| PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL DETAILS FOR 2018-19 SEASON | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 05:45 pm EDT 06/11/18 | |
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| PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL DETAILS FOR 2018-19 SEASON Works from a Dynamic Group of American Playwrights Dig into Personal, Interpersonal, and National Fractures and Tensions Season Includes Craig Lucas’s I Was Most Alive With You, Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, Heather Raffo’s Noura, Tori Sampson’s If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, Halley Feiffer’s The Pain of My Belligerence, and Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop New Details: · Michael Gaston Joins Craig Lucas’s I Was Most Alive With You, the Season’s First Production, in the Featured Role of Ash; Kalen Feeney Joins Shadow Cast of Actors Performing in American Sign Language · OBIE-Winning Director Trip Cullman, Recently Acclaimed for His Broadway Productions of Lobby Hero and Six Degrees of Separation, Will Direct Feiffer’s Incisive Dark Comedy The Pain of My Belligerence · Celebrated Choreographer Raja Feather Kelly Steps Into the Creative Team of Michael R. Jackson’s Musical, A Strange Loop Playwrights Horizons (Artistic Director Tim Sanford, Managing Director Leslie Marcus) announces additional details of its 2018-19 season, which comprises new works from a broad cross-section of the contemporary American theatre’s most exciting writers and artists. Playwrights Horizons holds a steadfast commitment to identifying, cultivating, and championing vital talent. This coming season,the organization brings to life unique visions from Craig Lucas, Larisa FastHorse, Heather Raffo, Tori Sampson, Halley Feiffer, and Michael R. Jackson. Playwrights Horizons welcomes previously unannounced cast and creative team members including Michael Gaston and Kalen Feeney (joining the cast of Lucas’ I Was Most Alive With You), Trip Cullman (directing Feiffer’s The Pain of My Belligerence), and Raja Feather Kelly (choreographing Jackson’s A Strange Loop). “Topicality and risk” are on full display this season at Playwrights Horizons, one of “the most adventurous theaters Off Broadway.” (The New York Times) The writers represented in 2018-2019 make compellingly varied stylistic choices. By turns, they elucidate and intriguingly complicate the socially hazardous terrain of the American present (and past). With two plays incidentally set around tense Thanksgivings and one at Christmas, these works all find their ways of prying into the cracks of life in this fractious, fraught environment. I Was Most Alive With You, a Book of Job-inspired play written by Craig Lucas (Small Tragedy, Three Postcards, Prayer for My Enemyat Playwrights; Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, Amélie, The Light in the Piazza) and directed by Tyne Rafaeli (The Rape of the Sabine Women by Grace B. Matthias, In a Word) kicks off the season, August 31-October 14. For the production, Michael Gaston (Lucky Guy on Broadway; The Leftovers, The Man in the High Castle) returns to Playwrights Horizons, where, over two decades ago, he performed in Neal Bell’s Somewhere in the Pacific. Hejoins a cast that includes two-time OBIE winner Lisa Emery, Theatre World Award-winner Russell Harvard,and two-time Tony Award nominee Lois Smith. Gaston plays the role of Ash, a recovering alcoholic whose Deaf, also-recovering addict son Knox (Harvard) has brought a new boyfriend—himself a user—home for Thanksgiving. When I Was Most Alive With You made its world premiere at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, the Boston Globe noted Craig Lucas’ skill “at constructing a metaphysical framework that can contain and illuminate the deepest human dilemmas, such as how we sustain love, both as an emotion and an act of volition.” They praised the play for its “intricate…innovative marriage of form and content,” achieved by pairing hearing and Deaf casts simultaneously performing in English and American Sign Language as the play examines familial communication across a number of misfortunes. Kalen Feeney (Switched at Birth)joins and completes the previously announced ASL-performing cast. Larissa FastHorse’s latest work also surrounds Thanksgiving—zeroing in, with a sharp satirical eye, on the ideological fissures provoked by the holiday’s historical ugliness. The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, makes its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, October 12-November 25. FastHorse, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Sicangu Lakota Nation, told HowlRound, “It’s such a charged holiday, and I think most people aren’t aware how charged it is for Indigenous people in this country. It’s the first time I’ve tackled a really specific historical issue that everybody knows about, or they believe they know about.” Iraqi American playwright and actor Heather Raffo brings Nourato Playwrights Horizons November 27-December 30, following its explosive world premiere at Shakespeare Theatre Company for the Women’s Voices Theater Festival (in association with Playwrights Horizons). She conceived the play after compelling Middle Eastern women in a workshop she led to adapt part of A Doll’s House, and noting their unanimous desire to take on the final scene, in which Ibsen’s protagonist, Nora, makes her exit from her stifling bourgeois life. As she recounted to The Washington Post, “All of them said, if you did this in the Middle East, you’d be dead. You can’t just up and leave.” She decided to loosely base a play of her own—about an Iraqi immigrant family in the U.S.—around Ibsen’s classic, and ended up with a haunting “portrait of a woman torn between cultures and family members” and “the best premiere [from] the Women’s Voices Theater Festival” (The Washington Post). Raffo, known for embodying the Iraqi women she interviewed over the course of 10 years in the stunning 2003 play Nine Parts of Desire, again takes on the roles of both actor and writer in this production reuniting her with Desire director Joanna Settle. Kennedy Center’s 2017 Paula Vogel Playwright Tori Sampson makes her Playwrights Horizons debut with the world premiere of If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (February 15-March 31, 2019), helmed by Tony Award nominated and Obie and Lucille Lortel awards winning director Leisl Tommy (Eclipsed, Relevance).Set in the village of “Afreakah-Amirrorkah,” the play interweaves contemporary African and American cultures in its reinterpretation of a West African folk tale. Sampson uses this framework to trace the lengths to which people will go to fit into and uphold narrow beauty standards. Trip Cullman, just off the acclaimed production of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero,will direct Halley Feiffer’s The Pain of My Belligerence, a Playwrights Horizon commission. The two reteam for Feiffer’s latest sharply comical production, following their critically acclaimed collaboration on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City. Like Raffo in Noura, Feiffer acts in The Pain of My Belligerence. She takes on the role of journalist Cat in her play examining what’s felt within the intimacy of a relationship against the changing nature of the country in which it’s set. “My aim is to examine the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity on women, and men as well, on a microcosmic level within the larger framework of society,” Feiffer told the New York Times. The Pain of My Belligerence makes its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons March 29-May 12, 2019. Raja Feather Kelly choreographs 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award-winner Michael R. Jackson’s musical A Strange Loop, originally developed at Musical Theatre Factory (one of Playwrights Horizons’ Resident Companies). Dance Magazine writes, “Kelly brings a vivid boundlessness to all he does… whether dancing for the likes of Reggie Wilson or cooking up his own darkly entertaining dance-theater productions.”Directed by Stephen Brackett, with book, music, and lyrics by Jackson, A Strange Loop closes Playwrights Horizon’s 2018-2019 season in a world premiere production May 24-July 27, 2019. The musical charts the inner life of a black, gay man writing a musical about a black, gay man. Ticketing Information A Six-Show Subscriptionpackage to Playwrights Horizons’ 2018-19 season is now available ($310, four Mainstage and two Peter Jay Sharp Theater productions). In addition to discounts on all season productions, subscribers receive priority booking and seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins. Flex Passes (customizable bundle, $220+) and Memberships ($45 to join, $25 preview tickets) are also now on sale. Patron packages start at $1,750. Packages are available at www.phnyc.org. Tickets for individual performances in the 2018-19 season will be available to purchase at a later date. PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS 2018-19 SEASON PROGRAMMING I Was Most Alive With You (New York Premiere) By Craig Lucas Directed by Tyne Rafaeli Sabrina Dennison, Director of Artistic Sign Language Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theatre August 31-October 14, 2018 “A rewarding experience. Craig Lucas illuminates the deepest human dilemmas.”—The Boston Globe Ash has a blessed life, thankful every day for the gifts of his family, his addiction, and his son’s Deafness. But on one fateful day, everything’s taken from him. How can he see this unexpected test, that threatens to cast him and his loved ones into darkness, as the ultimate gift? Performed simultaneously in English and ASL by two casts, Craig Lucas’s sublime, stunning new play is a theatrical event not to be missed. The play will be simultaneously performed in American Sign Language by a shadow cast of Deaf actors. I Was Most Alive With You hails three-time Tony Award nominee and three-time OBIE Award winner Craig Lucas, with direction by Tyne Rafaeli and Sabrina Dennison (Santa Sangre, the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You) serving as Director of Artistic Sign Language. The cast will feature Marianna Bassham (the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You, Moonrise Kingdom), Tad Cooley (the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You, “Secrets and Lies”), Michael Gaston (Lucky Guy on Broadway; First Reformed, The Man in the High Castle, The Leftovers) two-time Obie Award winner Lisa Emery (For Peter Pan…, Marjorie Prime, Marvin’s Room at Playwrights; Six Degrees of Separation), Theatre World Award winner Russell Harvard (the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You, Tribes, There Will Be Blood, “Fargo”), two-time Tony Award nominee Lois Smith (Marjorie Prime, After the Revolution, 100 Saints You Should Know at Playwrights; Buried Child, Grapes of Wrath, Lady Bird, “True Blood”) and Gameela Wright (the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You, “She’s Gotta Have It”). The play will be simultaneously performed in American Sign Language by a shadow cast of Deaf actors, including Beth Applebaum (The Diaries of Adam and Eve), Kalen Feeney (Switched at Birth), Seth Gore (collaborations with New York Deaf Theatre), Dickie Hearts (“Grace & Frankie”), Amelia Hensley (the world premiere of I Was Most Alive with You, Deaf West Theatre’s Spring Awakening), Anthony Natale (Mr. Holland’s Opus, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and Alexandria Wailes (Deaf West Theatre’s Big River and Spring Awakening). I Was Most Alive With You had its world premiere at Huntington Theater Company (Boston, MA) in May 2016. The Playwrights Horizons production is made possible by a generous grant from The Roy Cockrum Foundation. The mission of The Roy Cockrum Foundation is to award grants to support world-class performing arts projects in not-for-profit professional theaters throughout the United States. The Roy Cockrum Foundation enables theaters to reach beyond their normal scope of activities and undertake ambitious and creative productions. Craig Lucas (Playwright). Plays: Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God’s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Prayer For My Enemy, The Singing Forest, Ode To Joy, I Was Most Alive With You, Death of The Republic, All Will Be Known.Screenplays: Longtime Companion, The Secret Lives of Dentists, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul. Libretti: The Light in the Piazza, 3 Postcards, Two Boys, Orpheus in Love, Amélie, Wine & Roses.Direction: The Light in the Piazza (world premiere); This Thing of Darkness(coauthoredwith David Schulner); Saved Or Destroyed and Play Yourself(both byHarry Kondoleon); Ode to Joy; films The Dying Gaul and Birds of America. Lucas received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award, Laura Pels/PEN Midcareer Award, Greenfield Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations & the NEA. Tyne Rafaeli (Director). Playwrights debut. Recent productions include the world premiere of Michael Yates Crowley’s The Rape of the Sabine Women by Grace B. Matthias with Playwrights Realm, the world premiere of Anna Ziegler’s Actually at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles (Ovation-nominated), and the New York premiere of In a Word by Lauren Yee. Her work has also been seen at Classic Stage Company, the Geffen Playhouse, Playwrights Realm, Cal Shakes, Roundabout, Atlantic Theater, Two River, PlayMakers Rep, New York Stage & Film, Goodspeed, Juilliard, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Great Lakes Shakespeare, American Players Theater, Idaho Shakespeare Festival and the O’Neill Playwright’s Conference, among others. Upcoming productions include Ironbound by Martyna Majok at the Geffen Playhouse and The Heart of Robin Hood by David Farr at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Tyne is a 2016-18 Time Warner Directing Fellow at the WP and received the 2014 SDC Sir John Gielgud Fellowship for Classic Direction. Sabrina Dennison (Director of Artistic Sign Language). Playwrights debut. Sabrina played a major acting role in Siskel and Ebert’s 1990 top-six Hollywood movie, Santa Sangre, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Her professional acting experience continued via U.S. tour with the National Theatre of the Deaf, when she took on the role of Gertrude in Ophelia. Sabrina continued her tour at elementary schools with the Little Theatre of the Deaf. Sabrina completed ASL translation for Yale University’s Twelfth Night. She took on the role of an ASL consultant in a variety of theatre settings, including ArtsEmerson, Broadway Across America, Boston University School of Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company and the Boston Opera House, to name a few. She played a major role in Aditi Brennan Kapil’s production, Love Person, directed by Bevin O’Gara, and was nominated for an IRNE. In the most recent production, Sabrina proudly was the Director of Artistic Sign Language and ASL consultant for Craig Lucas’s I Was Most Alive with You at the Huntington Theatre Company. The Thanksgiving Play (World Premiere) By Larissa FastHorse Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater October 12-November 25, 2018 “A rising young Sicangu Lakota playwright who’s proactively effective in interweaving touching personal tales with politics. A writer worth keeping an eye on for the future.”—San Francisco Chronicle Thanksgiving: that most American of holidays, when families gather to celebrate the warmth of home, the bounty of the harvest—and a legacy of genocide and violent colonial expansion. Good intentions collide with absurd assumptions in Larissa FastHorse’s wickedly funny satire, as a troupe of terminally “woke” teaching artists scrambles to create a pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month. The Thanksgiving Play was commissioned by Artists Repertory Theatre (Portland, OR) where it received its West Coast premiere. Larissa FastHorse (Playwright). Playwrights debut. Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota) is an award-winning playwright, director, and choreographer. Larissa’s produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Kansas City Rep, Relative Theatrics), Urban Rez (Cornerstone Theater Company, NEFA National tour 2019-20), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). Larissa directed the critically acclaimed play, Our Voices Will Be Heard (Perseverance Theater Company) and is developing several new projects to direct with an emphasis on cross cultural community engaged work between Indigenous nations. Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with Larissa include Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, ASU Gammage, History Theater, Kennedy Center TYA, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. Larissa was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year, and numerous Ford, Mellon, and NEA Grants. She is a current member of the Playwright’s Union, Director’s Lab West 2015, officer of the TCG Board of Directors and Playwright’s Center Core Writers. As co-founder of Indigenous Direction with Ty Defoe, Larissa helps organizations plan and execute responsible engagements with Indigenous art, artists and audiences. Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Director). Playwrights debut. Broadway: Present Laughter with Kevin Kline (three Tony nominations including Best Revival of a Play), Hand to God (five Tony nominations including Best Play and Best Director). West End: Hand to God (Olivier nomination). Off-Broadway: Important Hats of the Twentieth Century (MTC), Verité (LCT3), Trevor (Lesser America), Love Song of the Albanian Sous Chef (EST), Bike America (Ma-Yi), Mel & El (Ars Nova), Spacebar (Studio 42), and My Base and Scurvy Heart (Studio 42). Regional: Alliance, Williamstown, Huntington, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and more. Moritz is the former artistic director of Studio 42, NYC’s producer of “unproducible” plays. Noura (New York Premiere) Written by and Featuring Heather Raffo Directed by Joanna Settle Produced in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater November 27-December 30, 2018 “Raffo’s work affirms the full power of the theatrical form to take us places the news cannot, and makes us look with fresh perspective.”—Los Angeles Times Eight years ago, Noura (Raffo) and her family fled their home in Iraq. Today, she plans the perfect Christmas dinner to celebrate their new life in New York. But when the arrival of a visitor stirs up long-buried memories, she and her husband are forced to confront the cost of their choices, and retrace the past they left behind. With compassion and startling clarity, Heather Raffo’s play charts the intricate pathways of motherhood and marriage—and the fragile architecture of what we call home. Heather Raffo (Playwright/Noura). Playwrights: The Profane. Heather Raffo is an award-winning playwright and actress whose work has been seen Off-Broadway, off West End, in regional theater and in film. She is the author and solo performer of the play 9 Parts of Desire (Lucille Lortel Award, Susan Smith Blackburn commendation, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, Helen Hayes nominations), which The New Yorker called “an example of how art can remake the world.” The play ran Off-Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over a decade. Current productions in Greece, Hungary and India. Raffo’s libretto for the opera FALLUJAH was part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at New York City Opera in 2016. Heather’s newest play, Noura, just won Williamstown’s prestigious Weissberger Award. Noura was further developed at Georgetown University’s LAB for Global Performance and Politics with refugee and Middle East policy experts. Further workshops were supported by the McCarter Theater, Epic Theater Ensemble and our nation’s first Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, MI. Noura is currently receiving itsworld premiere at Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC before a production in Abu Dhabi. Raffo is the recipient of multiple grants from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Joanna Settle (Director). Playwrights debut. Joanna Settle recently directed the world premiere of Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s musical The Total Bent in a twice-extended run at The Public Theater. Other Public Theater credits include Winter Miller's In Darfur and the Finale of Suzan-Lori Park’s 365 Plays/365 Days. She also directed the world premiere of Heather Raffo’s celebrated 9 Parts of Desire at Manhattan Ensemble Theater, and for subsequent productions at theaters and art museums around the US. Settle served as the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Division 13 Productions from 1998 to 2004 and directed and adapted 15 projects including BLOOD LINE: The Oedipus/Antigone Story, two plays by Sophocles, Macbett by Ionesco, and several Samuel Beckett shorts including Cascando and Play. She served as Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound 2009 to 2012, where she directed free outdoor Shakespeare productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet. Settle completed her graduate studies at The Juilliard School and holds a BA in Theater Directing and Design from Hampshire College. She has taught and guest directed at Bard College, Williams College, Juilliard, Cornell and Stanford and served as Director of the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts from 2014 to 2016. She is currently Associate Arts Professor of Theater at NYU Abu Dhabi. 2018 premieres include Noura by Heather Raffo, Lashed but Not Leashed by Martha Graham Cracker for Under The Radar Festival at The Public Theater and an untitled new opera (composer Lembit Beecher, librettist Hannah Moscovitch) with Opera Philadelphia. If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (World Premiere) Written by Tori Sampson Directed by Liesl Tommy Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater February 15-March 31, 2019 Kennedy Center’s 2017 Paula Vogel Playwright and 2018 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist Tori Samspon makes her New York professional debut with If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka. In the village of Affreakah-Amirrorkah, no one questions that Akim is the one true, perfect beauty – not even her jealous classmates. But they’ll be damned before they let her be the leading lady in this story. A decidedly contemporary riff on a West African fable, Tori Sampson’s explosive epic is brimming with live music and dance, as these frenemies jockey for their rank in a culture built on ideals forever out of reach. Tori Sampson (Playwright). Playwrights debut. Tori is a Minneapolis-based playwright originally from Boston. Her plays include If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, This Land Was Made, Cadillac Crew, Where Butterflies Go in the Winter and Some Bodies Travel. Her work has been developed at Great Plains National Theater Conference, Berkeley Rep’s The Ground Floor residency program, Victory Gardens’ Ignition festival and Ubuntu Theater. Tori is a 2017 Playwright’s Center Jerome Fellow. Two of Tori’s plays appeared on the 2017 Kilroys List and she received an Honorable Mention from the 2016 Relentless Award. She was the Kennedy Center’s 2017 Paula Vogel Playwright and second-place Lorraine Hansberry recipient. She was a 2017 finalist for the Alliance Theater’s Kendeda Prize. Tori is currently working on commissions from the Atlantic Theater Company, Berkeley Rep and Yale Rep. She holds a BS in sociology from Ball State University and an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. Liesl Tommy (Director). Playwrights debut. Liesl is a Tony-nominated and Obie and Lortel awards-winning director whose recent Broadway production of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed starringLupita Nyong’o garnered six Tony nominations. Liesl made history as the first woman of color ever to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Director of a Play. She also recently made her TV directorial debut with Ava Duvernay’s show Queen Sugar on Oprah’s network OWN. Off-Broadway credits include Vineyard Theatre/Signature Theatre (VA): Kid Victory; The Public: Eclipsed, Party People, The Good Negro;Signature Theatre: Appropriate (Obie Award). Liesl has also directed Disney’s Frozen LIVE at the Hyperion Theater as well as various productions at Canadian Stage, Luminato Festival, Huntington Theater, Woolly Mammoth, Baltimore Centre Stage, Dallas Theater Center, OSF, Berkeley Repertory, Shakespeare Theater, CATF, Yale Repertory, California Shakespeare Theater and Trinity Repertory. Liesl is a Program Associate at The Sundance Institute and Associate Artist at Berkeley Repertory. Liesl is a proud native of Cape Town, South Africa. The Pain of My Belligerence (World Premiere) Written by and Featuring Halley Feiffer Directed by Trip Cullman Playwrights Horizons Commission Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater March 29-May 12, 2019 “Halley Feiffer takes a tough look at the forces that can bring us to our knees.”—Time Out New York Twenty-something and brilliant, Cat (Feiffer) is a journalist at the top of her game: tack-sharp and ambitious, and rapidly establishing her place in the field. Until she meets Guy — magnetic, devilishly charming, and married — and the attrition begins. Charting their spiky relationship over eight years, following a rapidly changing America, Halley Feiffer’s harrowing comedy sheds light on how we perpetuate our roles within a patriarchal culture, and the promise of a new paradigm. The Pain of My Belligerence is the result of a Playwrights Horizons Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust commission. Halley Feiffer (Playwright/Cat). is a writer and actress. Playwrights debut. Plays include I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic, OCC nomination), Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow (Williamstown), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City (MCC) and How To Make Friends and Then Kill Them (Rattlestick). Her plays have been produced around the country and in the UK. Acting credits include the Broadway revivals of The Front Page and The House of Blue Leaves (Theatre World Award), and numerous Off-Broadway productions including Tigers Be Still (Roundabout, Drama League nomination). Television and Film includes recurring roles on HBO’s “Mildred Pierce” and “Bored to Death”andthe films The Squid and the Whale, Gentlemen Broncos and He’s Way More Famous Than You, which she co-wrote. She recently starred in the West Coast premiere of her play A Funny Thing Happened… at the Geffen in Los Angeles. TV writing credits include “The One Percent” (Starz), “Purity” (Showtime), “Mozart in the Jungle”(Amazon) and original pilots for FX and TNT. She is currently a producer on the upcoming Showtime series “Kidding,” starring Jim Carrey and directed by Michel Gondry. Trip Cullman (Director). Playwrights Horizons: Assistance, A Small Fire (Drama Desk nomination), The Drunken City, Manic Flight Reaction. Broadway: Lobby Hero, Significant Other, Six Degrees of Separation. Other NYC credits include Yen, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic…, Punk Rock (MCC); The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick); The Substance of Fire, The Layover, Bachelorette, Swimming in the Shallows, Some Men (Second Stage); Dog Sees God (Century Center); The Last Sunday in June (Rattlestick and Century Center); Roulette (EST); Bad Jazz (Play Co.). Regional credits include Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Betty’s Summer Vacation (Bay Street Theatre), and Touched (Williamstown Theatre Festival). MFA: Yale School of Drama. A Strange Loop (World Premiere) Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael R. Jackson Directed by Stephen Brackett Choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly Produced in association with Page 73 Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater May 24-July 07, 2019 Usher is a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson’s blistering, momentous new musical, follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to break out of this strange loop. Jackson, winner of the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, makes his New York professional debut with this production. Michael R. Jackson (Book, Music, and Lyrics). Playwrights debut. Michael holds a BFA and MFA in playwriting and Musical Theatre Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. As a songwriter, he has seen his work performed at NAMT, 24 Hour Musicals, Barrington Stage Company, Merkin Hall, The Laurie Beechman Theater, Feinstein’s/54 Below, Triad, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, Metropolitan Room, Bruno Walter Library, and ACT in Seattle. He wrote book and lyrics for the musical Only Children with composer Rachel Peters, book and lyrics for the musical adaptation of the 2007 horror film Teeth with composer and co-bookwriter Anna Jacobs, and is currently writing book for the musical U.G.L.Y with composer-lyricist Darius Smith. He is an alum of the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, the Ars Nova Uncharted Writers Group, and is a Sundance Theatre Institute Composer Fellow. He is 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant Recipient, a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award Winner, a 2017 ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award Winner, a 2016/2017 Dramatist Guild Fellow, the 2017 Williamstown Theatre Festival Playwright-In-Residence, and has commissions from Grove Entertainment & Barbara Whitman Productions and LCT3. Stephen Brackett (Director). Playwrights debut. Credits include The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (Theaterworks USA), Jonathan Tolins’ Buyer & Cellar (Rattlestick and Barrow Street Theaters/Westport Playhouse/National Tour/London’s Menier Chocolate Factory), Joe Tracz and Joe Iconis’ Be More Chill (Two River), Kerrigan-Lowdermilk’s The Mad Ones (Prospect Theater), Tasha Gordon-Solmon’s I Now Pronounce (Humana Festival), Philip Dawkins’ Le Switch (About Face), Caroline McGraw’s Ultimate Beauty Bible (Page 73), David West Read’s The Great Pretender (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Greer Melocik’s Wringer (NYCCT), Bixby Elliot’s Sommerfugl (InViolet), Anton Dudley’s City Of (Playwrights Realm) Lucas Kavner’s Carnival Kids (Lesser America), Ken Urban’s The Correspondent (Rattlestick), Chad Beckim’s After (Partial Comfort), Dan Fishback’s The Material World (Dixon Place), Bekah Brunstetter’sBe A Good Little Widow (Ars Nova) and The Tenant (Woodshed Collective). Raja Feather Kelly (Choreographer). Playwrights debut. Off-Broadway: EVERYBODY, The Death of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Funnyhouse of a Negro (Signature); EVERYDAY AFROPLAY (JACK); Electric Lucifer, Another Fucking Warhol Production (The Kitchen); Andy Warhol's Bleu Movie (BAM Fisher); Andy Warhol’s TROPICO (Danspace Project); Andy Warhol’s DRELLA, I Love You Faye Driscoll (The Invisible Dog); Andy Warhol’s 15: Color Me, Warhol; (Dixon Place). Honors: 2017 Princess Grace Award for a Fellowship in Choreography, 2018-19 Carthorse Fellowship at the Buran Theatre, 2017 Bessie Schoenberg Fellowship at the Yard on Martha's Vineyard, 2016 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, 2016 NYFA Choreography Fellowship. Credits Playwrights Horizons’ season productions are generously supported in part by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and the Time Warner Foundation. About Playwrights Horizons Playwrights Horizons is dedicated to cultivating the most important American playwrights, composers and lyricists, as well as developing and producing their bold new plays and musicals. Under Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, Playwrights builds upon its diverse and renowned body of work, counting 400 writers among its artistic roster. Prior artistic directors include André Bishop and Don Scardino. Robert Moss founded Playwrights Horizons in 1971 and oversaw its first decade, cementing the mission that continues to guide the institution today. In addition to its onstage work each season, Playwrights’ singular commitment to nurturing American theater artists guides all of the institution’s multifaceted initiatives: our acclaimed New Works Lab, a robust commissioning program, an innovative curriculum at its Theater School and more. Playwrights Horizons has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including six Pulitzer Prizes, 13 Tony Awards and 39 Obie Awards. Notable productions include six Pulitzer Prize winners: Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013 Obie Award, 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award, Best Play), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. |
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