Pitt Stages will present “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson — Apt. 2B” from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2 — the first mainstage production for the 2025-26 season at Pitt’s Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre in the basement of the Cathedral of Learning. 

KJ Gilmer, Department of Theatre Arts Teaching associate professor and head of design, technology and management, will direct and serve as costume designer and intimacy choreographer. 

The play, written by Kate Hamill, is a darkly comic feminist twist on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. The show will run October 24-Nov. 2.  

The fast-paced detective escapade follows oddball sleuths solving devious crimes. While there are elements of humor, the show is not afraid to delve into the dark. The production contains content warnings of adult themes, murder by suicide, and copious amounts of stage blood, to name a few. 

Tonya Lynn, Richard E. Rauh teaching artist-in-residence, will serve as fight coordinator for the production. The show is performed and produced by Pitt students, faculty and staff.   

The 2025-2026 Pitt Stages season has been dubbed “Transformations” by the season selection committee. The other fall productions of Harold Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter,” which was performed earlier this month, and Ellen McLaughlin’s “Iphigenia and Other Daughters,” in November, share dark and morbid themes, some concluding without traditional “happy endings.”  

The shows are a complement to the spring season productions — “The Trees” by Agnes Borinsky and “Head Over Heels” by Jeff Whitty and James Magruder, that will draw on themes of community, family, love and joy.  

The show will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24-25 and Oct. 29-Nov. 1, and at 2 p.m. Oct. 26 and Nov. 2. Tickets are $15 for students, artists and educators and $25 for the general public, and can be purchased online.