New Jackie Sibblies Drury World Premiere to Play Abrons Arts Center

Abrons Arts Center and New York City Players' American Playwrights Division present Really, a new play written by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Richard Maxwell and designed by photographer Michael Schmelling. Performances of Really will take place March 16 - April 2 at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand St. Manhattan). Full performance schedule, press dates and casting will be announced at a later date. For more information visit abronsartscenter.org or call 212.352.3101.

Really is a play about grief, intimacy and the difference between goodness and greatness seen through the lens of photography. A black woman takes pictures of her artist boyfriend's mom. As they jockey for a claim to him, they try to redefine themselves in the wake of his legacy.

The play is the first from Sibblies Drury since she received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Drama and the United States Artists Donnelly Fellowship this year.

This world premiere is the fourth production from New York City Players' (NYCP) American Playwrights Division, which helps emerging experimental directors and playwrights take true risks in their work with the company's financial and artistic support. Mentorship and production support are core values of NYCP, and the American Playwrights Division is the company's flagship program in support of those values. Previous American Playwrights Division productions include Tina Satter's House of Dance (written and directed by Ms. Satter) in 2013, Julia Jarcho's Dreamless Land (written and directed by Ms. Jarcho) in 2011, and Christina Masciotti's Vision Disturbance (directed by Richard Maxwell) in 2010.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Social Creatures and And now I only dance at weddings. The presenters of her plays include Soho Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London. Sibblies Drury hasdeveloped her work at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. She was a dramaturg for Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received the 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and is currently a member of The Writer's Room at Manhattan Theatre Club and Ars Nova.

Richard Maxwell is the recipient of the 2014 Spalding Gray Award from the commissioning consortium of Performance Space 122, the Andy Warhol Museum, On the Boards, and the Walker Art Center. He is a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist and has received a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and was an invited artist in the Whitney Biennial (2012). Recent projects include Maxwell's plays The Evening (Part 1), Isolde and Neutral Hero; Devotion, a dance by Sarah Michelson with text by Maxwell; Ads, a video play conceived by Maxwell; and two sections of the 24-hour, site-specific adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest in Berlin. His book, Theater for Beginners, was published in January 2015, by TCG.

Michael Schmelling is the author of several photo books, including The Plan (J+L Books, 2009), Atlanta: Hip Hop & The South (Chronicle, 2010) and My Blank Pages (The Ice Plant, 2015). Schmelling is also a graphic designer, having designed books for Damiani, Glenn Horowitz Booksellers, Blum & Poe, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. He designed and edited the 2011 book Golfwang (Picturebox) by Oddfuture, and photographed and designed Friedrich Kunath's You Owe Me A Feeling (Blum & Poe 2012). Schmelling's illustrations have appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page, as well as in 5 Dials. He is also a frequent collaborator with the New York City Players theater company, and won an OBIE Award for his lighting design of Richard Maxwell's playDrummer Wanted. Schmelling's work from The Plan was included in the 2013 ICP Triennial: A Different Kind Of Order; his first one-person museum exhibition, Your Blues, a commission from The Museum of Contemporary Photography, was presented in 2014.