Show Round Up: World Premiere Weekend

January 22, 2026

Happy opening to our 2025 Rella Lossy awardee!

This weekend marks the opening of world premiere play Running After Shadows by Vincent Terrell Durham at City Lights Theater Company. Running After Shadows was awarded our 2025 Rella Lossy award and we couldn’t be more excited to see this show take flight! Alongside this world premiere production, there some great theatrical gems, including some can’t miss musicals and a limited run of a compelling solo show, all running this weekend.

About Running After Shadows

Morgan Collins is on a culinary journey. He used to buy his cookware at the 99-cent store, and is now a budding gourmet and an America’s Test Kitchen devotee. But today, as he unboxes his new garlic press live on Instagram, he also opens something completely unexpected. This box brings him face to face with childhood memories and the pain left by his absentee father. Both poignant and funny, this story of human connection was commissioned by City Lights as part of a series of solo plays by writers in the BIPOC community.

About the Award

The Rella Lossy Award honors the memory of Rella Lossy, a lifelong champion of the American theatre and playwriting, by honoring the best new full-length script of a play by an emerging playwright that will premiere in Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Marin County, Napa County, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, Solano County, or Sonoma County in the coming year.

Learn all about this week’s shows:

Only This Weekend

Don’t miss your only chance to see this show!

The iPhone Arias at Potrero Stage

About the show

The iPhone Arias is a solo-musical-comedy about one woman’s chaotic relationship told through her cellphone. Caroline broke up with her boyfriend a week ago, but she can’t stop poring through her notes app, photos, and texts, trying to figure out why her seven-year, long-distance relationship ended. It doesn’t help that her phone reminds her of all the other disasters in her life, whether it’s the men she messages through Hinge, the people on social media living better lives than her, or the stream of rejections from residencies, roommates, and potential dates. Combining the oldest form of music, opera, with contemporary comedic prose, The iPhone Arias is a semi-autobiographical work about a person trying to move on and “get back out there,” while also examining the intimacy of technology. Come laugh, cry, and cringe.