Playwrights Horizons has announced its 2017–18 season, which will kick off with the New York premiere of For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, the newest play by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony nominee Sarah Ruhl. The lineup also includes five world-premiere new works.
For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday will launch the season August 18 with direction by Les Waters, who returns to Playwrights following his acclaimed production of The Christians. In the title role will be Tony nominee and three-time Obie winner Kathleen Chalfant, who will be joined by David Chandler, Ron Crawford, Lisa Emery, Daniel Jenkins, and Keith Reddin.
The season will be completed by five world-premiere plays. In season order: The Treasurer by Max Posner (Judy), directed by three-time Lortel Award winner David Cromer (The Band’s Visit); Mankind, written and directed by two-time Obie winner Robert O’Hara (Barbecue); This Flat Earth by Lindsey Ferrentino (Ugly Lies the Bone), directed by Rebecca Taichman (Indecent); Dance Nation by Obie Award winner Clare Barron (You Got Older, I’ll Never Love Again), directed by Obie winner Lee Sunday Evans (Caught); and Log Cabin by Pulitzer Prize finalist Jordan Harrison (Marjorie Prime), directed by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon (Amélie) .
Casting information and dates for the shows will be announced in the coming months.
For details of the upcoming productions, as billed by the theatre, see below:
For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday
Playing Peter Pan at her hometown children’s theater is one of Ann’s fondest, most formative memories. Now, fifty years later, Neverland calls again, casting her and her siblings back to this faraway dreamscape where the refusal to grow up confronts the inevitability of growing old. Sarah Ruhl conjures a tender, yearning tale that flies in the face of time, in the search for a second youth.
The Treasurer
Ida Armstrong is broke, lonely and fading fast. And she’s spending all of her children’s money, forcing her son to assume the unwanted role of The Treasurer: an arrangement that becomes untenable the more he questions his devotion to her. In this darkly funny, sharply intimate portrait, Max Posner chronicles the strained ties between a son and his aging mother, and the hell of a guilty conscience.
Mankind
Mark and Jason were keeping things casual until Jason got pregnant. But however unplanned the pregnancy was, nothing could be less expected than the chain of events it would set in motion. Robert O’Hara’s audacious, hilarious allegory envisions an uncannily familiar future – one long after women have gone extinct from centuries of mistreatment—where man’s capacity to f**k everything up soars to new heights.
This Flat Earth
At a middle school in this seaside town, the unthinkable has happened, placing a bewildered community in the national spotlight. Stuck at home in a state of shocked limbo, Julie and Zander, two thirteen-year-olds, try to make sense of the chaos they witnessed, their awkward crushes and an infinitely more complicated future—but the grown-ups are no help at all. An urgent response to our times, This Flat Earth is a startling and deeply felt story of growing up in our confounding world.
Dance Nation
Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. But in Clare Barron’s raucous pageant of ambition and ferocity, these young dancers have more than choreography on their minds, because every plié and jeté is a step toward finding themselves, and a fight to unleash their power.
Log Cabin
It’s a faraway age of hope and inclusivity; in other words, it’s 2015. When a tight-knit circle of married gays and lesbians—comfy in the new mainstream—see themselves through the eyes of their rakish transgender pal, it’s clear that the march toward progress is anything but unified. With stinging satire and acute compassion, Jordan Harrison’s pointed comedy charts the breakdown of empathy that happens when we think our rights are secure, revealing conservative hearts where you’d least expect
Subscription packages for Playwrights Horizons’ 2017–18 season are now available at PHnyc.org.
