Wexner Center for the Arts Announces 2025-26 Performing Arts Season

New season features a bold slate of works spanning dance, music, and multidisciplinary performance

COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ --The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University announces its 2025–26 performing arts season, offering a full year of bold, multidisciplinary performances that bridge generations, disciplines, and communities. Running from September 2025 through April 2026, the season features visionary artists working across dance, theater, and music (including opera and jazz) with many returning to the Wex as part of its legacy of supporting groundbreaking work.

This year's lineup continues the center's longstanding commitment to artistic innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, with performances presented in partnership with Opera Columbus, Available Light Theatre, and Ohio State's School of Music and Office of Academic Affairs. Through new work and returning artists, the season invites audiences into conversations about history, identity, ecology, and collective resilience.

"This season is about connection and rediscovery," said Nathalie Bonjour, Head of Performing Arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts. "We're presenting work that speaks to the moment while continuing to bring visionary artists to our local stage. Whether you're a longtime Wex audience member or visiting for the first time, these performances invite you to experience something powerful, memorable, and vividly present."

Advance ticket sales for Wex members began July 7, and tickets will be available to the general public beginning July 21 here.

The season lineup includes:

SOLE Defined: Zaz: The Big Easy
Thu–Fri, Sep 4–5 | 7 PM
Sun, Sep 7 | 3 PM
Performance Space

Experience the world premiere of this powerful, performative archive of stories honoring the resilience of Hurricane Katrina survivors, embodying their experiences through dance, music, and technology. ZAZ: The Big Easy is an immersive sensory performance that expands traditional viewing beyond sight and sound.

Etienne Charles & Creole Soul
Thu, Sep 18 | 7 & 9 PM
Performance Space

One of the most innovative and charismatic musicians in the contemporary jazz world, Charles and his band, Creole Soul, will explore infectious grooves from their large collection of work.

Mark Lomax II
Thu, Oct 2 | 7 PM
Performance Space

Experience a musical performance focused on elevating the human spirit through healing, transformation, and unifying the human family. Mark Lomax II and the Urban Art Ensemble perform the world premiere of their new release, The Unity Suite, which draws musical inspiration from Lomax's experiences in the Black church.

The Old Man and the Sea
Fri, Oct 10 & Sun, Oct 12 | 7:30 PM & 2 PM
Mershon Auditorium
Presented in partnership with Opera Columbus and Ohio State's Office of Academic Affairs, and produced by Beth Morrison Projects

This Ohio premiere reimagines Hemingway's beloved classic as a contemporary operatic masterpiece, complete with water on stage. Onstage you'll hear music from Jeffrey Zeigler as the featured cellist, as well as percussionists and a 16-person chorus featuring students from Ohio State's School of Music.

Wanjiru Kamuyu: Fragmented Shadows
Wed–Thu, Oct 22–23 | 7 PM
Performance Space

This Midwest premiere explores personal, ancestral, and societal wounds that imprint on the body and shape our well-being. Kamuyu positions the body as a site of liberation through dance, sound, and imagery.

Marion Ramirez and Ojeya Cruz Banks: Mareas/Tides
Wed, Nov 5 | 7 PM
Performance Space

Dance, live music, and immersive visuals transport audiences into a story about the Earth's interconnected push-and-pull relationship with its oceans. Mareas/Tides is an interdisciplinary performance that combines dance, storytelling, singing, music, visual imagery, and improvisation, and traces island cosmologies and diasporic geographies of the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Pacific seas and the gravitational power of the moon.

Doug Varone and Dancers
Fri, Nov 21 | 7 PM
Performance Space
Copresented by The Ohio State University Department of Dance

The renowned company returns to the Wex with three powerful works choreographed by Varone that explore human connection and vulnerability: Double Octet (music by Philip Glass), Home (music by Dick Connette) and Restore (music by Nico Bentley). A fourth piece, commissioned by the Wex and created during a summer residency at the center, will also be performed in the program.

Immanuel Wilkins
Fri, Jan 23 | 7 & 9 PM
Performance Space

The acclaimed saxophonist and composer brings his quartet and vocalists to present Blues Blood, a bold new project in the Wex jazz series.

Available Light Theatre: John Cage 101
Fri–Sat, Jan 30–31 | 7 PM
Sun, Feb 1 | 3 PM
Performance Space

A theatrical mixtape celebrating the renegade life and controversial ideas of the 20th century's most influential experimental composer.

Trisha Brown Dance Company and Merce Cunningham Trust: Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage
Fri, Feb 6 | 7 PM
Mershon Auditorium

Experience the power of collaboration across disciplines in the Ohio premiere of this celebration of the iconoclastic American artist Robert Rauschenberg on his centennial.

Kenny Barron Trio
Fri, Feb 13 | 7 & 9 PM
Performance Space

The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and Grammy-nominated legendary jazz pianist brings his longtime trio to the Wex for the first time.

Bill Frisell: In My Dreams
Thu, Apr 2 | 7 & 9 PM
Performance Space
Presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts and The Ohio State University Office of Academic Affairs

Brilliant jazz guitarist Bill Frisell returns with his longtime friends and collaborators for this year's jazz series with his project In My Dreams.

Claire Chase: Day of Listening
Sun, Apr 12 | 1 PM
Performance Space

This interactive, contemporary, and family-friendly performance inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros is free and open to music lovers of all ages.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: Still/Here
Fri, Apr 17 | 7 PM
Mershon Auditorium

Bill T. Jones's groundbreaking work Still/Here returns to Mershon Auditorium 30 years after its creation as a Wex Artist Residency Award project, continuing to break boundaries between the personal and political.

Performance details, artist bios, and ticket information available here. Promotional images for your use are available here.

PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Doris Duke Foundation

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Wexner Family
Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts
CampusParc
The Columbus Foundation
Every Page Foundation
Mellon Foundation
Axium Packaging
Nationwide Foundation

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Joyce Shenk
Lachelle Thigpen

Contact: 
Erik Pepple, 
[email protected] 
(614) 292-0058

SOURCE Wexner Center for the Arts