“A Confederacy of Dunces” Announces Extension in Boston
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DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY EXTENDS
“A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES” TO DECEMBER 20
(BOSTON) – Due to popular demand, the Huntington Theatre Company announces the addition of one week of performances to its run of the world premiere production of A Confederacy of Dunces. The show will now play through December 20, 2015 at the Boston University Theatre. Previews begin Wednesday, November 11; Opening Night is Wednesday, November 18. A new block of tickets are now on sale.
A Confederacy of Dunces is adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by John Kennedy Toole, directed by David Esbjornson (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and All My Sons) and featuring Nick Offerman of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.”
Nick Offerman stars as the larger-than-life character Ignatius J. Reilly: overweight, arrogant, eccentric, and still living with his mother in 1960s New Orleans. Called the Don Quixote of the French Quarter, Ignatius has a singular outlook on life. His farcical odyssey includes a riot in a department store and a raid on a strip club, and stints working at a pants factory and as a hot dog vendor. A Confederacy of Dunces is a hilarious, wild ride, filled with colorful characters and comic misadventures. The Washington Post says A Confederacy of Dunces is, “An epic comedy. A rumbling, roaring avalanche of a book.”
“A Confederacy of Dunces is an iconic novel with an incredible cult following,” says Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois. “It’s a privilege to work with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, the brilliant and profoundly funny Nick Offerman, and our friend director David Esbjornson, and to be the first to share this exciting new play with Boston audiences.”
“Adapting John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces into a play has been like wrestling Ignatius Riley to the stage,” says adapter Jeffrey Hatcher. “The book is famously picaresque, episodic, and digressive, but the digressions are often the point. What I think we’ve arrived at is a play that focuses on the characters – Ignatius, his mother Mrs. Reilly, Burma Jones, Myrna Minkoff – without losing any of the book’s color and atmosphere and humor.” This worldwide bestselling novel, published by LSU press, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.
A Confederacy of Dunces is presented in cooperation with a team of developmental partners including Robert Guza, John Hardy, LSU Press, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.
A Confederacy of Dunces is supported by Huntington Season Sponsors Carol G. Deane and J. David Wimberly.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jeffrey Hatcher (Adapter) is the author of numerous plays including Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Three Viewings, A Picasso, Scotland Road, Murder by Poe, The Spy, and Neddy. He wrote the book for the Broadway musical Never Gonna Dance, and the adaptations of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Turn of the Screw Off Broadway. His work has been performed at theatres across the country, including the Guthrie Theater, The Old Globe, Yale Repertory Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Play House, CATCO, South Coast Rep, Arizona Theater Company, San Jose Rep, The Empty Space, Indiana Rep, Children’s Theater Company, History Theater, Madison Rep, Intiman, Illusion, Denver Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Rep, Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Actors Theater of Louisville, Philadelphia Theater Company, Commonweal Theater, Asolo, City Theater, Studio Arena, and dozens more. His film and television work includes Stage Beauty, Casanova, The Duchess, and episodes of “Columbo.” He is the recipient of the 2013 IVEY Lifetime Achievement Award, Rosenthal New Play Prize, Frankel Award, Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award, Barrymore Award for Best New Play (A Picasso), and LA Critics Circle Award for Best Adaptation (Cousin Bette). He is a member and/or alumnus of The Playwrights Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild, and New Dramatists.
David Esbjornson (Director) previously directed Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and All My Sons at the Huntington. His directing premieres include Driving Miss Daisy (Broadway, London, and Australia), Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? (Broadway) and The Play about the Baby (Off Broadway), Arthur Miller’s The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (Broadway) and Resurrection Blues (Guthrie Theater), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (world premiere), and Perestroika (first staged presentation, Eureka Theatre), and Homebody/Kabul (London), Neal Bell’s Therese Raquin (Classic Stage Company), In the Blood (The Public Theater/NYSF), and Tuesdays with Morrie (Minetta Lane Theatre). His revivals include Lady From Dubuque (Signature Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre), Death of a Salesman (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Hamlet (Theatre for a New Audience), Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing and The Normal Heart (The Public Theater/NYSF), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Summer and Smoke (Guthrie Theater), Twelfth Night, Mud, and Drowning (Signature Theatre), A Few Good Men (London’s West End), Endgame, The Maids, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and The Entertainer (Classic Stage Company), and Farmyard (New York Theatre Workshop). He is the recipient of two Obie Awards for Outstanding Direction, a What’s On Stage Award, two Lucille Lortel Awards, a Los Angeles Critics Award, a Friends of New York Theatre Award for Best Director, seven Bay Area Critics Awards, seven Connecticut Critics Awards, a TCG Directing Fellowship, and others. He previously served as artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York City and Seattle Repertory Theatre, and is the current chair of Rutgers University Theatre Program.
Nick Offerman (Ignatius J. Reilly) is best known for the role of Ron Swanson on NBC’s hit comedy series “Parks & Recreation,” which just completed its 7th and final season. For his work on the show, he won a Television Critics Association Award for Achievement in Comedy in 2011, having earned his first nomination in 2010. He also received two Critics’ Choice Television Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. His long list of film credits includes 21 & 22 Jump Street; The Lego Movie; We’re the Millers; Smashed; Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl; Casa de mi Padre; The Men Who Stare at Goats; A Walk in the Woods and many more. Next, Mr. Offerman will be seen in the second season of the FX series “Fargo.” Currently, he is touring his comedy show “Full Bush.” His last tour, “American Ham,” was released on Netflix on December 12, 2014. Mr. Offerman and his bride, Megan Mullally debuted their “Summer of 69: No Apostrophe” comedy show this year. The tour went to multiple cities in the US and will have an Australian tour early next year. Mr. Offerman released his New York Times bestselling books, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living in 2013 and Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America’s Gutsiest Troublemakers earlier this year. He recently wrapped production on The Founder opposite Michael Keaton, which will be released November 25, 2016. He got his start in the Chicago theatre community, where he received a Joseph Jefferson Citation for his performance in The Kentucky Cycle at Pegasus Players Theatre, and a second Jefferson Citation for the puppets and masks he and his team crafted for The Skriker at Defiant Theatre, the company he co-founded. He has also worked extensively at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, and Wisdom Bridge, among others, he appeared in Annapurna and Adding Machine Off Broadway, and is currently a company member of the Evidence Room Theater Company in Los Angeles. In his spare time, he can be found at his woodshop in Los Angeles building hand-crafted items ranging from fine furniture to canoes to ukuleles.
ABOUT THE HUNTINGTON
Recipient of the 2013 Regional Theatre Tony Award and named Best of Boston 2013 and 2014 by Boston magazine, the Huntington Theatre Company has developed into Boston’s leading professional theatre and one of the region’s premier cultural assets since its founding in 1982. Bringing together superb local and national talent, the Huntington produces a mix of groundbreaking new works and classics made current to create award-winning productions, runs nationally renowned programs in education and new play development, and serves the local theatre community through its operation of the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. Under the direction of Artistic Director Peter DuBois and Managing Director Michael Maso and in residence at Boston University, the Huntington cultivates, celebrates, and champions theatre as an art form. For more information, visit huntingtontheatre.org.
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