WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL CASTING FOR 2019 SEASON
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TONY® AWARD-WINNING
WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL
ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL CASTING FOR THE 2019 SEASON
ELLEN BARKIN, ANDRÉ BRAUGHER, PRISCILLA LOPEZ, THOMAS SADOSKI, BERNARD WHITE, JOBETH WILLIAMS,
AND MORE JOIN LINEUP
ADVANCE SINGLE TICKET RESERVATIONS NOW AVAILABLE
New York, NY (April 12, 2019) – Williamstown Theatre Festival (Mandy Greenfield, Artistic Director) announced today additional casting for the 2019 summer season, including Ellen Barkin, André Braugher, Priscilla Lopez, Thomas Sadoski, Bernard White, JoBeth Williams, and many more. The 2019 season kicks off June 25, 2019 and runs through August 18, 2019.
Joining the previously announced casts are: Golden Globe®, Emmy®, and Obie® Award winner André Braugher, Sullivan Jones, Matthew Saldivar, Keith Randolph Smith, and Antonio Michael Woodard in A Human Being, of a Sort (June 26 – July 7); Tony and Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee Ellen Barkin, Drama Desk® Award winner Cassie Beck, Kyle Beltran, and Obie and Drama Desk Award winner Midori Francis in Before the Meeting (August 7 – August 18); Kyle Beltran, Eboni Flowers, Joe Goldammer, Mandi Masden, Nikiya Mathis, and Warner Miller in A Raisin in the Sun (June 25 – July 13); Bernard White in Ghosts (July 31 – August 18); Obie Award winner Mark Blum in Tell Me I’m Not Crazy (July 24 – August 3); and Tony, Drama Desk, and Obie Award winner Priscilla Lopez, Screen Actors Guild Award winner Maulik Pancholy, and Obie Award winner and Tony and Drama Desk Award nominee Thomas Sadoski in Grand Horizons (July 17 – July 28). In addition, Academy®, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award nominee JoBeth Williams joins the cast of Grand Horizons; Williams replaces the previously announced Mary Steenburgen, who had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts.
Additional programming and events, as well as further casting and creative team information, will be announced at a later date. Advance single ticket reservations are available now at www.wtfestival.org.
ABOUT THE SEASON
Main Stage
A Raisin in the Sun | June 25 – July 13
By Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Robert O’Hara
with Francois Battiste, Kyle Beltran, Eboni Flowers, Joe Goldammer, Mandi Masden, Nikiya Mathis, S. Epatha Merkerson, Warner Miller
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Lorraine Hansberry’s masterpiece, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner S. Epatha Merkerson and Francois Battiste breathe new life into this American classic. Lena Younger (Merkerson) and her son Walter Lee (Battiste) are at odds. Lena wants to use her late husband’s life insurance to move her family out of their cramped apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Walter Lee would rather use the funds to start a business and become an independent man. As their dispute intensifies, the powerful and destructive forces of 1950s America come knocking at the Youngers’ front door. Directed by Obie Award winner Robert O’Hara, Hansberry’s fearless interrogation of hope in the face of racial and economic strife is as provocative and powerful today as when it premiered.
WORLD PREMIERE
Grand Horizons | July 17 – July 28
By Bess Wohl
Directed by Leigh Silverman
with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Priscilla Lopez, Maulik Pancholy, Thomas Sadoski, JoBeth Williams
Bill and Nancy (Academy, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award nominee JoBeth Williams) have been happily married for fifty years. They can finish each other’s sentences and anticipate each other’s every sigh, snore, and sneeze. But there’s one thing nobody could have anticipated: Nancy wants out. As their adult sons Brian (Emmy Award nominee Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Ben (Tony Award nominee Thomas Sadoski) descend on the Grand Horizons senior living community, the walls of the French family as-they-know-it come crumbling down. Directed by Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman, Bess Wohl’s world premiere play takes an intimate, funny, and painful look at the nature of love over time.
Grand Horizons is a Williamstown Theatre Festival and Second Stage Theater Co-Commission. WTF Commissions are made possible through the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical Commissioning Program.
NEW TRANSLATION
Ghosts | July 31 – August 18
By Henrik Ibsen
Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Walsh
Directed by Carey Perloff
with Uma Thurman, Bernard White
With great happiness, Mrs. Alving (Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman) welcomes her painter son Oswald home from years of living abroad. But when he starts to flirt with the family maid, she must intercede to save her son and herself from scandals present and past. Mrs. Alving struggles to find joy in a life bound by the strictures of Pastor Manders (Bernard White) and the spectral chains of mistakes from long ago. Directed by Carey Perloff, Henrik Ibsen’s vivid and passionate play asks – even now – how far one mother, caught between duty and desire, can or should go to protect her family.
Nikos Stage
WORLD PREMIERE
A Human Being, of a Sort | June 26 – July 7
By Jonathan Payne
Directed by Whitney White
with André Braugher, Sullivan Jones, Matthew Saldivar, Keith Randolph Smith, Antonio Michael Woodard
It’s 1906, and at the Bronx Zoological Park, an African-American convict named “Smokey” (Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner André Braugher) is guarding the zoo’s most sensational exhibit: Ota Benga (Antonio Michael Woodard), a Congolese pygmy. As the public’s fascination intensifies and protestors call for Ota’s release, Smokey must grapple with the fact that his own freedom depends on another black man’s captivity. Based on a true story, Jonathan Payne’s world premiere play, directed by Whitney White, exposes the complexity of power and compliance in a world where all lives do not seem to matter equally.
WORLD PREMIERE
Selling Kabul | July 10 – July 21
By Sylvia Khoury
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
with Omar Metwally, Marjan Neshat, Babak Tafti
Taroon (Babak Tafti), a former interpreter for the US military, lives in hiding from the Taliban in his sister Afiya’s (Marjan Neshat) home in Kabul, Afghanistan. As Taroon restlessly awaits news from the hospital on the eve of his first child’s birth, his brother-in-law Jawid (Omar Metwally) works to protect him from dangers lurking outside the apartment walls. In this world premiere drama directed by Tyne Rafaeli, Sylvia Khoury examines loyalty, empty promises, and what it means to be left behind.
Selling Kabul is the recipient of the 2018 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, administered by Williamstown Theatre Festival.
WORLD PREMIERE
Tell Me I’m Not Crazy | July 24 – August 3
By Sharyn Rothstein
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
with Mark Blum, Mark Feuerstein, Jane Kaczmarek, Nadine Malouf
Forced into retirement and unsettled by the changing world around him, Sol Koening (Mark Blum) buys himself a gun—and his family is up in arms. His wife Diana (Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee Jane Kaczmarek) thought they’d spend more time together and with the grandkids, but Sol’s new hobby puts a bullet in that plan. Meanwhile, their son Nate (Mark Feuerstein) is trying to be a good stay-at-home dad while his jet-setting wife Alisa (Nadine Malouf) climbs the corporate ladder, and school is calling with concerns about their kid. Directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Sharyn Rothstein’s world premiere comedy asks how one small firearm redefines a family and how two generations confront what it means to succeed and to sacrifice in America today.
Tell Me I’m Not Crazy is a Williamstown Theatre Festival Commission. WTF Commissions are made possible through the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical Commissioning Program.
WORLD PREMIERE
Before The Meeting | August 7 – August 18
By Adam Bock
Directed by Trip Cullman
with Ellen Barkin, Cassie Beck, Kyle Beltran, Midori Francis, Jason Butler Harner
Every day, Gail (Tony and Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee Ellen Barkin) and the regular members of her early morning group set up for their meeting in the exact same way: Nicole (Midori Francis) makes the coffee, Gail arranges the chairs, and Ron (Jason Butler Harner) complains. As they forge a path toward sobriety and well-being, they come to rely on the routine and each other. But when Gail’s estranged granddaughter reopens old wounds, Gail knows it will take more than coffee, chairs, and companionship to keep her life from falling apart. Trip Cullman directs Adam Bock’s world premiere play, which examines how to truly make amends on the road to recovery.
TICKETS AND SCHEDULE
Advance single ticket reservations are now available at www.wtfestival.org. The WTF season brochure will arrive in mailboxes in early May (call 413-458-3253 to join the mailing list). The WTF Box Office will open on June 1 at which point tickets may be purchased online, by phone, or in person at the ‘62 Center for Theatre and Dance at 1000 Main St (Route 2), Williamstown, MA 01267.
WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL
For over six decades, Williamstown Theatre Festival, recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and the Commonwealth Award for Achievement, has brought emerging and professional theatre artists together to create a thrilling summer festival of premiere work alongside fresh, new productions of the western canon, accompanying cultural events including COMMUNITY WORKS and Late-Night Cabarets, and readings and workshops of new plays. Under Artistic Director Mandy Greenfield, WTF launched the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical Commissioning Program, through which theatre artists, including Jocelyn Bioh, Nathan Alan Davis, Halley Feiffer, Justin Levine, Matthew Lopez, Marsha Norman, Jiehae Park, Zoe Sarnak, Benjamin Scheuer, and many others, create new work supported by a year-round play development program. WTF runs unmatched training programs for new generations of theatre talent, and artists and productions shaped at the Festival fill theatres in New York, London, and around the country each season. Williamstown Theatre Festival’s productions of The Bridges of Madison County, The Elephant Man, Fool for Love, Living on Love, and The Visit enjoyed critically acclaimed runs on Broadway, with The Elephant Man and The Visit receiving Tony Award nominations for Best Revival of a Play and Best Revival of a Musical, respectively. In addition, the Festival’s world premiere productions of Cost of Living (winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) and Actually played acclaimed Off-Broadway runs at Manhattan Theatre Club, and Paradise Blue had an extended run at Signature Theatre in New York.
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