About TheatreSquared

TheatreSquared’s signature offering of bold new plays in an intimate setting has driven its growth to become the state’s largest theatre, welcoming more than 80,000 community members to 350 performances and events each year. The company is Northwest Arkansas’s theatre, offering a unique audience experience of immersive, professional productions in an intimate setting. Its pioneering work has been recognized with the 2022 Obie Award as well as critical acclaim from The New York Times (“Best Theater of 2020” list), The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, NPR’s All Things Considered, and the American Theater Wing, founder of the Tony Awards.

TheatreSquared’s audience includes tens of thousands of students and their teachers. The theatre partners with schools from Northwest Arkansas to the Delta Region, working to give students in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri access to live performances and arts-based learning tools.

A professional company, TheatreSquared employs trained artists from across the country to create its performances at the theatre, in schools, and online. The theatre is also one of mid-America’s leading new play laboratories, having supported the development of more than 70 scripts. The company has helped launch new work by Bryna Turner, Candrice Jones, José Cruz Gonzáles, Sarah Gancher, The Kilbanes, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Anne García-Romero, Rachel Lynett, Tony Meneses, Lisa D’Amour, Qui Nguyen, Mona Mansour, Karen Zacarías, and many others. 

TheatreSquared’s home—winner of the 2020 American Architecture Award, the 2021 International Architecture Award, AIA New York State Honor Award, an Interior Design Best of Year Honor, the 2023 AIA NY Design Merit Award and the USITT Architecture Award—is a cultural landmark in Northwest Arkansas. The 50,000-square-foot campus unites two intimate theatres, rehearsal space, a three-level commons and café, outdoor gathering spaces, production workshops, offices, and artists’ apartments. Campaign efforts are in their closing phase — learn more at ournextstage.org.

TheatreSquared’s remarkable expansion—with a twentyfold increase in audience in just the past decade—parallels the emergence of its home region in the northwest corner of Arkansas as a booming population center and destination for American art. Since its founding in 2005, TheatreSquared’s work has remained rooted in its founding vision, that “theatre—done well and with passion—can transform lives and communities.”

“TheatreSquared is clearly worthy of its fine reputation. First-class theater — an outstanding drama company.” 

– The Wall Street Journal