Based in 1987, a ten-year-old Meek wants a nuclear radiation detector for Christmas. Her father, a former Black Panther, now runs the local roller disco, her uncle works for Reagan’s administration, and his wife has just come home from something nobody wants to talk about. Throw in a peace choir with a nationalist streak and thirteen original songs, and you have COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE: the buzzy, critically acclaimed play-with-music that won the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and became an Off-Broadway sensation, earning a New York Times Critic’s Pick and praise as “alive and audacious.”

Following its acclaimed New York run, Theater Alliance presents the first production since – with a story centering a young Black girl navigating family, identity, and the particular terror of growing up when the world might end before you do.