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Second Stage Theater Celebrates 40th Anniversary Season
SECOND STAGE THEATER
Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary Season
Upcoming Productions include
Young Jean Lee’s STRAIGHT WHITE MEN
Plus Two World Premieres and a
Pulitzer Prize Finalist…
DAYS OF RAGE
WORLD PREMIERE PLAY
Written by STEVEN LEVENSON
Directed by TRIP CULLMAN
SUPERHERO
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL
Book by JOHN LOGAN
Music and Lyrics by TOM KITT
Directed by JASON MOORE
Starring Tony Award Nominees
KATE BALDWIN and BRYCE PINKHAM
and introducing KYLE McARTHUR
DYING CITY
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
Written by CHRISTOPHER SHINN
Directed by LILA NEUGEBAUER
As well as Harvey Fierstein’s TORCH SONG
At Second Stage’s Broadway home,
The Helen Hayes
May 9, 2018 -- Second Stage Theater (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director; Casey Reitz, Executive Director) will celebrate its 40th Anniversary season with a slate of productions throughout the 2018-19 season, including two World Premieres, plus an acclaimed favorite in their new Broadway home.
The 40th Anniversary season will kick off with the Broadway premiere of Young Jean Lee’s STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, directed by Anna D. Shapiro and starring the previously announced Kate Bornstein, Josh Charles, Ty Defoe, Armie Hammer and Tom Skerritt. Previews begin June 29 and the production officially opens on July 23 at The Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway.
Productions at the Off-Broadway Tony Kiser Theater will commence in October 2018 with the World Premiere of DAYS OF RAGE, a new play by Tony Award winner Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen), directed by Trip Cullman who staged the company’s current Tony-nominated hit production of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero.
The season will continue in winter 2019 with the World Premiere musical, SUPERHERO, with a book by Tony Award winner John Logan (Red), music and lyrics by Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), and direction by Tony Award nominee Jason Moore (Avenue Q). This new musical will feature Tony Award nominees Kate Baldwin (Hello, Dolly!), Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide…) and newcomer Kyle McArthur.
Summer 2019 will feature Christopher Shinn’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, DYING CITY, in a new production from acclaimed director Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves), who will direct Second Stage’s upcoming production of Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe.
Additionally this fall, Second Stage’s sold-out, wildly popular production of Harvey Fierstein’s TORCH SONG, directed by Moisés Kaufman and starring Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl, is moving to Broadway and will play at Second Stage’s Broadway home, The Helen Hayes Theater.
A fourth production remains to be announced.
“I’m incredibly excited to celebrate our 40th Anniversary with a fantastic line-up of works that includes both world premieres and celebrated plays that deserve a second viewing,” said Artistic Director Carole Rothman. “The world premiere productions include Steven Levenson’s Days of Rage, which taps into a young and vital political impulse that I think is very important at this moment in our country, and it’s in expert hands with Trip Cullman who steered Lobby Hero to renewed life on Broadway this spring. And a world premiere musical is always an event, but one that combines the talents of Tom Kitt, John Logan, and Jason Moore promises to be something truly remarkable; I can’t wait for audiences to discover this fresh and emotionally powerful new musical. In 2019 we’ll bring Christopher Shinn’s acclaimed play, Dying City, back to New York for a well-deserved second viewing through the lens of the fearless young director Lila Neugebauer. All of this, plus the previously announced Broadway productions of Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men and Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song at the Hayes, promises to make our upcoming 40th season, both on and off Broadway, a highpoint of Second Stage’s four decades of bringing American plays to life.”
Subscriptions for these three productions are $255 and are available by calling the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422 or visiting the company’s website, www.2ST.com.
More detailed information on these three upcoming off-Broadway Second Stage productions is included below:
DAYS OF RAGE
World Premiere
Written by Steven Levenson
Directed by Trip Cullman
Previews begin October 2; Opening in late October
Against the backdrop of an endless, unwinnable war raging halfway across the world, and a polarizing president recklessly stoking the flames of racist backlash at home – a generation of young people rises up to demand change from a corrupt political establishment. It is October, 1969 and unbeknownst to the rest of the world, three 20-something radicals are busy planning the impending revolution from a quiet college town in Upstate New York. But when two strangers appear, disrupting the group’s delicate balance, new dangers and old wounds threaten to tear the collective apart. By the Tony Award-winning writer of Dear Evan Hansen, DAYS OF RAGE is a timely new play about means and ends, ideals and extremes, and the perils of changing the world.
STEVEN LEVENSON (Playwright) is the Tony Award-winning book writer of Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance Of Tom Durnin, Core Values, The Language of Trees, and Seven Minutes In Heaven. Honors include the Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Outer Critics John Gassner Playwriting Award, Drama League Award, Drama Desk nomination, Hull-Warriner nomination, Lucille Lortel nomination, and the Helen Hayes Award. A former Artist in Residence at Ars Nova, he worked for three seasons as a writer and producer on Showtime’s Masters of Sex and is a founding member of Colt Coeur and an alumnus of MCC’s Playwrights Coalition and Ars Nova’s Play Group. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Playscripts. A graduate of Brown University, he is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. and the WGA.
TRIP CULLMAN (Director) has staged seven productions at Second Stage, including Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero; Leslye Headland's The Layover and Bachelorette; Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire; Paul Weitz's Lonely, I'm Not; Terrence McNally's Some Men; and Adam Bock's Swimming In The Shallows. Select NYC: John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (Barrymore), Joshua Harmon’s Significant Other (Booth), Anna Jordan's Yen (MCC), Halley Feiffer's A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City (MCC), Harmon's Significant Other (Roundabout), Feiffer's I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic), Simon Stephens' Punk Rock (MCC, Obie Award), Tarell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy (MTC), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theatre), Headland's Assistance (Playwrights Horizons), Bock's A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nom.), Adam Rapp's The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick), Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (Century Center), Bock's The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Weitz' Roulette (EST), Jonathan Tolins' The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center), Gina Gionfriddo's US Drag (stageFARM), and several productions with The Play Company. London: Bock's The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, PA (Tricycle). Select regional: McCraney's Choir Boy (Geffen and Alliance, NAACP and Suzi Bass awards), Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), Richard Greenberg's The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), McNally's Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation (Bay Street), Bess Wohl's Touched (Williamstown Theater Festival), Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein's Unknown Soldier (WTF), Wohl's Barcelona (Geffen, Ovation nom.), Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo (WTF).
SUPERHERO
World Premiere
Book by John Logan
Music and lyrics by Tom Kitt
Directed by Jason Moore
With Kate Baldwin, Bryce Pinkham and Kyle McArthur
Previews begin January 31; opening in late February
Before we can save the world, we have to save each other. From the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of Next to Normal and the Tony Award-winning writer of Red comes a deeply human new musical about a fractured family, the mysterious stranger in apartment 4-B, and the unexpected hero who just might save the day.
KATE BALDWIN is currently starring in the Tony Award winning Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! for which she personally received Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Award nominations. Other Broadway credits include: Finian’s Rainbow (Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Award nominations), Big Fish, Wonderful Town, Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Full Monty. Off-Broadway, she received Drama Desk nominations for her work in The Keen Company’s production of John & Jen and the Public Theatre’s production of Michael John LaChuisa’s Giant. Also off-Broadway: Songbird at 59E59 Street Theaters. Film: Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best. TV: “Law & Order: SVU”. PBS: “First You Dream: The Music of Kander & Ebb” and “Live From Lincoln Center: Stephen Sondheim’s Passion.” Concerts: Chicago Humanities Festival, NSO, PSO and the American Songbook Series. Recording: Let’s See What Happens and She Loves Him: Live at Feinstein’s (PS Classics).
BRYCE PINKHAM is most widely known for originating the role of ‘Monty Navarro’ in the Tony Winning Musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway, for which he was nominated for Tony, Grammy, and Drama Desk awards. He soon after appeared in the Broadway revival of The Heidi Chronicles and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance in 2015. His other Broadway credits include Holiday Inn, Ghost the Musical, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. He most recently starred in Benny and Joon a new musical adaptation of the 1993 movie starring Johnny Depp at the Old Globe Theater. His latest onscreen appearances include Baz Luhrmann's Netflix series The Get Down, Robert De Niro's The Comedian, and as a series regular on PBS’s Civil War drama series Mercy Street. His other TV credits include Blindspot, The Good Wife and Person of Interest.
KYLE McARTHUR will be making his professional theatrical debut with this production after playing Simon in the O'Neill NMTC reading of Superhero. Other readings include Disney's Freaky Friday (Adam), Rapture (Andy), Stuck (Rayce), and The America Project (Cam).
JOHN LOGAN (Book) received the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critic Circle and Drama League awards for his play Red. This play premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London and at the Golden Theatre on Broadway. Since then, Red has had more than 200 productions across the US and has been presented in over 30 countries. In 2013, his play Peter and Alice premiered in London and I'll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers opened on Broadway. He also co-wrote the book for the musical The Last Ship and is the author of more than a dozen other plays including Never the Sinner and Hauptmann. Logan’s upcoming theatrical work includes Moulin Rouge! As a screenwriter, Logan has been three times nominated for the Oscar and has received a Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA, and PEN Center award. His film work includes Skyfall, Spectre, Hugo, The Aviator, Gladiator, Rango, Genius, Coriolanus, Sweeney Todd, The Last Samurai, Any Given Sunday, and RKO 281. He also created and produced the television series "Penny Dreadful" for Showtime.
TOM KITT (Music and Lyrics) received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as two Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Orchestrations for Next to Normal. Other composing credits: If/Then (Tony Nomination); High Fidelity; Bring it On, The Musical; Disney’s Freaky Friday; and The Winter’s Tale, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Cymbeline (The Public’s NYSF). Tom is the music supervisor for the new NBC drama, “Rise,” and is responsible for the music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations for Jagged Little Pill, SpongeBob SquarePants, “Grease Live!” and Green Day’s American Idiot on Broadway. His work with Green Day also includes additional arrangements for their Grammy Award-winning album 21st Century Breakdown and their album trilogy, ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! Tom received an Emmy Award as co-writer (with Lin-Manuel Miranda) for the 2013 Tony Award opening number, “Bigger.” Other television songwriting credits include “Royal Pains,” “Penny Dreadful,” and “Sesame Street.” As an arranger and orchestrator, credits include all three Pitch Perfect films, 2Cellos featuring Lang Lang (“Live and Let Die”), “The Kennedy Center Honors,” Everyday Rapture, Laugh Whore, Pippin (Deaf West), and These Paper Bullets.
JASON MOORE (Director). Broadway: Fully Committed, Shrek the Musical (Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk nominations for Best Direction), Steel Magnolias, Avenue Q (Tony nomination, Best Direction). Carnegie Hall: Jerry Springer: The Opera. Off-Broadway: Speech and Debate (Roundabout), Avenue Q (the Vineyard), Guardians (the Culture Project), The Crumple Zone and Tales of the City, with music by the Scissor Sisters (American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco). Associate director: Les Misérables (Broadway, national tour), Ragtime (Vancouver). Writer: The Floatplane Notebooks (Charlotte Repertory Theatre). Television: “Dawson's Creek,” “Everwood,” “One Tree Hill,” “Brothers and Sisters,” and “Trophy Wife.” Film: Pitch Perfect, Pitch Perfect 2 & 3 (Executive Producer), Sisters. Moore divides his time between New York and Los Angeles and received a B.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
DYING CITY
Written by Christopher Shinn
Directed by Lila Neugebauer
Previews begin late July; opening mid-August
Christopher Shinn's intimate and compassionate play, DYING CITY, is set in a sparse Manhattan apartment, where a young widow receives an unexpected visit from the twin brother of her deceased husband. DYING CITY explores the human fallout of global events, including the Iraq War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, through the interwoven stories of three unforgettable characters in this 2008 Pulitzer finalist from “one of our most provocative and probing playwrights” (The New York Times).
CHRISTOPHER SHINN is the author of twelve plays, including Where Do We Live (Obie in Playwriting), Dying City (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Now or Later (shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play), and Four. His plays have premiered at the Royal Court, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, the Donmar Warehouse, and the Goodman Theatre, among others. His most recent play, Against, premiered in 2017 at the Almeida Theatre in London and starred Ben Whishaw. A Guggenheim Fellow, Chris teaches playwriting at the New School.
LILA NEUGEBAUER is an Obie, Drama Desk, and Princess Grace Award-winning director. Recent directing credits include Zoe Kazan's After The Blast (Lincoln Center); Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo (Signature Theatre); Lily Thorne's Peace for Mary Frances; Annie Baker’s The Antipodes; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody (Pulitzer finalist); Albee’s The Sandbox; Fornes’ Drowning, and Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro (as an evening, Signature Plays); A.R. Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn (all at Signature Theatre); Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves (The Playwrights Realm, NY Stage & Film); Abe Koogler’s Kill Floor (Lincoln Center); Mike Bartlett’s An Intervention (Williamstown); Amy Herzog’s After The Revolution, 4000 Miles (Baltimore Center Stage); Zoe Kazan’s Trudy and Max in Love, Eliza Clark’s Future Thinking (South Coast Rep); Lucas Hnath’s Red Speedo (Studio Theatre); Dan LeFranc’s Troublemaker (Berkeley Rep); Partners, O Guru Guru Guru (Humana Festival); and Annie Baker’s The Aliens (San Francisco Playhouse, Studio Theatre). As co-artistic director of The Mad Ones, Neugebauer conceives and directs ensemble-devised work, including Miles for Mary, Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War and The Essential Straight and Narrow. Drama League alum, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, Ensemble Studio Theatre member, New Georges Affiliated Artist, New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. She will direct this spring’s production of Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe at Second Stage Theater and Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery on Broadway next season.
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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 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, Lisa D’Amour, 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’s next production at The Tony Kiser Theater is the New York premiere of Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe, directed by Lila Neugebauer and starring Blair Brown, Kayli Carter, Audrey Corsa, Marcia DeBonis, Ryan Foust, Tess Frazer, Emma Geer, Grace Gummer, Mia Sinclair Jenness, Brian Kerwin, Tatiana Maslany, Kellie Overbey, Susan Pourfar, Maria Elena Ramirez, Elliot Villar, and Gary Wilmes. Previews begin June 19 and the production officially opens July 12. Lead production support is provided by Gina Maria Leonetti.
Special support for this summer’s productions comes from Second Stage Board member Gina Boonshoft. Also a member of the Directors Guild of America, Ms. Boonshoft was a Film/TV/Commercial Assistant Director for over 20 years. Credits include Five Corners, Married to the Mob and Silence of the Lambs along with TV series and commercials. Gina executive produced the short film, “First Chair,” plus the documentaries “Art & Heart, the World of Isaiah Sheffer,” and “Fellowship of Reconciliation: Over 100 Years of Waging Peace & Justice.” She also serves on the boards of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger and the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program, a division of the Nassau Alternative Advocacy Program in Long Island.
For more information, please visit www.2ST.com
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