Spring 2026 Events | New Jersey City University

Events to Make You Dance, Sing... and Think

Every year, the NJCU Center for the Arts brings you a wide range of performances to entertain and inform. This spring is no different. Check out our list of offerings from March to May.

Buy Tickets

Jagged Little Pill

Weekend One:

Friday, March 20, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 22, 2026 at 3:00 p.m.

Weekend Two:

Friday, March 27, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 29, 2026 at 3:00 p.m.

Margaret Williams Theatre

This is not a bio-musical about Alanis Morissette. It tells the original story of The Healys; a family in crisis. Set in Connecticut, we meet Mary Jane (aka MJ), her husband Steve, her star pupil son Nick (who has just been accepted to Harvard), and her adopted black daughter Frankie. The picture-perfect family, however, might not be as squeaky-clean as it seems and soon the cracks begin to show.

Despite her efforts to keep up appearances, MJ battles a growing addiction to opiates following a car accident and battles with trauma in her past that she has not yet come to terms with. Steve watches his wife become increasingly withdrawn and distant from him, without knowing why. Meanwhile their children are battling challenges of their own. Frankie is determined to find her own voice and discover her sexuality, while Nick must balance the pressure of his parents to do well against exposing his own faults in order to make sure justice is served. Exploring a range of sensitive issues, including rape, sexuality, addiction, and racism, Jagged Little Pill presents a vivid, passionate, and chaotic portrayal of a modern-day family who deal with their pain and find their way to healing.

Buy Now

Program

Book Celebration with Dr. Ann Wallace for Keeping Room

Location: Gothic Lounge, Hepburn 202,

John F. Kennedy Blvd. Jersey City, NJ 07305

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 4:00pm

Zoom Option also Available for those unable to attend onsite:https://NJCU.zoom.us/meeting/register/8nJ0RvkTSdWvsgNKNJazTg

Please join us for the book celebration for Keeping Room by Dr. Ann E. Wallace. The event, hosted by Dr. Jason Martinek, Assistant Provost of NJCU, will feature a reading from Keeping Room, and questions from the audience, followed by a book signing and reception. Books will also be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Keeping Room is an intimate collection grounded in familial spaces of home and garden. The poems grapple with the nature of survival, and the survival of nature, as experienced by a woman living with disability and chronic illness in an overdeveloped city with a shrinking natural footprint. The collection spools from the pain of chronic illness and grief, to the loss of political freedoms, to the disrupted urban (and global) landscape. However, despite despair and uncertainty, the poems reach for hope, love, and strength in the unlikely places where they may be found, with a steady turn toward nature and healing, or often, healing through nature, throughout the collection.

Ann E. Wallace’s third collection, Keeping Room pulls together several threads of her work--including her 2024 collection Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID's Long Haul (Kelsay Books), her work as a Long COVID patient and illness advocate, as well as her podcast The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey. Wallace served as the 2023-24 Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. As a long-time survivor of ovarian cancer, a woman with multiple sclerosis, and one of the nation's first Long Covid patients, she has lived and written through illness for more than thirty years. Pain, disability, and disease—as well as hope and resilience—have inspired and informed her work as a poet, memoirist, patient advocate, and scholar. She is Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at New Jersey City University.