SEASON 45: 2023/24
JUST ANNOUNCED: SARAH PAULSON RETURNS TO BROADWAY IN APPROPRIATE
Welcome to our 45th Anniversary Season! We’re celebrating with two World Premiere plays, one by Guggenheim Fellow Jen Silverman and one by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Paula Vogel, plus the Broadway debut of two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins starring Sarah Paulson. Two more productions at the Tony Kiser Theater will be announced in the coming months. Read on and join us to experience the bold, funny, and modern storytelling you’ve come to know from 2NDSTAGE.
Step into a sophisticated, slippery world where the line between truth and fiction is all in the packaging. It's 1936, and a pair of passionate filmmakers have landed their next big project: a sweeping Spanish Civil War film with the potential to change American hearts and minds. It just happens to be bankrolled by the KGB. This seductive and funny new play about the art of propaganda and the dangerous ongoing Disinformation Age explores how art can change the world—for better and worse.
Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Drama Desk Award winner Lila Neugebauer invite you to one helluva reunion in this darkly comic American family drama.
It’s summer, the cicadas are singing, and the Lafayette family has returned to their late patriarch’s Arkansas home to deal with the remains of his estate. Toni (Sarah Paulson), the eldest daughter, hopes they’ll spend the weekend remembering and reconnecting over their beloved father. Bo, her brother, wants to recoup some of the funds he spent caring for Dad at the end of his life. But things take a turn when their estranged brother, Franz, appears late one night, and mysterious objects are discovered among the clutter. Suddenly, long-hidden secrets and buried resentments can’t be contained, and the family is forced to face the ghosts of their past.
Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) has written a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.It’s 1962, just outside of D.C. and matriarch Phyllis is supervising her teenage children, Carl and Martha, as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful rollercoaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.
This season is supported by a grant from the Howard Gilman Foundation. Spain is the recipient of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund award.
NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2023
SPAIN
BY JEN SILVERMAN
DIRECTED BY TYNE RAFAELI
NOVEMBER 2023 – FEBRUARY 2024
APPROPRIATE
BY BRANDON JACOBS-JENKINS
DIRECTED BY LILA NEUGEBAUER
APRIL – JUNE 2024
A WORLD PREMIERE PLAY
BY PAULA VOGEL
DIRECTED BY TINA LANDAU
PLUS TWO MORE SHOWS AT THE TONY KISER THEATER TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!
JUST ANNOUNCED:
SARAH PAULSON TO STAR IN APPROPRIATE
SARAH PAULSON
Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner SARAH PAULSON last appeared onstage in New York in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Talley’s Folly in spring 2013. Other stage appearances include the Broadway productions of Collected Stories, opposite Linda Lavin, and The Glass Menagerie alongside Jessica Lange; the Mark Taper Forum production of The Cherry Orchard opposite Alfred Molina and Annette Bening; and off-Broadway in Tracy Letts’ critically acclaimed Killer Joe. Paulson received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her portrayal of attorney Marcia Clark in FX’s critically acclaimed miniseries “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” Paulson also received a Golden Globe® Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics’ Choice Award and a Television Critics Association Award for this role. Her many additional TV credits include her performance as Linda Tripp in FX’s “Impeachment: American Crime Story” (Emmy nomination, also Executive Producer); the title role in the Netflix series, “Ratched” (also Executive Producer), which debuted at number one across 50 countries worldwide and earned Paulson a Golden Globe® nomination; the FX on Hulu Emmy-nominated limited series, “Mrs. America,” opposite Cate Blanchett; Aaron Sorkin's “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (Golden Globe nomination); HBO’s “Coastal Elites” and “Game Change” (Emmy and Golden Globe nominations); ten installments of Ryan’s Murphy’s award-winning television series “American Horror Story,” where she also made her directorial debut with the 78-minute crossover episode, “Return to Murder House.” Paulson has received five Emmy® nominations for her roles in the franchise, as well as two Critics’ Choice Awards for her roles in the anthology series. Paulson’s many film credits include Warner Bros.’ Ocean’s 8; Todd Haynes’ critically acclaimed Carol alongside Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, which received an Academy Award® for Best Picture. She has also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s The Post opposite Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep; Aneesh Chaganty’s Run for Hulu; M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Glass for Universal; Netflix’s Bird Box opposite Sandra Bullock; DreamWorks Animation’s Abominable. Other film credits include Martha Marcy May Marlene; Down with Love; What Women Want, The Other Sister. Upcoming, she will executive produce and star in Searchlight’s horror thriller, Dust; will appear in Bruce Norris’ film adaptation of his Pulitzer, Tony, and Olivier award-winning play, Clybourne Park, directed by Pam MacKinnon; and in Bad Robot’s series adaptation of Glennon Doyle’s memoir, “Untamed.”
SPAIN
BY JEN SILVERMAN
Jen Silverman is a playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Plays include Spain; Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties; The Moors; The Roommate; Witch, and Highway Patrol. Books include the novel We Play Ourselves and story collection The Island Dwellers; Jen’s next novel is forthcoming from Random House in 2024. Jen is a three-time MacDowell Fellow and a member of New Dramatists. Honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. Jen also writes for TV and film.
DIRECTED BY TYNE RAFAELI
APPROPRIATE
BY BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright and producer and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Recent theater credits include The Comeuppance, currently playing at the Signature Theatre, Girls (Yale Rep), Everybody (Signature Theatre), War (Yale Rep; Lincoln Center/LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre), Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience), and Neighbors (The Public Theater). He was showrunner, executive producer, and writer for HULU/FX’s drama series, Kindred, based on Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking novel. He currently teaches at Yale University and serves as Vice President of the Dramatists Guild council and on the boards of Soho Rep, Park Avenue Armory, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation. Honors include a USA Artists fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award.
DIRECTED BY LILA NEUGEBAUER
Lila Neugebauer is an award-winning stage and screen director. Broadway: Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery. Recent Off-Broadway credits include Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun (MTC), Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe (Second Stage), Annie Baker’s The Antipodes, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo: Homelife/The Zoo Story (Signature Theatre), Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves and Zoe Kazan’s After The Blast (Lincoln Center). As co-Artistic Director of The Mad Ones: Mrs. Murray's Menagerie (Ars Nova) and Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizons), among others. Lila is an alum of the Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, an Ensemble Studio Theatre member, New Georges Affiliated Artist, and New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Obie Award, Drama Desk Sam Norkin Special Award, and Princess Grace Award recipient. TV: “Maid” (Netflix), “The Last Thing He Told Me” (Apple TV+), “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and “Room 104” (HBO Max). Lila’s directorial feature debut Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry (Oscar nomination) is available on AppleTV+.
A WORLD PREMIERE PLAY
BY PAULA VOGEL
Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award nomination, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. In June 2020, she founded Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate, a uniquely curated virtual reading series designed to become a widely accessible platform for powerful, overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists. Lifetime achievement awards include American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, and the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and her memoir will be published by Penguin Press. She teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. www.paulavogelplaywright.com
