As A Short Leap Theatre Company has grown, so has our understanding of what community actually requires. Identity may be the starting point—but it is 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 2026–2027 mainstage 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 return us to a familiar A Short Leap question—now reframed and sharpened:

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

In Good Day, a world premiere by Diana Lynn Small, we are dropped 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?

Finally, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner offers a quietly radical vision of intimacy in a world shaped by restriction. As a couple navigates a government-imposed limit on spoken words, Steiner’s play explores how connection adapts when language itself becomes scarce. Tender, playful, and devastating, Lemons… asks: Who are we when we must choose our words carefully—and choose each other anyway?

Together, these three plays reflect A Short Leap’s continued commitment to work that is intimate, challenging, and rooted in lived experience. They mark our next step forward—not just as a company, but as a community willing to sit in discomfort, resist easy answers, and practice care in real time.

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?