Production Partners
Janet Hansen
Patricia VanAllan

Additional Support from Katie Ritcheske

THE COAST STARLIGHT is presented through special arrangement with TRW PLAYS 1180 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 640, New York, NY 10036. www.trwplays.com

The Coast Starlight

Regional Premiere

By Keith Bunin

Directed by Robin Robinson

6 passengers. 6 choices to make. 1 story of how life just keeps moving forward… A young man boards the Coast Starlight, the long-distance train that runs from Los Angeles to Seattle. As it happens, both he and his fellow travelers are all facing life circumstances that demand decisions, and they have roughly one thousand miles to figure out what each of them wants to do. The “what-if’s” of life are weighing on them all – including “what-if they’d made a real connection with the other passengers?” THE COAST STARLIGHT is a compassionate story about our capacity as human beings for invention – and re-invention when life takes its twists and turns. Recommended for mature audiences due to some profanity. This play is performed without an intermission.

“A gentle, rueful play…. the ride it offers is as smooth as it is wistful. Because Bunin knows that any trip involves leaving something or someone behind. [It] sends up sparks … So let it do what any train should, which is to move you.” — The New York Times

“THE COAST STARLIGHT is [a] funny, moving dramatic jewel… Keith Bunin’s luminous play focuses on a group of strangers on a train … and what they say to each other (very little) in contrast to the thoughts, confessions, and fantasies that run through their heads and which they convey direct to the audience (a lot).” — The Daily Beast

PURCHASE SINGLE TICKETS

LOCATION

Main Street Theater – Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Houston, TX 77005
Directions

PERFORMANCES AND TICKETS

February 7 – March 1, 2026
Previews: February 1, 5, 6

Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 3:00pm

Tickets: $40 – $63

February 8 at 3:00pm
Open “in-sync” Captioned Performance

HELPFUL INFO

Seating Charts
Parking/Dining
Learn more about available discounts here.

Running Time: 90 minutes without intermission.

Please note: no outside food/snacks are allowed at the theater. You may purchase concessions at the show.

Children under the age of 9 are not allowed in the theater.

Monday, January 12 at 6:45pm: Join us for a free, first read-thru of The Coast Starlight at our Rice Village location, 2540 Times Blvd. You get to be a fly on the wall for the very first rehearsal, hearing the cast read the play aloud for the first time together. Connect with the production from it’s very beginning and then see the arc of the process when you come back to see the full show.

Sunday, February 22: Join us for a post-matinee discussion led by Ronald E. Acierno, PhD, Executive Director, Trauma and Resilience Center, Vice Chair for Veterans Affairs and Professor, Louis Faillace Department of Psychiatry, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

Everyone is welcome, regardless of whether you are seeing the play on these dates. Just plan to arrive at the theater about 4:45pm. Free to all.

Pride Night: Feb. 19 at 6:15pm, join us for our pre-show Happy Hour & then the SingOUT Cabaret starting at 6:45pm! Special thanks to media sponsor OutSmart Magazine and event sponsor Riven Productions HTX!

Closing Weekend Party: Feb. 28 in the lobby after the show

Free Beer Fridays, sponsored by Saint Arnold Brewing Company! Have a beer on us after the show!

Season Sponsor

Production Guarantors

Kenneth Bohan & Dean O’Kelley

Production Angels
John Drewer & David Jaqua

Community Partner

Media Sponsor

Leopoldstadt

Regional Premiere

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Rebecca Greene Udden

Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands had fled from the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt.

Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama that follows multiple generations of this family as they reckon with a past – and a heritage – they cannot escape and a future they cannot control.

“This is a momentous new play. Tom Stoppard has reached back into his own family history to craft a work that is both epic and intimate; that is profoundly personal, but which concerns us all.” – The Financial Times

Winner of the 2023 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Play, Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play.

“A heart-rending epic.” —The New York Times

“Brilliant and gorgeous. A masterpiece.” —Deadline

“Breathtakingly brilliant.” —Chicago Tribune

“Ranks among Mr. Stoppard’s greatest works…an inexpressibly moving, majestic play.” —Wall Street Journal

PURCHASE SINGLE TICKETS

LOCATION

Main Street Theater – Rice Village
2540 Times Blvd.
Houston, TX 77005
Directions

PERFORMANCES AND TICKETS

March 28 – April 26, 2026
Previews: March 22, 26, 27
No performance Sunday, April 5

Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 3:00pm

Tickets: $45 – $64

March 29 at 3:00pm
Open “in-sync” Captioned Performance

HELPFUL INFO

Seating Charts
Parking/Dining
Learn more about available discounts here.

Running Time: TBD

Please note: no outside food/snacks are allowed at the theater. You may purchase concessions at the show.

Children under the age of 9 are not allowed in the theater.

Monday, March 2 at 6:45pm: Join us for a free, first read-thru of Leopoldstadt at our Rice Village location, 2540 Times Blvd. You get to be a fly on the wall for the very first rehearsal, hearing the cast read the play aloud for the first time together. Connect with the production from it’s very beginning, and then see the arc of the process when you come back to see the full show. THIS EVENT IS FULL.

Sunday, April 12: Join us following the matinee for a discussion with Marilyn Hassid, President of the Jewish Creativity International, about presenting Jewish Arts and Culture in the present days. Ms. Hassid is also the former Assistant Executive Director at Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston.

Sunday, April 19: Join us following the matinee for a discussion with Amy Frake about the history and the impact of the first 50 years of the 20th Century on the Jewish people. Ms. Drake is the Senior Associate Director of Education at the Boniuk Center for the Future of Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Studies at Holocaust Museum Houston.

Everyone is welcome at these post-show discussions, regardless of when you are seeing the play. Just plan to arrive at the theater about 5:00pm. Free to all.

Pride Night: Apr. 16 at 6:15pm, join us for our pre-show Happy Hour & then the SingOUT Cabaret starting at 6:45pm! Special thanks to media sponsor OutSmart Magazine and event sponsor Riven Productions HTX!

Closing Weekend Party: Apr. 25 in the lobby after the show

Free Beer Fridays, sponsored by Saint Arnold Brewing Company! Have a beer on us after the show!