Mill Mountain Theatre Unveils 2026–27 Season Built Around Appalachian Voices
Producing Artistic Director Ginger Poole says the slate — including a world premiere set in Franklin County — marks the theater’s most region-focused season in more than a decade.
Mill Mountain Theatre on Sunday unveiled a 2026–27 season built around Appalachian voices, with five of the six mainstage productions written by playwrights with Virginia, West Virginia, or East Tennessee roots — the theater’s most regionally focused slate in more than a decade.
The season opens in September with a revival of Robert Schenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle in a condensed two-evening staging, followed in November by the world premiere of The Franklin County Hornbook, a new drama by North Carolina playwright Mariel Long set against the backdrop of the 1935 Franklin County moonshine conspiracy trial.
Producing Artistic Director Ginger Poole said the focus emerged during a six-month listening process with audience members, subscribers, and local artists. “We heard the same thing over and over: tell our stories,” Poole said. “Not as costume drama, not as archival reenactment — as living theater.”
The season also includes a musical adaptation of Lee Smith’s novel Fair and Tender Ladies, commissioned by Mill Mountain and developed over the past two years with composer Deva Mahal; a touring production of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew as part of a new partnership with the New Harmony Project; and a holiday-season staging of Smoke on the Mountain.
The sixth slot, reserved for the theater’s long-running Centerpiece series, will be announced in early summer.
Subscriber prices rise modestly — by 4% at the full-season level — but the theater is introducing a new “Salt Pass” aimed at readers under 35, which bundles all six shows for $180.
“We have to grow a generation of theatergoers who don’t remember buying tickets at the box office window with cash,” Poole said. “If we don’t, we won’t have subscribers in ten years.”
Mill Mountain Theatre has undergone a slow rebuild since the 2010 financial crisis forced the Jefferson Street venue to briefly go dark. Its budget, which stood at $1.4 million in 2011, has climbed to $3.8 million this season — within $200,000 of its pre-crisis peak adjusted for inflation.
Board chair Elena Roma said the theater ended its most recent fiscal year with a modest surplus, its fourth in a row. “We’re not where we want to be, but we are no longer running on fumes,” Roma said.
The world premiere of The Franklin County Hornbook is expected to draw regional attention. Long, who grew up in Rocky Mount and now teaches at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, worked with legal historians and the descendants of two of the original indicted bootleggers to develop the script.
“This is a story the mountains have been telling around the kitchen table for ninety years,” Long said. “Now it belongs on a stage.”
Single tickets go on sale July 15.
