It’s already been a big year for Three Bone Theatre.
In January, the theater announced Lisa Miller as their first full-time Managing Director, a big step forward towards professionalizing the organization. Miller replaced volunteer executive director Becky Schultz, who served for 13 years.
The theater also assumed management of their home, The Arts Factory in Historic West End, through a partnership with the Arts & Science Council and Mecklenburg County.
The theater’s growth is matching the groundwork. At a VIP event at the Arts Factory to announce the theater’s 15th Anniversary Season — more on that below — Miller shared that over the past year, 51% of visitors were new to the theater. Three Bone put together its first-ever strategic plan, and Miller also noted that the production calendar “was fully booked” at the Arts Factory as other local theaters, including the Lotus Project, have produced plays on their stage.
Growth is important for an organization that bills itself as catalyst for conversation and change in the community. At a time when the political pendulum seems to be swinging away from hard conversations and back towards demonizing minority groups for partisan gain, Three Bone isn’t afraid to platform challenging conversations, make land acknowledgments, and produce plays that center the lived experience of indigenous and minority communities — including “Sovereignty,” the final production of Three Bone’s 14th Season.
“Sovereignty,” billed as “an expansive exploration of the circular continuity of history, human memory, and the power of human relationships,” shifts back and forth between scenes in the 1800s and in the present day Mary Kathryn Nagle, the playwright is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a playwright whose work has been produced at theaters across the country. Sovereignty premiered at Arena Stage in 2018 and has since been produced at theaters nationwide.
In addition to its run in Charlotte, Three Bone will be taking “Sovereignty” on the road to the Qualla Boundary with the support of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. The play will be performed in Cherokee, N.C. on September 11-12.
“Sovereignty” is sold out for its opening night performance, but tickets remain for the rest of the engagement at the Arts Factory through September 6.
Our review of “Sovereignty,” which held its final dress rehearsal after the reception and announcement, is forthcoming. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
Three Bone Theatre: The 15th Anniversary Season
Three Bone wants you to know that its 15th Anniversary Season “brings four searing mainstage productions and one limited special engagement that take risks, ask difficult questions and refuse easy answers.”
“This is a big anniversary season for us,” said artistic director and Three Bone Theatre co-founder Robin Tynes-Miller. “It is bolder, it is bigger, and we reflect on 15 years of our work … we begin and end the season with major award winners.”
Shows include “Liberation,” “The Reservoir,” “Purpose,” a staged reading of “Here There are Blueberries,” and the first-ever musical for the theater, “Coal Country,” with music and lyrics by Steve Earle.
Tickets are on sale now; you can find descriptions of the shows from the theater below.
LIBERATION - NOVEMBER 2026
WINNER
2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
2026 Tony Award for Best Play
LIBERATION
Written by Bess Wohl
Directed by Donna Bradby
It’s 1970. Somewhere in Ohio, six women meet on a basketball court to form a consciousness-raising women’s liberation group, determined to shake up their lives and change the world. Fifty years later, one of their daughters tries to understand where things fell apart.
A provocative, wildly theatrical play that poses vital questions about friendship, legacy and the true meaning of liberation, investigating what we inherit, what we forget, and what we’re still fighting to understand.
COAL COUNTRY - MARCH 2027
A MODERN MUSICAL EVENT
Experience Three Bone Theatre’s first-ever musical production
COAL COUNTRY
Written by Jessica Blank & Erik Jensen
Original Music & Lyrics by Steve Earle
Directed by Johnny Hohenstein
Coal Country tells the true story of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster, drawn from real interviews with survivors and families, with original songs by Steve Earle woven throughout. Marking Three Bone Theatre’s first musical, it’s a raw tribute to the miners’ lives and a reminder of why worker safety and solidarity matter now more than ever.
THE RESERVOIR - MAY 2027
WINNER
2024 National Jewish Playwriting Contest
NOMINEE
2026 Outer Critics Circle Awards
Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play
THE RESERVOIR
Written by Jake Brasch
Directed by Glynnis O’Donoghue
The Reservoir is a sharply funny, deeply moving new play by Jake Brasch about family, memory, and the messy work of healing. Fresh out of rehab and back home in Denver, Josh finds himself leaning on the last people he expected—his four aging grandparents, each navigating their own relationship with memory and dementia. What follows is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, as Jazzercise classes, unsolicited advice, and long-buried family history collide. Semi-autobiographical and full of heart, The Reservoir asks what we inherit from the people who raised us, and how we find our way back to ourselves through them.
PURPOSE - AUGUST 2027
WINNER
2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
2025 Tony Award for Best Play
PURPOSE
Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Sidney Horton
For decades, the Jasper family has stood as a pillar of Black American politics—civil rights leaders, pastors, congressmen. But when the youngest son returns home to Chicago with an uninvited guest in tow, old loyalties crack under the weight of long-buried secrets and unresolved resentments. As the family gathers under one roof, they’re forced into a reckoning with faith, legacy, and the price of believing in something larger than yourself. Purpose is a sharp, funny, and devastating portrait of a family determined to protect its public image even as the truth pushes to the surface. It’s an epic story about what we inherit from our parents, what we owe to history, and what happens when the mask finally slips.
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES - JANUARY 2027
WINNER
2025 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play
FINALIST
2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
A Staged Reading of
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES
Written by Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich
Directed by Robin Tynes-Miller
In partnership with the Stan Greenspon Holocaust Education Center
An album of never-before-seen World War II-era photographs arrives at the desk of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding. As Rebecca and her team of historians begin to unravel the shocking mystery behind the images, the album soon makes headlines around the world. In Germany, a businessman sees the album online and recognizes his own grandfather in the photos. He begins a journey of discovery that will take him into the lives of other Nazi descendants – in a reckoning with his family’s past and his country’s history. Here There are Blueberries confronts us with difficult questions: how do everyday people become monsters, and how do we face that capacity within ourselves?