Galileo

October 1-4 – Brooklyn Stage Company returns to the Waterfront Museum Barge this October with Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, in a new adaptation by Robert Francis Cole, based on the English version developed by Brecht and Charles Laughton. The production runs October 1–4, 2026, following two packed first-look performances on the barge in July. The play follows Galileo Galilei as he turns a telescope toward the sky and discovers a universe that contradicts the official order of things. What begins as a scientific revelation becomes a struggle over who controls truth, what power demands from the individual, and what responsibility a thinker carries when knowledge becomes dangerous. Brecht knew intimately what happens when political power decides which ideas are permitted to survive. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Brecht fled Germany and spent years in exile. In California, he collaborated with actor Charles Laughton on an English-language version of Galileo, first staged in Los Angeles in 1947 with Laughton in the title role and presented in New York later that year. Tickets and more information here