Festival organizers are inviting local playwrights and directors to submit original work for a four-day theater festival in April 2026 at the Coconut Grove Woman’s Club.
For Halloween this year, costumed children trick-or-treating on Fuller Street in downtown Coconut Grove were treated to a pop-up performance of an original children’s play produced by the Coconut Grove Theatre Festival.
The performance was part of a themed event – Alice in WonderGrove – organized by the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District (BID). But the theater group had a message of its own to deliver that night:
The Coconut Grove Theatre Festival is coming back.
Organizers say the festival, which had its first run earlier this year, will be returning for a second year from April 16-19, 2026, in Coconut Grove with a fresh roster of original work by local playwrights, including a children’s play for the first time.
Festival founder William Hector said he hopes the four-day festival at the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove will inspire a new generation of students to fall in love with theater, much like he did as a student himself.
“I got my start as a summer camper at the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s theater camp, so it really comes full circle,” Hector told the Spotlight.
The Alice in WonderGrove play, written by playwright Brandon Urrutia and directed by University of Miami Assistant Professor of Theater Maha McCain, both of whom have a background in arts education, was a success in several ways, organizers say.
Children in the audience that night gleefully focused on the performance, which included interactive elements, and clamored to speak with the actors afterward.
And the production itself included two student actors, student interns, and even a student assistant director from Ransom Everglades School.
“There are so many skills you learn from working in performing arts as a child,” McCain said. “The whole idea was, if this works, if the students seem to enjoy it, they seem to get benefit out of it, let’s bring it back (for the 2026 festival) … to bring more people into the idea that this is what the Grove is about. It’s not just about the adult side of it. The Grove is a family-friendly place, so why not have students be involved?”
More than 700 people attended the 2025 festival in May, which featured eight staged play readings at the Woman’s Club on South Bayshore Drive.
Hector and his colleagues recruited the playwrights and directors (16 in all, including Urrutia, McCain and Hector himself) who were featured in the first festival.
Organizers are casting a wider net for the 2026 festival with a call for submissions posted this week on Instagram. To apply, playwrights and directors must live in or be from South Florida and submit new works by Dec. 15. Everyone who submits, from college students to established playwrights, will be considered, Hector says.
“I think that a diverse mix of people of all levels of experience and with all different stories to tell is what makes Miami interesting, and is what the festival should reflect,” he said.
Hector said the children’s play will include opportunities for students to learn and engage deeply in different aspects of the production.
“To some degree, it’s thinking about the kinds of experiences I had as a student and what was really impactful for me, and also creating the experiences I would have loved to have,” Hector said.
McCain said creating those opportunities for students is “vitally important” to Hector, whom she taught when he attended the University of Miami.
“As someone who was into the arts for his whole entire life, to create a space that he would have wanted to have been in, as a child… he’s not doing it for the money, he’s doing it for the passion, for the love,” McCain said.
Hector plans to mount a few additional productions each year outside the four-day festival, and he hopes to activate unused spaces in the Grove for those performances to bring live theater back to a neighborhood once known for its creative output.
“People want to see theater in the Grove,” he said. “They support this. This is something that people are excited to come out and witness.”
Hector pointed to the festival’s list of 2025 sponsors as evidence of that support.
The festival’s entire 2025 budget was supported by donations from individuals, organizations, and businesses like Atchana’s Homegrown Thai restaurant.
“The theater festival exists because of that community spirit of people who want to see arts and make it happen,” Hector says, “and then extend that community spirit to others and create opportunities for actors, writers, and directors, to create opportunities for the next generation to be inspired by what they see and also take part and learn.”
Additionally, for 2026, Hector said he plans to bring more of a carnival atmosphere to the festival, so he’ll be increasing the scope of collaborations. The festival will be growing, not in size, but in connectivity, he says, “to see the ways that we can make it really a whole Grove-wide festival.”
McCain said that’s true to form for Hector.
“Just knowing William like I do, in the way he approaches [theater], his whole idea is, how do we support each other? How do we do what we love and make it fun for everybody?” McCain said. “I love that about him.”
For more information about the 2026 Coconut Grove Theatre Festival, including dates, sponsorship opportunities, and email updates, visit the festival website here.
