Nick Offerman to Lead World Premiere of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES in Boston

Huntington Theatre Company, the 2013 recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award and Boston magazine's Best Theatre of 2013 and 2014, announced today the world premiere production of A Confederacy of Dunces, 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." Performances will run November 11 - December 13, 2015 at the Huntington's mainstage, the BU Theatre.

Nick Offerman will star as the larger-than-life character Ignatius J. Reilly: overweight, arrogant, eccentric, and still living in his mother's New Orleans home in the 1960s. Called the Don Quixote of the French Quarter, Ignatius has a singular outlook on life. His farcical odyssey includes visits to a department store and 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.

"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 very 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 Confederacy of Dunces into a play has been like wrestling Ignatius Reilly to the stage," says adapter Jeffrey Hatcher. "The book is famously a 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."

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. It is the first show announced of the Huntington's 2015-2016 Season.

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 22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, We're the Millers, Smashed, Sin City, Casa de mi Padre, The Men Who Stare at Goats, 21 Jump Street, and many more. In 2013, Offerman released his New York Times bestselling book, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living. He got his start in the Chicago theatre community, where he received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his performance in The Kentucky Cycle at Pegasus Players Theatre, and a second Jefferson Award for the puppets and masks he and his team crafted for The Skriker at Defiant. He has also worked extensively at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, and Wisdom Bridge, among others, he appeared in 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.

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.

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, Old Globe, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Geffen Playhouse, Seattle Rep, 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 tv 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.

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