Second Stage Theater (Carole Rothman, President & Artistic Director; Lisa Lawer Post, Interim Executive Director) has announced three initial productions for its upcoming 45th Anniversary Season. Additional season productions will be announced in the coming months.
The season will kick off in November 2023 with the world premiere of Guggenheim Fellow Jen Silverman’s (Collective Rage) play, SPAIN, directed by Tyne Rafaeli (The Coast Starlight), off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street). The fall will also see the Broadway debut of Obie Award-winner and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (The Comeuppance, An Octoroon) when his acclaimed play, APPROPRIATE, debuts at the Hayes Theater in an all-new production directed by Lila Neugebauer (2ST’s Mary Page Marlowe).
Spring 2024 will see the world premiere of an untitled new play by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned To Drive), directed by Tina Landau (The SpongeBob Musical) at the Hayes Theater.
SPAIN
World Premiere at off-Broadway’s Tony Kiser Theater
By Jen Silverman
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
Performances begin November 2023
Step into a sophisticated, slippery world where the line between truth and fiction is all in the packaging. It’s 1936, and a pair of passionate filmmakers have landed their next big project: a sweeping Spanish Civil War film with the potential to change American hearts and minds. It just happens to be bankrolled by the KGB. This seductive and funny new play about the art of propaganda and the dangerous ongoing Disinformation Age explores how art can change the world—for better and worse.
APPROPRIATE
Broadway Premiere at Hayes Theater
By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Lila Neugebauer
Performances begin November 2023
Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award-winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (An Octoroon) and Drama Desk Award-winner Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery, 2ST’s Mary Page Marlowe) invite you to one helluva reunion in this darkly comic American family drama.
It’s summer, the cicadas are singing, and the Lafayette family has returned to their late patriarch’s Arkansas home to deal with the remains of his estate. Toni, the eldest daughter, hopes they’ll spend the weekend remembering and reconnecting over their beloved father. Bo, her brother, wants to recoup some of the funds he spent caring for Dad at the end of his life. But things take a turn when their estranged brother, Franz, appears late one night, and mysterious objects are discovered among the clutter. Suddenly, long-hidden secrets and buried resentments can’t be contained, and the family is forced to face the ghosts of their past.
A New Play, Title To Come
At Hayes Theater
By Paula Vogel
Directed by Tina Landau
Performances begin late March 2024
Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) has written an unflinchingly honest and bitingly funny play about the hold our family has over us, and our coming to terms with the scars we leave on each other.
It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis is supervising her teenage children, Carl and Martha, as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them.
