For its 2026-27 Broadway season, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall is celebrating women’s empowerment with a number of shows that focus on female characters standing up for themselves and showing what they can do.

The 10-show line-up includes week-long runs of the current Broadway hit “SIX,” about the six wives of Henry VIII, most of whom he either divorced or beheaded, and the Tony Award-winning Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” which uses her music to recall her growing up years in Manhattan.

Executive Director Mary Bensel was hoping to have even more full-week runs, but two of the shows she was eyeing either delayed tours or were rerouted.

“It’s a pretty exciting season. ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ just closed on Broadway and ‘Six’ is still running,” Bensel said.

“Hell’s Kitchen” features such hits as “Fallin’,” “No One,” “Girl on Fire” and “Empire State of Mind,” set to choreography by Camille A. Brown. It’s a semi-autobiographical story of a 17-year-old girl named Ali discovering love and her connection to music while living in an apartment building filled with artists in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York. The show earned 13 2024 Tony Award nominations and won two.

“SIX” had its premiere in 2017 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a performance by Cambridge University students, and it became a sensation, moving to London’s West End, and, in 2019, to Broadway, where it opened a month before the COVID pandemic shutdowns. It features book, music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who create a pop concert setting for the six wives of Henry VIII to share their stories and win over the audience.

The lineup also includes several musicals based on or inspired by movies, including “The Bodyguard” a stage adaptation of the 1992 film that starred Kevin Costner as a security guard for a pop singer who is in danger played by Whitney Houston. The musical includes such Houston hits as “One Moment in Time,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” “So Emotional,” “Saving All My Love For You” and “I Will Always Love You.”

Pop hits also provide musical fuel for the stage version of “Mystic Pizza,” adapted by playwright Sandy Rustin from the 1988 film that starred Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor and Annabeth Gish as three young waitresses at a pizza joint in Mystic, Connecticut. The show, which got its start in 2021 at the Ogunquit Playhouse, was revised and restaged last year at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. The musical selections include “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “True Colors,” “The Power of Love,” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

The Van Wezel also will host its first run of the Tony Award-winning country-style musical comedy “Shucked,” which is set in Cob County, where the local residents’ lives revolve around corn. 

“It is so much fun and I think the audience will have a hoot with it. I hate to say it’s corny, but it is,” Bensel said. The main character, Maizy, is trying to figure out what is causing the illness to the local corn crop, which is having a devastating effect on the local economy.

The female theme continues with Dorothy trying to find her way back home in the national tour of “The Wiz” and a pie-maker named Jenna getting by in her small town and with an abusive husband in the Sara Bareilles musical “Waitress,” which will return for the third time. Also returning is “Mamma Mia,” which is coming off a mostly sold-out six-month run on Broadway. And Elle Woods is back in “Legally Blonde – the Musical,” about a sorority girl who finds herself chasing new dreams as a student at Harvard Law School.

Another show new to Sarasota is “Water for Elephants,” about a veterinary student who finds himself working for a traveling circus, where he falls in love with one of the performers.

“I thought this was perfect for Sarasota because we’re such a circus town,” Bensel said. 

All the Broadway shows will be available through one of several subscription packages, along with a few potential bonus shows. They include Neil Berg’s “117 Years of Broadway,” a revue of Broadway music now in its 17th year, the return of the Alvin Ailey dance company, the traditional New Year’s Salute to Vienna and two circus shows – Cirque Kalabante and Cirque Alice.

Subscribers get discounts on ticket prices that grow depending on how many shows are purchased. Bensel has been working to expand the Broadway offerings and the subscription series to allow her to book more week-long runs in the future, the way shows are scheduled at Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts.

“We’re getting there. The Straz has an amazing season. It’s huge,” she said, noting such currently running Broadway hits as “Oh, Mary!,” “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical,” among others.

Bensel also acknowledges that the Tampa center gets favored treatment by Broadway producers because of the larger market and greater number of seats.

Bensel has been advocating for years for a new and larger performing arts center for Sarasota, which would allow her to attract newer and bigger productions.

“I have been chasing ‘Wicked’ for a 100 million years, but (producer) David Stone has told me I have to open a larger theater in order to get it,” she said. “Producers go where the seats are.”

Plans for the proposed new Sarasota Performing Arts Center, a collaboration between the City of Sarasota and the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation (formerly the Van Wezel Foundation),  have been scaled back since they were first revealed. In the latest version, there were would be 2,200 seats, about 500 more than the Van Wezel.

The rest of the Van Wezel’s 2026-27 season variety events will be announced in the summer.

Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

2026-27 Broadway Subscription Series

941-263-6799: vanwezel.org

“The Bodyguard,” Dec. 1-2

“Mystic Pizza,” Jan. 6-8

“The Wiz,” Jan. 15-16

“Mamma Mia!” Jan. 26-31

“Shucked,” Feb. 8-9

“Water for Elephants,” Feb. 12-14

“Waitress,” Feb. 23-25

“Six,” March 16-21

“Legally Blonde – The Musical,” March 29-April 1, 2027

“Hell’s Kitchen,” April 13-18, 2027

Broadway Bonuses

“The 70s: Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll,” Nov. 12

Salute to Vienna, Dec. 30

Cirque Kalabante, Feb. 4

Alvin Ailey Dance, Feb. 11

“117 Years of Broadway,” March 8

Cirque Alice, March 11