Although South Florida has become a robust landscape for theater of all kinds, summer presents a theatrical dry spell. One would think that a nice cool theater would be a great place to beat the sizzling summer heat and be entertained for a few hours, but South Florida theater companies face unique concerns during the summer.
“We used to literally say that in our ads, when we used to do fluff in the summer,” said David Arisco, artistic director of Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. “We used to say get yourself off the streets into a nice cool afternoon in the theater and have a bunch of laughs. We enjoyed that for a while, and then we realized that the summer down here has become very difficult for so many theaters because of so many snowbirds and so many people who aren't here who support theater.”
Stuart Meltzer, founding artistic director of Zoetic Stage in Miami concurred that there is less support for theater in the summer, citing not only the snowbird schedule, but summer vacations.
Meltzer also cites hurricane season as a reason to take the summer off. Those concerns have also led to the decision to begin the Zoetic Stage season in November.
“I used to push to do an October play and then all of a sudden, we started seeing hurricanes going later and later in the year,” Meltzer said. “It's scary because putting on a show is so bloody expensive. It's a matter of risk.”
While Zoetic Stage closes June through October, Actors’ Playhouse offers a summer show. This July, they open “The Shark is Broken,” a comedy about the making of “Jaws.”
“When you're able to produce a farce or a play that has a pop culture reference, or that has something to say about something that’s happening in the town, or you can put musicians on stage, I like doing it,” said Arisco. “I like the feeling of doing a show that I picked with a lower budget, that made me laugh out loud or, maybe, think about something. And that’s what I do with the summer.”
Even though the theater season winds down for the summer, there are still three very different plays to catch this month.
“DIAL M FOR MURDER” AT ACTORS’ PLAYHOUSE
For their penultimate show, Actors’ Playhouse will produce a period piece with a lot of pop culture cache, the thriller “Dial M for Murder.”
While most people likely know the title as a 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Ray Milland as a husband who plots to murder his wife, played by Grace Kelly, after he discovers her affair with another man, the script was based on a 1952 play by Frederick Knott. Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher wrote a new adaptation of the original play, with permission from Knott’s estate, that made a few changes, including changing the wife’s lover from a man to a woman. The adaptation premiered in 2022 to critical acclaim, and that is the version audiences at Actors’ Playhouse will see.
“I always love plays that have something to make you think and question and wonder,” said Arisco. “You remember when the TV shows switched from whodunits to thrillers where you knew who the killer was, but then Columbo had trouble figuring it out. So that was kind of the change between what they used to call a mystery, a whodunnit, and a thriller.”
For Arisco, a big Hitchcock fan, including “Dial M for Murder” in the Actors’ Playhouse season presented an interesting challenge for him as a director.
“For me, what’s fun about this is can I make this talking head, wordy piece a thriller?” Arisco said. “Can I do what Hitchcock did and can I do it on stage without what he had, all those interesting tricks? I love reading about Hitchcock and his tricks.”
While Arisco likes the lesbian twist, he also likes that it doesn’t matter.
“The way they did it, they didn't make it a big menagé a trois, you know, that would be like she was his lover but now she's her lover,” said Arisco. “He’s just a guy who discovered his wife was going out on him but it was with a woman. And how did he know it was with a woman? He decided he would stick around and watch it. There's a great line in the show that says, any one of us could be a killer but we can’t all be murderers.”
“I have wonderful actors, I have a wonderful script by Jeffrey Hatcher,” said Arisco. “Now I want to make sure I create some of the thriller aspects of the film.”
IF YOU GO
“Dial M for Murder”
May 15-June 7
Actors’ Playhouse, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables
“MOSES” AT ZOETIC STAGE
(Photo: Morgan Sophia Photography)
David Rosenberg in Zoetic Stage's one-man show, "Moses," which runs through May 17.
Zoetic Stage closes out its season with “Moses,” a one-man show by playwright Michelle Lowe, about a man at a crossroads after losing everything and everyone he loves.
With a season of big shows, including “Merrily We Roll Along” and “The Inheritance Part One,” founding artistic director Stuart Meltzer wanted to include a smaller, more intimate show to balance the Zoetic roster. “Moses” fit the bill.
“I immediately fell in love with the storytelling, because that's all that it is,” said Meltzer. “It's really one man telling a story about a man named Moses and his journey from something very traumatic to something that's full of light and hope.”
David Rosenberg plays the title role of Moses. Rosenberg was born and raised in Miami but is now based in New York. He has worked with Meltzer before when Zoetic Stage produced his play, “Wicked Child.”
“I saw him do an off-Broadway play, and I was, like, oh my God, this guy's a wonderful actor.” Meltzer said. “He went to Juilliard for acting and this journey as an artist. I thought it would be really interesting to work with him as an actor, as opposed to director/playwright. He's so wonderful that I thought it would be really a great space for us to sort of re-collaborate on something.”
In addition to being a successful playwright, Lowe also coaches rabbis, and much of “Moses” deals with grief and one’s own relationship with God.
“There's a surprise in the play that really connects to the journey of a rabbi in lots of ways, and in ways in which you throw God away, and how sometimes you come back to God, or maybe you never go back to God,” said Meltzer. “The play asks profound questions that I think many people who have struggled with relationships with any form of religion. In this case, it’s Judaism, so I think it is a really timely play in that way.”
It’s a topic Meltzer, who was raised culturally Jewish without a lot of actual religion, has struggled with, especially in these times when antisemitism is on the rise.
“One thing that I love about this play, is that there’s a line, it's one of the most important lines in the play that says you have to believe in something. Whether that something is God, or whether it’s humanity, you’ve got to believe in something to get through on a day-to-day basis. And to me, that is gorgeous. That's beautiful. I understand it, and it's something that I think that many people can relate to.”
IF YOU GO
“Moses”
Through May 17
Zoetic Stage at the Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
“EUREKA DAY” AT GABLESTAGE
(Photo: Magnus Stark)
Mark Dold, Jeni Hacker, Rita Cole, Jordyn Moone , and Ryan Didato in "Eureka Day," which opens May 16 at GableStage
In addition to directing “Moses” at Zoetic Stage, Meltzer is making his GableStage directorial debut this month with “Eureka Day,” the Coral Gable’s theatre’s final production of the season.
“Eureka Day,” by playwright Jonathan Spector, focuses on the board members of a progressive private elementary school in Berkeley, California, who clash over the school's liberal vaccine policy during a mumps outbreak, forcing them to confront their ideals versus practical divisive choices. While it sounds like ripped-from-the-headlines story from during the COVID-19 pandemic, “Eureka Day” actually premiered in 2018 and won the best revival of a play Tony Award in 2025. It is the third most-produced play in the United States in the 2025-2026 season.
Meltzer said “Eureka Day” is fundamentally about two things.
“It's about the conversation of vaxing, and not so much about where it happened, but how, right now, there is a conversation and a distrust---and this is before COVID---a distrust about what vaccinations are and what they do, about the different versions of vaccinations for children. We're talking about early child vaccinations.”
“Eureka Day” focuses on the happening within our own country, and people's different points of view on what they think is appropriate for the larger good of the community. Are people's individual rights more important than getting a herd immunity? Is freedom better than everyone’s safety?
“It is such an omnipresent discussion. It’s around us all the time. The conversation hasn't gone away,” Meltzer said. “It’s also about how people get information, and how information can either be a crock full of misinformation, a crock full of lies, how people believe what they read and where people get their information from, social media news outlets or things like that. There’s a case of a student getting mumps at a super progressive school in Berkeley, California. So, what we think is going to happen, may or may not happen because of an evolution of personal beliefs, which we all went through during COVID. It's a marriage between a circumstance and an environment. “
Meltzer stressed that “Eureka Day” is not farce or satire, but rather a straightforward play that combines a lot of humor with a dose of drama and deals with the lives and the betterment of children.
“We're dealing with economic statuses and racial discriminations and how education contributes to information,” said Meltzer. “It's a fascinating play that I think that a lot of people connect to.”
IF YOU GO
“Eureka Day”
May 15-June 14
GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables