Tony, Oscar, and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy, Parade) has granted producer Lisa Dozier Shacket the option to develop and produce his long-shelved play Without Walls. 

Set in a progressive private high school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1976, Without Walls tells the story of a beloved theatre teacher and his two favorite students as they navigate the complexities of mentorship, trust, and personal growth. The play was originally drafted in the early 2000s, but Uhry revisited the work in 2023 at the encouragement of Matthew Johnson Harris, and has since rewritten much of the script. 

“Without Walls is loosely based on an incident that occurred when I was teaching at The Calhoun Learning Center on the Upper West Side of NYC in the 1970s,” Uhry said in a statement. “When I revisited the script, a strange thing happened. Somehow, the intervening years had sharpened my perspective, and thanks to my friend, Matthew Johnson Harris, I saw how relevant the material has become today. I revised accordingly, and now I am delighted that a new friend, Lisa Dozier Shacket, is making plans to bring it to New York.” 

“It is the absolute honor of my career to collaborate with Alfred Uhry on bringing a new work of his to the New York stage,” added Shacket. “As a child living in a small town in Kentucky, Driving Miss Daisy changed my life—it was the first time I learned about Broadway and the power of the American theatre. Without Walls is a gorgeous exploration into mentorship and the challenges teachers face every day trying to protect their students.”

The project is being developed with the full support of International Literary Properties (ILP), which manages Uhry’s estate and oversees his literary works.