Nathan Lane, Christopher Abbott, Ben Ahlers to Host 2026 Shubert Foundation High School Theater Festival
Tony and Emmy winner Nathan Lane and his Death of a Salesman co-stars Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers will host the 2026 Shubert Foundation High School Theater Festival for NYC Public Schools May 4 at 7:30 PM at Broadway’s Schoenfeld Theatre.
This annual theater training expertise, introduced by The Shubert Foundation and the NYC Public Schools Arts Office, will give 200 younger NYC public faculty theater artists the prospect to make their Broadway debuts.
Additional visitor presenters for the twelfth annual occasion will embrace Isa Antonetti (Buena Vista Social Club), Treshelle Edmond (Spring Awakening), Thayne Jasperson (hamilton), Francis Jue (Yellow Face), Aimé Donna Kelly, (Law & Order: SVU), Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), Da’Von Moody (Buena Vista Social Club), N’Kenge (Motown: the Musical), Liz Pearce (Masquerade), Caesar Samayoa (Just in Time), and Abel Santiago (Julliard & Shubert Festival alum).
The Festival celebrates 5 excellent highschool pupil productions from the 2025-26 faculty yr, chosen from greater than 30 performs and musicals throughout the town by skilled theater artists and theater educators. This yr, pupil displays from the next faculties will carry out scenes and musical numbers: Chicago (Susan E. Wagner High School, Staten Island)Come From Away (Professional Performing Arts High School, Manhattan)In Transit (Brooklyn High School of the Arts, Brooklyn), Little Shop of Horrors (Academy for College Preparation & Career Exploration, Brooklyn), and The SpongeBob Musical (Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Campus Collaboration, Manhattan).
For the primary time, the Festival can even highlight the scholars who positioned first and second within the NYC Shakespeare Competition: Madison Martinez (Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing & Visual Arts, Manhattan) and Kriston Hall (Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts, Manhattan). The two will carry out their profitable monologues, adopted by a scene from Romeo & Juliet.
“The arts play an essential role in every student’s learning and well-being. Events such as The Shubert Foundation High School Theater Festival provide a unique professional Broadway setting for our students to shine, supporting their creativity and confidence,” stated Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels in a press release. “My Arts Office colleagues and I deeply admire the Shubert Foundation for his or her continued partnership, assist, and dedication to how theater training enriches the lives of our college students and their communities.”
“This is now the 12th year that The Shubert Foundation High School Theater Festival will be showcasing the stellar theater programs of NYC’s public schools on a Broadway stage and we continue to be amazed by the talent and effort of the students and their teachers,” added The Shubert Foundation President Diana Phillips. “They have already impressed their school communities and now, on the evening of May 4th, their stage becomes even bigger, their audience even wider. We couldn’t be more proud to see them take their Broadway bows.”
Sponsored by The Shubert Foundation, The Festival is introduced in partnership with the New York City Public Schools’ Arts Office. A 2025-26 Shubert Foundation grant of $734,000 funds the Festival and helps a variety of present theater and humanities education schemes in New York City public faculties. Since 2005, The Shubert Foundation has supplied greater than $10 million to the New York City Department of Education for Theater and humanities education schemes.
The Shubert Foundation, Inc. is the most important institutional funder of theater education schemes all through NYC public faculties and the nation’s largest personal basis devoted to unrestricted funding of not-for-profit theaters, with a secondary give attention to dance.
Visit ShubertFoundation.org.
