Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Artistic Director, Johanna Pfaelzer; Managing Director, Tom Parrish) and Matt Ross just announced today the world premiere of the new musical, The Interestings. The production will be part of Berkeley Rep’s 2026/27 season, produced in association with Ross.
Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Michael Arden, The Interestings features music and lyrics by two-time Grammy® Award winner, three-time Tony® Award and three-time Primetime Emmy® Award nominee, and multi-platinum recording artist Sara Bareilles. New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer joins the team as Co-Bookwriter, adapting her own novel for the stage, along with the previously announced Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl. Music Supervision is by Grammy Award nominee Nadia DiGiallonardo.
Performances begin at Berkeley Repertory Theatre [2025 Addison St, Berkeley, CA] on January 31, 2027, with an opening night set for February 17, 2027. Tickets will only be available as part of a 2026/27 season subscription package beginning February 18 for renewing subscribers and April 15 for new subscribers. Individual tickets will be available at a later date. To subscribe, visit www.berkeleyrep.org/subscription-and-ticket-packages-m1xn.
“When I read Meg Wolitzer’s unbelievably funny and poignant novel, The Interestings, I wrote the first song before I’d finished the book,” said Sara Bareilles. “I felt like I knew these characters already, and they continue to inspire and challenge me to evolve as a writer and a storyteller. My love affair with them continues, and it has been the thrill of a lifetime to be entrusted with helping them sing. Meg’s novel is the blueprint for what this creative team is conjuring, and it has been a complex, deep process of arrival and discovery and surrender and delight. It is especially wonderful to get the opportunity to bring a new work to one of the great theaters on the west coast, Berkeley Repertory Theatre. As a Northern California girl, it feels like coming home with something I am so proud of, and that I am so excited to share.”
The Interestings follows six friends who bond over their shared dream of leading creative lives. From their first meeting as teenagers at a summer camp in the 1970s to decades later in New York City, that bond remains, but so much else has changed. Tracing their lives as they grow together and apart, The Interestings explores friendship, love, envy, class, art, money, and power—and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a life.
Additional details, including cast and creative team, will be announced at a later date.
Released in 2013, Meg Wolitzer’s New York Times bestselling novel The Interestings has been called “remarkable… acutely perceptive…” (The New York Times Book Review), “sprawling, ambitious and often wistful” (USA Today), “a supremely engrossing, deeply knowing, genius-level enterprise” (The Chicago Tribune), “wonderful” (Vanity Fair), and “a victory” (Entertainment Weekly).
