CU Theatre’s 2026-27 season leans into campus and state history for CU Boulder’s 150th celebration

Offering farce, tragedy, history and musical horror-comedy, CU Theatre’s 2026-27 season celebrates CU Boulder’s 150th anniversary with something for virtually everyone.

“The through-line for this year is that it’s really about CU students, alumni and history,” says Kevin Rich, chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance.  

Students working on a new, devised piece, The 150 Project, mined campus archives seeking oral histories of CU students who made a mark on campus since its opening. In collaboration with visiting guest artist, Jimmy Maize of New York City’s Tectonic Theatre Project, a student cast will discover and embody those stories onstage in the historic Old Main Chapel. 

“It’s been exciting to find these rich stories that emerge from the archival work,” Rich says. 

The season finale resurrects the late-90s cult horror-comedy film, Cannibal! The Musical, produced, directed, written and starred in by CU Boulder graduate Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park. In Parker’s edgy romp, infamous Colorado cannibal Alferd Packer tells reporter Polly Pry how he came to be the sole survivor of a grim mountain ordeal.

“It was originally a B-horror movie and was later produced in the region as a funny campy musical,” Rich says. “It’s got those South Park vibes.”

CU Theatre PhD graduate and lecturer Heather Kelly sets Romeo and Juliet within an innovative frame, as a troupe of teens break into an abandoned theater to produce a rogue version of Shakespeare’s most famous play for social media.

And taking place at a chaotic anniversary party, Neil Simon’s lone venture into the farce subgenre, Rumors, will open the season in the intimate Loft Theatre.

CU Theatre 2026-27 performances 

Rumors

By Neil Simon
Directed by Chip Persons
Oct. 2-11, 2026
Loft Theatre
(This production is sold out)

Neil Simon’s lone farce revels in the chaos and deception that ensues when the first wealthy couple to arrive for a 10th anniversary party for the deputy mayor of New York find that he’s shot himself in the earlobe, his wife has disappeared, and the house staff have fled. Hoping to stave off a P.R. nightmare, the couple tries to hide the truth from other guests as they arrive, conjuring increasingly absurd stories as they become entangled in their own webs of deceit. 

The 150 Project

Devised work by students and Jimmy Maize of the Tectonic Theatre Project
Directed by Kevin Rich
Nov. 6-15, 2026
Old Main Chapel

In a unique celebration of CU Boulder’s 150th anniversary, this year’s Roe Greene Guest Artist, Jimmy Maize of the Tectonic Theatre Project (The Laramie Project) has worked with students to delve deep into the archives and reclaim stories of past students who made their mark on campus, from the late 1800s to the present. Onstage at the university’s most historic performance space, and using techniques from Tectonic’s innovative Moment Work™, the cast brings the long-lost stories of their forebears to life. 

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Heather Kelly
Feb. 19-28, 2027
Roe Green Theatre

Inspired by the generational battle and challenges to authority in Shakespeare’s most famous work, CU Boulder PhD graduate Heather Kelly introduces an innovative framing device: A night watchman witnesses a troupe of teenage actors breaking into a shuttered theatre, where they plan to stage a scrappy, irreverent adaptation for social media. Caught by the watchman, they seek to call him in — but will he join their rogue dramatic conspiracy, or bow to duty and betray them to authorities?

Cannibal! The Musical

By Trey Parker
Directed by Aaron Klass
April 9-18, 202
Roe Green Theatre

Produced, directed, written, and starring South Park co-creator Trey Parker while he was at CU Boulder, the B-horror-comedy Cannibal! The Musical foreshadowed his future as a wizard of edgy, irreverent satire. Based on the true story of Alferd Packer, Colorado’s infamous convicted cannibal, the sole (but full) survivor of a wintry Rockies expedition regales pretty Polly Pry, reporter, with tales of horror — from feasting on forbidden flesh to chirpy, aggravating campfire songs — while awaiting his fate. “Refreshingly ludicrous.” — The New York Times