Liberty’s 2025-26 theatre season to feature magic beans, murder plots, and musical dreams

With season tickets now on sale for Liberty University’s Department of Theatre Arts 2025-26 season, audiences are able to get their seats for stories that span fantasy, mystery, drama, and comedy, with all but one of the productions never before performed on a Liberty stage.

“Every year, we look at shows we haven’t done because we like to bring things that are new to the audiences and fresh for our directors and students,” Department Chair Linda Nell Cooper said. “We had an abundance of new titles that we looked at this past year, and without even really trying to do all these new shows, we found the titles were so great. They fit our audience well, they fit our students well, and it all came together.”

The first show of the season will be a product of the Alluvion Stage Company, Liberty’s Broadway-quality professional theatre company, with a cast of professionals and students joining in the fairy tale setting of “Into the Woods” (Sept. 12-28). The Stephen Sondheim musical is one of Cooper’s all-time favorites and has been performed three times previously at Liberty, most recently in 2012. The plot follows a baker and his wife as they seek to break a witch’s curse — crossing paths with fairy tale characters like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (and his beanstalk) — only to discover that “happily ever after” doesn’t always last.

“I love the complexity of the story, I love how clever it intertwines all the fairy tales that we all know and adore while bringing different sides that we’ve never seen or explored, and I love how it pertains to everyone’s life,” she said. “The whole metaphor of going into the woods to find your path, to find your direction and what’s on the other side of the woods, it’s something I think everyone experiences at some point.”

“It’s Sondheim’s lyrics and music, and he’s a genius,” she added. “When you do a Sondheim show, it’s like you’re doing the Shakespeare of musical theatre. ‘Into the Woods’ is so intelligent, and yet children like it as well because of the fairy tale aspect.”

From magic spells to murder suspects, the next production is the Agatha Christie whodunnit “Murder on the Orient Express” (Oct. 17-26), in which detective Hercule Poirot must decipher which of the passengers on the famous train committed murder during their ride.

“Christie was a brilliant murder mystery writer, and it’s good for our students to get the type of experience of working with great writing like hers,” Cooper said. “The ensemble work of the play — where you don’t really have one lead, but you have multiple leads — , really gets the audience involved because they really have to pay attention to all the details.”

The musical adaptation of another literary classic, Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” (Nov. 7-22), will conclude the fall semester by telling a story of sacrifice and redemption on the streets of London and Paris in the years leading to the French Revolution. Given its scale, action, and sung-through music, Cooper said the production will give students plenty of opportunities to exercise their skill sets onstage.

“It’s a massive, epic story where you’ve got to almost have two completely different casts — the British and the French — and is about the two sides of man. It’s all about how far you will go to protect the person you love, which may even mean sacrificing your own life. With lots of stage combat, use of accents, a period (setting), and lots of choreography … it’s great for the students. Our students love that type of (challenge).”

In the spring, the Tower Theater will be transformed into Prince Edward Island to tell the story of “Anne of Green Gables” (Feb. 13-22). The play, based on the children’s novel of the same name, is about an imaginative 11-year-old orphan girl named Anne Shirley sent by mistake to two middle-aged siblings who had intended to adopt a boy to work on their farm, and ultimately becomes a coming-of-age story for Anne and the audience.

“It’s such a wholesome story and a beloved novel,” Cooper said. “It’s all about a girl who is independent and knows her own mind, and yet she still knows how to love and be loved. The character of Gilbert (Blythe) is such a favorite book character because he allows Anne to be herself and he loves her for who she is.”

The first musical ever to be staged in Liberty’s Black Box Theater, a more intimate space located just a short walk from the Tower Theater, “The Marvelous Wonderettes” (March 26 – April 4) uses a jukebox musical format to tell the story of four high school girls in the 1950s who form the titular, fictional singing group that sings at their senior prom. In the second act, the girls meet at their school’s 10-year reunion, revealing the way they each have changed and singing songs from the new decade.

“We’ve got two different decades of music that these four girls sing in a four-part harmony, and it’s a lot of fun with the upbeat, energetic music,” Cooper said. “The audience will be able to relate to being seniors in high school and then coming back 10 years later wondering, ‘Is anybody still the same?’”

Before they say goodbye to the spring semester, audiences will say “Hello, gorgeous” to Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl” (April 17 – May 3). Following Brice on her catapulting career journey from aspiring performer to Ziegfeld Follies headliner, the musical will showcase the comic and musical talents of Liberty’s students and finish the season on an entertaining high note.

“We made it the finale of our season because it’s a musical comedy, and we like to leave things on a lighter note,” Cooper said. “It was a musical that was made famous by Barbra Streisand and her big voice with these great numbers, so it allows for some of our female students to really be highlighted. It’s about going rags to riches, the American Dream, as a Jewish girl with nothing becomes a Broadway star. And even though she became so famous, she was still the young Jewish girl, she stayed true to her roots and to who she was, and so you root for her.”

Cooper said that Liberty’s theatre audiences have shown immense support to the students and productions, illustrating how live theatre continues to tell stories and entertain like no other artform can.

“Our audiences have come out and supported us in throngs, and we see that continuing in the future,” she said. “They trust us when they come and buy a ticket that they’re going to get a couple hours of good entertainment and see some talented kids. It’s very unifying to sit in a theater with 600 other people and experience the same emotions together. There’s nothing that feels better than to hear hundreds of people laugh at the same time or gasp at the same time. There’s something beautiful in that that we don’t get (anywhere else).”

Visit the Department of Theatre Arts website for dates and ticket information.

Help provide financial assistance to full-time students and degree candidates within the Department of Theatre Arts through the Tower Club. Giving levels start at just $100 and come with exclusive benefits such as tickets to our annual Gala, exclusive events. Scheduled events include a historical literary discussion on Nov. 15 in conjunction with “A Tale of Two Cities,” an “Anne of Green Gables” family event on Feb. 21, and the Tower Club Gala on April 25. Corporate sponsorships are also available. Contact Kelli Doby @kpdoby@liberty.edu or 434-582-7899 for information. Thanks to generous donors, the Tower Club awarded $10,000 in scholarships in its first year and increased that to $25,000 last year.