Tony Winners Celia Keenan-Bolger and Tony Shalhoub to Take on Sophocles' Antigone Off-Broadway

Tony Award winners Celia Keenan-Bolger and Tony Shalhoub will star in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School), a reimagining of the ancient play by Sophocles, at the Public Theater in 2026. Tyne Rafaeli directs Anna Ziegler’s play, to be staged in winter/spring 2026. The production was announced as part of the Public Theater’s 2025-26 season.

Ziegler’s take on the play follows a fiercely independent young woman determined to control her own body in a kingdom ruled by archaic laws that regulate women’s autonomy. The world of the play is both modern and ancient: a world of lost leaders, hapless cops and one very righteous daughter on an all-night bender. Keenan-Bolger will play Chorus alongside Shalhoub’s Creon. Additional casting is to be announced.

The production will arrive in the wake of adapter-director Robert Icke’s take on Sophocles’ Oedipus, opening on Broadway in fall 2025.

The Public Theater’s 2025-26 season will also include the New York premiere of The Other Americans, a new play written by and starring Tony winner John Leguizamo; the world premiere of The Seat of Our Pants, a new Ethan Lipton musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, starring Damon Daunno and Tony winner Ruthie Ann Miles and directed by Leigh Silverman; and Oh Happy Day, from Tony Award-nominated writer and director duo Jordan E. Cooper and Stevie Walker-Webb.