asian Americans make up more than 10 percent of Boston's population, according to the US Census Bureau. In Massachusetts, they account for 8.5 percent of residents. Nationwide, the figure is 7 percent. Despite these numbers, the local stage offers very few stories that reflect this community.

The Huntington, the American Repertory Theater, the Emerson Colonial Theatre, the Boch Center Wang Theatre, and the Boch Center Shubert Theatre have no Asian American-focused works in their lineups. The same is true for SpeakEasy Stage Company, Lyric Stage Boston, the Charles Playhouse, and ArtsEmerson. Smaller venues in the region, including Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell and Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham, also lack such productions.

Summer venues showed the same gap. North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly and Gloucester Stage Company did not stage Asian American works in 2026. Berkshire Theatre Group and Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires also had no productions on this theme. Williamstown Theatre Festival canceled its 2026 season entirely.

Broadway offers little relief. Of 32 current productions, only one, Maybe Happy Ending, could be called Asian-themed. That musical depicts robots in South Korea falling in love. It does not focus on the lives of Asian Americans in the United States. Of 22 new Broadway debuts planned for the season, none center on Asian American narratives.

CHUANG Stage, a Boston-based company founded to cultivate Asian American stories, is staging Alex Lin's play Laowang. The production explores the changing face of America's Chinatowns through a family's fight against a developer. It runs through Saturday, October 31. CHUANG Stage also recently presented Minna Lee's My Home on the Moon, a sci-fi comedy about a Vietnamese restaurant family.

Other smaller groups have scheduled relevant works. Boston Playwrights Theatre will stage Yide Cai's White Phoenix in November. The play follows a brother and sister raised apart in China and the United States. In January, Cambridge's Multicultural Arts Center will present Barbed Wire for two nights. The new play by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro and Mary E. McCullough tells of a friendship between a Japanese American inmate and a Black soldier at a World War II internment camp.

Wheelock Family Theatre will stage When You Trap a Tiger in February. The adaptation of Tae Keller's novel follows three generations of women in a Korean American family. A spring production of the musical Working by Front Porch Arts Collective and Central Square Theater will include at least one story focused on an Asian American worker's experience.

Theater leaders cite audience development as a top priority. Mayor Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, leads a city where Asian American residents are a major constituency. The current season suggests a mismatch between the community's size and its representation on stage. The Huntington is developing works by Korean American playwright Lloyd Suh and Indian American playwright Mahira Kakkar, but neither is scheduled before June 1. Merrimack Rep will host a workshop reading of the second part of the Letters From Home trilogy by Cambodian American Kalean Ung.