Performances begin November 16 for Theatre For a New Audience's production of Fefu and Her Friends by the late María Irene Fornés. Directed by Obie Award winner Lileana Blain-Cruz at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, the production sees the audience split up into four groups (as the play is written), and move around the auditorium where they each experience the story in a different setting and in a different order.
In Fefu and Her Friends, a group of articulate, idiosyncratic women gather in Fefu’s New England country house in 1935 to rehearse for a charity event.
The cast of the TFANA production is comprised of Brittany Bradford (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Merrily We Roll Along ) as Julia, Juliana Canfield (He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, Succession) as Christina, Helen Cespedes (The Cripple of Inishmaan, The School for Scandal) as Emma, Jennifer Lim (Chinglish, Usual Girls) as Cindy, Ronete Levenson (Lascivious Something, Our Town) as Sue, Lindsay Rico (Alligator, Song for a Future Generation) as Paula, Amelia Workman (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead, Coriolanus) as Fefu, and Carmen Zilles (Little Women, Scenes from a Marriage) as Cecilia.
Fefu and Her Friends is scheduled through December 8, with a November 24 opening.
“María Irene Fornés is a titan of the American theatre, and it truly is an honor to be directing Fefu and Her Friends not only because she's influenced so many important artists, but because she revolutionized what theatre could be," says Blain-Cruz. “The depth and complexity of this play requires an exhilarating participation between artist and audience and is one of the most exciting theatrical challenges I've ever encountered.”
The creative team includes set designer Adam Rigg, costume designer Montana Levi Blanco, lighting designer Jane Cox, sound designer Palmer Hefferan, and props supervisor Andrew Diaz.