As A Short Leap has grown, so has our understanding of what community actually requires. Identity may be the starting point, but it’s not the end of the conversation. Once we know who we are, we are confronted with what comes next: how we speak, how we listen, how we care for one another, and how we remain present when the systems around us make that increasingly difficult.

In assembling our 2026 season, these plays rose to the forefront for their shared preoccupation with connection under constraint. Each examines what happens when communication is limited, when bodies refuse to cooperate, or when love must stretch across distance, silence, or time. Together, they ask the question A Short Leap keeps returning to, now reframed and sharpened.

Who are we when staying connected is the hardest thing to do?

Diana Lynn Small’s Good Day drops us into a single afternoon where movement, grief, and anger collide. Anna lies immobile on her parents’ front lawn, refusing to move, to eat, or to comply. What unfolds is a raw, funny, and ferocious reckoning with avoidance, care, and emotional labor. Good Day asks: Who are we when our bodies say no, even as the world demands yes?

In Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles, an unlikely relationship forms between a young man reeling from loss and the grandmother who takes him in. Through quiet humor and profound tenderness, Herzog’s play examines generational gaps, political divides, and the fragile ways we show up for one another. It asks: Who are we when love looks like patience, listening, and staying?

A political parable, a real-time emotional rupture, and a deeply human portrait of care—these three plays reflect our continued commitment to work that is intimate, challenging, and rooted in lived experience. Together, they mark our next step forward as a company and as a community.

If last season asked us to look inward, this season asks us to reach outward—carefully, imperfectly, and with intention.

Who are we when connection is not guaranteed—

—but chosen?