First there was URINETOWN. Then came YEAST NATION. And now... brace yourself... ZM!

New Line Theatre opens its 35th season with the American premiere of this gloriously unhinged new meta-musical from certified chaos merchants Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis — the Tony-winning mad geniuses who looked at musical theatre and said, “What if… but weirder?”

Part Walking Dead, part Bat Boy, and part “you probably shouldn’t eat that,” ZM is a darkly comic fable set in an American small town where a fast-food chain is test-marketing a new sandwich. Which turns customers into zombies. Two brave teenage employees must risk everything to infiltrate corporate headquarters, uncover the truth, and maybe -- just maybe -- ask, “Should we have read the ingredients list?”

Originally commissioned by True Love Productions, Kotis and Hollmann began developing ZM in 2013 during a five-day writers’ retreat. Thirteen years, multiple workshops, and at least a few questionable snacks later, the show lumbered its way to its first fully staged production — in Spanish — in Mexico City in 2024. New Line's is the first full production in English, making New Line the only company brave (and unsupervised) enough to produce all three Kotis-Hollmann musicals: Urinetown (2007, 2022), Yeast Nation (2018), and now ZM.

Click here for more info on the show.

ANOTHER VERY SPECIAL EVENT!

When Broadway Meets St. Louis -- it loosens its tie, finds its groove, and finally learns how to really sing!

For two nights only, the New Liners return to the beautiful, acoustically stunning Sheldon Concert Hall in the Grand Center Arts District -- because if you’re going to shake up Broadway, you gotta do it somewhere that can handle the volume.

New Line Theatre continues its 35th season of bold, relevant, adult musical theatre in January with another unique evening of reimagined theatre songs. After the tremendous success of Broadway Noir (2025) and Broadway Noir Deux! (2026), this electrifying new concert raises the stakes again.

Featuring an all-female+ cast of local performers singing iconic "men's songs,", this isn’t just another love letter to Broadway; it’s a stylish, sharp-edged rewrite. These women reclaim the catalog of the American musical theatre, reframing it through their own lives and reminding us that these songs belong to all of us -- not just the people who usually get to sing them.

Click here for more info on the show.

Once in a while, a show comes along that warms your heart and sends you out into the world a better person.

This is not that show.
This show sends you out laughing nervously and questioning your voting history.

New Line Theatre continues its 35th season with the hilariously goofy, Pulitzer Prize–winning Jazz Age musical comedy OF THEE I SING. Because nothing says “timeless entertainment” like a musical about a completely absurd presidential election that feels weirdly current. Featuring songs by George and Ira Gershwin and a script by legendary comedy troublemakers George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, Of Thee I Sing gleefully dives into the kind of political chaos that makes you say, “Wait… this was written in 1931?”

Riffing on the topsy-turvy madness of Gilbert and Sullivan, the show delivers one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns you’ve ever seen -- complete with an Atlantic City beauty pageant, a sex scandal, an impeachment, and plenty of backroom deals. And somehow, nearly a century on, the jokes still land a little too well. As one critic noted, the show feels less like a period piece and more like a documentary with better music.

Responsible for much of the Great American Songbook, the Gershwin Brothers wrote fifteen musicals together, including Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, Girl Crazy, and Porgy and Bess, as well as several film musicals. Their timeless song catalog includes classics like “I Got Rhythm,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” "The Man I Love," "A Foggy Day," "They Can't Take that Away from Me," "Our Love is Here to Stay," "Nice Work If You Can Get It, " and “S’Wonderful,” among dozens of others. Meanwhile, Kaufman and Ryskind were busy redefining comedy with works like Animal Crackers and other projects with the Marx Brothers, plus Kaufman’s long list of classic stage collabroations, You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Merrily We Roll Along, The Royal Family, and Once in a Lifetime, among others.

Click here for more info on the show.

Let the sun shine in.

New Line Theatre closes its 35th season with the mind-melting, soul-expanding, kaleidoscope-splashed "American tribal love-rock musical," a show that didn’t just change theatre -- it rewired it.

Though this rock & roll odyssey is 24 years old, its message of free expression and the power of art has only gotten more relevant over that time, possibly more relevant today than ever before. After running in London for ten years, and becoming the 11th longest running musical in West End history, the show played all over the world, including six of the world’s continents. Since its debut, this musical has been seen by more than 20 million people across 28 countries.

With book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado, and music by Galt MacDermot, HAIR first burst onto the scene at Joe Papp’s Public Theatre before evolving into its final Broadway form under the cosmic guidance of the visionary Tom O’Horgan. Somewhere between downtown experiment and full-blown cultural detonation, a new kind of musical was born. And nothing was ever the same again.

Pulled from the swirling ether of the Sixties anti-war movement, hippie counterculture, experimental theatre, psychedelic exploration, rock and roll, and the poetic frequency of Allen Ginsberg, HAIR didn’t just reflect 1967 -- it was 1967. Loud. Messy. Beautiful. Defiant. A little high. Probably very high.

It’s a show that doesn’t politely ask for your attention -- it grabs you, shakes you, hugs you, sings to you, and occasionally dares you to rethink everything. Decades later, it still hits like a flash of color in a black-and-white world, still capable of surprising you, shocking you, and opening up something you didn’t realize was closed.

The New Liners are proud to bring HAIR back to St. Louis for its 60th anniversary. Some shows age gracefully, but some shows just keep expanding. In 2000, New Line produced HAIR for the first time, in the Washington University blackbox theatre. Audiences and the New Line cast -- now, "the Osage Tribe" -- were so deeply affected by the show, that we brought it back for another run in 2001 at the ArtLoft Theatre. In 2008, we needed HAIR again, so we brought it back once more, at the Washington University South Campus Theatre. This is the first time New Line has produced any show for the fourth time. Which either means we can’t let it go -- or it won’t let us go.

Either way, the tribe is gathering again.
The music is starting.
The colors are getting brighter.

And somewhere, just at the edge of it all… the sun is waiting.'

Click here for more info on the show.