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Rehearsal photos by Angela Marie Orellana |
Whoopi Goldberg’s Monologues Return to the Stage—This Time With a Powerhouse Ensemble
More than four decades after Whoopi Goldberg arrived on Broadway and rewired the possibilities of solo performance, one of her defining works is getting a new life at Lincoln Center Theater.
The company announced the complete cast and creative team for The Whoopi Monologues, a reimagining of Goldberg’s landmark 1984 stage show, which begins performances Tuesday, July 7, 2026, ahead of an official opening night on Monday, July 13, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.
Written by Goldberg and directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Whitney White, the production will not be a conventional revival so much as a theatrical relay: Goldberg’s unforgettable characters, once delivered by the then-unknown performer in a breakthrough one-woman turn, will now be inhabited by an ensemble of five women. The cast includes Emmy Award nominee Dominique Fishback, Tony Award winner Kecia Lewis, NAACP Image Award winner Danielle Pinnock, Golden Globe nominee Kerry Washington, and two-time Tony Award winner Kara Young. Kai Heath, Denise Manning, and Pavar Snipe will round out the company as understudies.
It is the kind of casting announcement that makes the downtown-to-uptown theater crowd sit up a little straighter. Fishback brings the charged emotional precision that made Swarm such a jolt. Lewis arrives fresh from the Broadway heat of Hell’s Kitchen. Pinnock, a scene-stealer on Ghosts, brings comic electricity. Washington, no stranger to the stage after American Son, adds star wattage and political intelligence. Young, one of Broadway’s most magnetic current forces, brings the kind of danger and delicacy that can turn a monologue into an event.
In 1984, Goldberg’s original show was a revelation: provocative, sharply observed, funny, bruising and deeply human. Long before she became an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony-winning household name, Goldberg used the stage to conjure a gallery of characters who cut through race, gender, class, fantasy and American self-delusion with unnerving clarity. The work did not ask politely to be admired; it took up space, changed the temperature in the room, and announced the arrival of a performer with her own vocabulary.
Now, The Whoopi Monologues returns not as a museum piece, but as a conversation across time. The portraits, described by Lincoln Center Theater as funny, vivid and deeply human, are being reframed for a new generation—one that has inherited many of the same social fractures Goldberg was staring down in the Reagan era, albeit with newer language, louder platforms and no shortage of fresh anxieties.
The production is being presented in partnership with Whoop Inc./Tom Leonardis and Simpson Street Productions, Washington’s production company.
The creative team includes Studio Bent’s Adam Rigg and Anton Volovsek on set design, Tony Award winner Qween Jean on costume design, Cha See on lighting design, Fan Zhang on sound design, Hana S. Kim on video design, Nikiya Mathis on hair and wig design, and The Telsey Office on casting. Tiffany N. Robinson will serve as stage manager.
The announcement also arrives during a notable new chapter for Lincoln Center Theater. With the 2025–2026 season, Lear deBessonet assumed the role of Kewsong Lee Artistic Director, joining a leadership team that includes Managing Director Mike Schleifer, Executive Producer Bartlett Sher, Stacey and Eric Mindich Producer Nicole Kastrinos, Executive Director of Development and Planning Naomi Grabel, and LCT3 Artistic Director and Producer Maria Manuela Goyanes.
For LCT, the production feels like both an act of preservation and provocation: honoring a work that helped define Goldberg’s artistry while allowing it to breathe through a new set of bodies, voices and cultural memories. In a theater season already thick with revivals, reinventions and star-driven returns, The Whoopi Monologues has the makings of something more combustible—a reminder that the right words, in the right mouth, can still feel brand new.
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