STRAIGHT WHITE MEN To Feature ARMIE HAMMER and TOM SKERRITT

Written by YOUNG JEAN LEE

Directed by ANNA D. SHAPIRO

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On Broadway Summer 2018

Previews Begin Friday, June 29

Opening Night is Monday, July 23

Second Stage at The Hayes Theater

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December 4, 2017 – Second Stage Theater (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director; Casey Reitz, Executive Director) has announced that Armie Hammer and Tom Skerritt will appear in the Broadway production of Young Jean Lee’s dark comedy, STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, directed by Anna D. Shapiro.

With STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, playwright Young Jean Lee will become the first Asian-American female playwright to be produced on Broadway. Anna D. Shapiro will be making her Second Stage directorial debut with this production. The Artistic Director of Steppenwolf Theatre, Ms. Shapiro won a Tony Award for her direction of August: Osage County in 2008.

The production will also mark Mr. Hammer’s Broadway debut. Mr. Skerritt made his Broadway debut in the 2013 production of A Time to Kill.

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN will begin previews at the Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street) on Friday, June 29, 2018 and will officially open on Monday, July 23, 2018.

Additional casting will be announced shortly.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Ed has gathered his three adult sons to celebrate with matching pajamas, trash-talking, and Chinese takeout. But when a question they can’t answer interrupts their holiday cheer, they are forced to confront their own identities. Obie Award-winning playwright Young Jean Lee takes a hilariously ruthless look at the classic American father-son drama. This is one white Christmas like you’ve never seen before.

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN will feature scenic design by Todd Rosenthal, costume design by Suttirat Larlab, lighting design by Donald Holder, sound design by M.L. Dogg and casting by Telsey + Company.

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN is currently available with a 4-Play subscription for $295 which also includes Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, directed by Trip Cullman; Greg Pierce’s Cardinal, directed by Kate Whoriskey; and Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe, directed by Lila Neugebauer.

To purchase or for more information, visit 2ST.com or call the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422.

Single tickets for STRAIGHT WHITE MEN will go on sale in April via Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or Telecharge.com.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

ARMIE HAMMER (Drew) has received critical praise and an Independent Spirit Nomination for Supporting Actor for his role in Luca Guadagnino’s film Call Me By Your Name, opposite Timothee Chalamet. Hammer will next star in Stanley Tucci’s film Final Portrait as American art critic James Lord. The film premiered to rave reviews at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in early 2018. He will also be seen in Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You. Next year, which was just announced to screen in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Hammer will also star in Anthony Maras’ film, Hotel Mumbai, alongside Dev Patel. He recently wrapped production on Mimi Leder’s On The Basis Of Sex, opposite Felicity Jones. The film is the story of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and he portrays her husband, Martin. Earlier this year, Hammer voiced the role of “Jackson Storm” for Pixar’s Cars 3, and starred in Ben Wheatley’s film Free Fire alongside Cillian Murphy and Brie Larson. The film premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, earning the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness. Hammer’s other film credits include Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, Birth of a Nation, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, The Lone Ranger, The Social Network and J. Edgar, for which he received a SAG Award Nomination.

TOM SKERRITT (Ed). Best Actor Emmy winner for the series, “Picket Fences,” Skerritt is well known from his film work, including M*A*S*H, Turning Point (Best Supporting Actor Award, National Board of Review), Alien, A River Runs Through It, Steel Magnolias, Top Gun, and Contact, among others. At UCLA, he studied film writing and theatre and mentored with Robert Altman, Hal Ashby and Ridley Scott. In 1994 he received a Life Achievement Honor from UCLA; in 2007, a Life Achievement from Wayne State University followed with a Laureate Award from The Rainier Club in Seattle. In 2011, he received the Saturn Best Guest Actor Award - TV. In 2004, along with other Hollywood transplants, he founded The Film School in Seattle, with a focus on feature storytelling. The success of the school, started the Red Badge Project, Storytelling for PTS Vets in VA Centers throughout the state of Washington. Recently, Skerritt founded Heyou Media, a New Media content company. He made his Broadway debut in 2013 in A Time to Kill.

YOUNG JEAN LEE (Playwright) is a writer, director, and filmmaker who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by The New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed ten shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, and Theatre Communications Group. She has written a screenplay commission for Plan B Entertainment, and her short films have been presented at The Locarno International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and BAMcinemaFest. Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN Literary Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, and the ZKB Patronage Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel. She is currently working on a new Broadway play commission for Second Stage. She teaches at Stanford and Yale.

ANNA D. SHAPIRO (Director) won the 2008 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Director for August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. In 2011 she received a Tony Award nomination for her direction of The Motherf**ker with the Hat. Broadway credits include Larry David’s Fish in the Dark, the revival of Steppenwolf’s production of This Is Our Youth and the Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men, which National Theatre Live selected as the first American production to be broadcast to over 700 cinemas across the US and Canada. Shapiro has directed many notable productions with Steppenwolf, including Visiting Edna by David Rabe, and The Minutes and Mary Page Marlowe, both by Letts. Additional Steppenwolf directing credits include A Parallelogram, Up, The Unmentionables, The Pain and the Itch (also at Playwrights Horizons), Letts’s Man from Nebraska (named by Time Magazine as one of the Year’s Top Ten of 2003), Side Man (also in Ireland, Australia and Colorado) and Letts’s adaption of Three Sisters, among others. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and Columbia College and the recipient of a 1996 Princess Grace Award, as well as the 2010 Princess Grace Statue Award. Shapiro began working with Steppenwolf in 1995 as the original director of the New Plays Lab, joined the ensemble in 2005 and became Artistic Director at the start of the 2015/16 Season.

ABOUT SECOND STAGE THEATER

Under the artistic direction of Carole Rothman, SECOND STAGE THEATER produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America’s best contemporary theater by living American playwrights, including 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis; 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes; The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown; Dogfight by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Peter Duchan; Dear Evan Hansen by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; Trust and Lonely, I’m Not by Paul Weitz; The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz; Everyday Rapture and Whorl Inside a Loop by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; Jitney by August Wilson; Jar the Floor by Cheryl L. West; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants by Ricky Jay; Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; and Tiny Alice by Edward Albee.

The company’s more than 130 citations include six 2017 Tony Awards for Dear Evan Hansen (Best Musical; Best Lead Actor in a Musical, Ben Platt; Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Rachel Bay Jones; Best Book of a Musical; Best Original Score; Best Orchestrations), three 2009 Tony Awards for Next to Normal (Best Lead Actress in a Musical, Alice Ripley; Best Score, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Best Orchestrations, Michael Starobin and Tom Kitt); the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed); the 2005 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, …Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, …Spelling Bee); the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses); the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 30 Obie Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, three Clarence Derwent Awards, 13 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 19 Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Critics Circle Award and 23 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theater opened The Tony Kiser Theater, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theater, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theater Uptown” series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theater. The Theater supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

SECOND STAGE THEATER ON BROADWAY

Second Stage Theater purchased the historic Helen Hayes Theater, located at 240 W. 44th Street, in 2015 and has enlisted David Rockwell and The Rockwell Group to make renovations and updates to the 104 year old landmark building. The company will continue to lease and operate the McGinn/Cazale Theater on the city’s Upper West Side and The Tony Kiser Theater in Midtown Manhattan.

In addition to Straight White Men, Second Stage Theater’s inaugural Broadway season will include the Broadway Premiere of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, directed by Trip Cullman and featuring Michael Cera, Chris Evans, Brian Tyree Henry, and Bel Powley. Performances begin March 1 and the production officially opens March 26.

This inaugural season kicks off Second Stage’s mission of creating and building a permanent home on Broadway dedicated exclusively to American plays and living American playwrights.

Second Stage Theater is investing in its future on Broadway by co-commissioning established playwrights through its STAGE-2-STAGE program, launched with Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group. This ongoing program will provide a pathway to Broadway, with each play receiving an initial production in Los Angeles at one of CTG’s three theaters before moving to New York. The commissioned playwrights are Jon Robin Baitz, Will Eno, Lisa Kron, Young Jean Lee, Lynn Nottage, and Paula Vogel.

Second Stage Theater is also co-commissioning a new work from Bess Wohl for Broadway, through a partnership with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and new works for Broadway from Lydia R. Diamond and Dominique Morisseau, which will be developed in association with Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theater.

SECOND STAGE THEATER OFF-BROADWAY

Second Stage Theater’s current season at The Tony Kiser Theater include its critically-acclaimed production of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song, directed by Moisés Kaufman; the world premiere of Greg Pierce’s Cardinal, directed by Kate Whoriskey in January 2018; and the New York premiere of Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe, directed by Lila Neugebauer in June of 2018.