The John & Joyce Ambruster
Play-Reading Series, 2026-2027

Over 10 years ago, we decided we’d like to present more plays to our Rogue audience. Our season schedule was too full to offer more fully-produced plays, so we decided to produce a play-reading series. At the very same time, John & Joyce Ambruster asked to fund a special project at The Rogue.

It was a perfect marriage.

In The John & Joyce Ambruster Play-Reading Series we offer readings of plays that might be of interest to our Rogue audience. Each play is rehearsed by a group of actors for about 12 hours and performed with scripts in hand. Some of these plays will be fully produced in future years, and some of the plays are just interesting to hear once. Either way, you get to taste more plays each year.

The 2026–2027 Season of Play-Readings

This series is made possible by a generous gift from John and Joyce Ambruster.

Rhinoceros

by Eugène Ionesco
translated by Derek Prouse

Saturday, July 18, 2026 at 2:00 pm
Sunday, July 19, 2026 at 2:00 pm

An absurdist allegory in which the inhabitants of a French provincial town begin to transform, one after another, into rhinoceroses. As the pressure to conform spreads far and wide, one bumbling everyman is all that stands between rationality and mass hysteria…

Sponsored by Clay Shirk

The Language Archive

by Julia Cho

Saturday, March 27, 2027 at 2:00 pm
Sunday, March 28, 2027 at 2:00 pm

George is a linguist obsessed with preserving the dying languages of fading cultures, but can’t summon so much as a single word to prevent his wife from leaving him. A tender and whimsical comedy about the sounds and silences of human connection.

Sponsored by Clay Shirk

Picnic at Hanging Rock

by Joan Lindsay
adapted by Tom Wright

Saturday, May 22, 2027 at 2:00 pm
Sunday, May 23, 2027 at 2:00 pm

Adapted from the celebrated Australian novel, the play tells the mysterious story of a group of boarding school girls who disappear on a hike up Hanging Rock on St. Valentine’s Day, 1900; and the resulting chaos that emerges in their absence.

Sponsored by Gian & Marykay Morelli

Four-reading subscription packages are available now for $72.

Three-reading subscription packages will become available in July for $54.

Single tickets for Rhinoceros go on sale July 1, and single tickets for the other three readings go on sale in early August.
Single tickets are $20.