Manhattan Theatre Club Adds David Lindsay-Abaire Play ‘The Balusters’ To Upcoming Broadway Line-Up

The world premiere production of The Balusters by Kimberly Akimbo writer David Lindsay-Abaire has been added to Manhattan Theatre Club‘s 2025-2026 season, joining the previously announced Broadway premiere of James Graham’s acclaimed Punch.

The Balusters, to be directed by Kenny Leon, will open at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in spring 2026 (Punch opens there in the fall). Lindsay-Abaire won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole, a Manhattan Theatre Club production.

MTC today also announced an Off Broadway addition to its 2025-2026 season: A newly imagined version of Queens by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living), to be directed by Trip Cullman with an opening in fall 2025 Off-Broadway at NY City Center Stage I. Queens joins MTC’s spring 2026 Off Broadway production The Monsters, written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu in a co-production with Two River Theater.

Additional productions for MTC’s 2025-26 season will be announced soon.

“We are thrilled to welcome back David Lindsay-Abaire and Martyna Majok, both of whom received the Pulitzer Prize for plays produced by MTC,” said Artistic Director Lynne Meadow. “David’s history with us began over two decades ago, when we premiered Fuddy Meers Off Broadway. I’m so proud that his newest work is the seventh world premiere David Lindsay-Abaire play we’ve produced at MTC. We welcome back director Kenny Leon, who staged King James for us in 2023.

“We’re also excited to reunite with Martyna after producing Cost of Living both on and Off Broadway,” Meadow continued. “Her play Queens is a powerful portrait of female immigrants facing difficult circumstances in our city. We are delighted that the production will be helmed by Trip Cullman. We treasure our rich relationships with these extraordinary artists, and we’re so happy to bring them ‘home’.”

The official synopsis: “The Balusters is a raucous, wild ride through a small community with big feelings. The Vernon Point Neighborhood Association is a passionate bunch, whether squabbling over historically inaccurate porch railings or debating trash can protocol. Still, no one is prepared for the neighbor-versus-neighbor battle royale that ensues when a newcomer to the board suggests the unthinkable: installing a stop sign on the corner of the enclave’s prettiest block.”

“Manhattan Theatre Club has been my artistic home since I was a baby-playwright, so of course I’m thrilled to be back with The Balusters, my newest play about well-intentioned people behaving really badly,” said Lindsay-Abaire. “The only thing more exciting than having a new show on Broadway? Having it helmed by the brilliant director Kenny Leon. After twenty-five years of plays with MTC, I’ve never looked forward to sharing a story with an audience more than I am with The Balusters.”

Lindsay-Abaire’s previous work at MTC has included Rabbit Hole, Good People, Ripcord, Wonder of the World, Fuddy Meers, and his play Kimberly Akimbo, which he later adapted with composer Jeanine Tesori into the Tony Award-winning musical.

The official synopsis for Majok’s Queens: “In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive. Directed by Trip Cullman, Queens chronicles the strivers who sacrificed whole worlds for the chance at something remarkable.”

“Queens means the world to me,” said Majok. “I first began writing it in 2016 and I’ve been searching for it ever since, in various workshops, productions, and late nights and early mornings. I worried I’d never write another original play again until I figured out this one; so haunted was I by these women, so driven to do right by them. It’s with tears that I now write that I finally feel like I’ve found their story.”

Leon, whose Broadway credits include A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, Topdog/Underdog, Purlie Victorious, Our Town and the current Othello, returns to MTC, where he previously directed Rajiv Joseph’s King James in 2023.

Cullman directed MTC’s world premiere of Joshua Harmon’s We Had a World this season, and previously directed the MTC productions of Choir Boy and Murder Ballad. His other major credits include the Broadway productions of Cult of Love, The Rose Tattoo, Lobby Hero, Six Degrees of Separation, and Significant Other, among others.