The New Group Announces the Productions Slated for 2011-2012 Season

Off-Broadway's The New Group proudly announces the productions slated for its 2011-2012 season. All productions will play at The New Group @ Theatre Row (The Acorn Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street).

Russian Transport by Erika Sheffer, directed by Scott Elliott.
Set in the Russian-Jewish enclave of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Russian Transport is a deeply personal, emotionally charged tale of an immigrant couple, their two assimilated teenagers and the fierce and fiery upheaval they experience when sexy, mysterious Uncle Boris from the old country comes to stay with them for his shot at the American dream. Part family drama, part heart-pounding thriller, this debut from Erika Sheffer captures the complex and conflicting layers of striving, joy, pain and terror of one very particular immigrant experience.

Russian Transport marks the Off-Broadway debut of playwright Erika Sheffer. Her other plays include The Drowning Side and short pieces Engaging Dynamic Guest Experience, Likes to Scratch and Something in Your Stomach. Sheffer's work has received readings at Naked Angels, Primary Stages, The Woodshed Collective and Personal Space Theatrics in association with The Actors Studio. She has performed original pieces at Upright Citizens Brigade and Dixon Place. She will be developing her newest play through a fellowship from SPACE on Ryder Farm this summer. Erika Sheffer founded The Jam Band Writers Group, is a founding member of the 15th Floor Playwrights Collective, and an alumna of The Movement Theatre Company's 2010 New Works/Moving Up Writers Group. Sheffer has been a finalist for The Estrogenius Festival as well as a Juilliard fellowship. B.F.A in drama from Syracuse University.

Burning by Thomas Bradshaw, directed by Scott Elliott.
Burning is the Off-Broadway debut of downtown phenomenon and Guggenheim Award-winner Thomas Bradshaw. In intersecting stories spanning two eras, a contemporary Black painter who hides his race goes to Germany for a show, only to find that the gallery owner has misinterpreted his work. And in the '80s a homeless teenager comes to New York to become an actor and is taken in by two gay men, who are themselves producing a new play. Titillating, taboo-testing and psychosexually insightful, this epic tale of ambition and self-invention bursts open the conceits of the worlds of art and theatre.

Thomas Bradshaw's recent plays include Mary (The Goodman Theater); The Bereaved (Partial Comfort Productions, and subsequently produced at The State Theater of Bielefeld in Germany); Southern Promises (P.S. 122); Dawn (The Flea Theater); Job (The Wilma). He is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Prince Charitable Trust Prize, and a 2011 New Voices New York Fellowship from the Lark Play Development Center. Prophet, Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist, Cleansed, Purity, Dawn, and Southern Promises are all published by Samuel French, Inc. A German translation of Dawn was presented at Theater Bielefeld and The National Theatre of Mannheim in Germany. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor at Medgar Evers College. He has been featured as one of Time Out New York's ten playwrights to watch and Best Provocative Playwright by The Village Voice. He was the Playwright in Residence at The Soho Theatre in London.

An Early History of Fire by David Rabe, directed by Jo Bonney.
From one of the most influential playwrights of our time, a world premiere set at the tipping point of the early 1960s. In a Midwestern town, Danny's world is defined by friendship and loyalty. But the bigger world is encroaching, in the form of Karen, back from college in the east, alluring and unsettling because of what she now knows. Still, Danny can't escape the grip of his immigrant father, who is mourning a vanished world of lost prestige and clinging to his only son. Awhirl in longing and confusion, An Early History of Fire marks David Rabe's return to The New Group, following the company's acclaimed revival of Hurlyburly.
David Rabe's first play in New York in 1971 was The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. This was quickly followed by Sticks and Bones, The Orphan, In the Boom Boom Room and Streamers, all produced by Joseph Papp. Hurlyburly came later, as did Those the River Keeps, A Question of Mercy, The Dog Problem and The Black Monk adapted from Chekov. In recent years he has devoted his time more to fiction as he pursued a course begun with the novel Recital of the Dog. Since 2005 he has published A Primitive Heart, a book of stories, and two novels, Dinosaurs on the Roof and Girl by the Road at Night. A fourth novel was completed not long ago, along with several plays. Among his awards are the Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics, Obie, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Tony and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

Jo Bonney's directorial credits include: Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Second Stage); Break of Noon (MCC), Culture Clash's American Night (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Darci Picoult's Lil's 90th (Long Wharf Theatre); Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the War (Public Theatre Lab); Naomi Wallace's The Hard Weather Boating Party (The Humana Festival) and Fever Chart (Public Theatre Lab); Michael Weller's Beast (New York Theatre Workshop); Alan Ball's All that I Will Ever Be (NYTW); Eric Bogosian's subUrbia; Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play and Lisa Loomer's Living Out (Second Stage, NY); Will Power's The Seven (NYTW & La Jolla Playhouse) (L. Lortel Best Musical); Neil LaBute's Fat Pig (MCC & Geffen Playhouse); Some Girl(s) (MCC); Carol Churchill's Top Girls (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Christopher Shinn's On the Mountain (Playwrights Horizons); Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics (Arena Stage); Universes' Slanguage (NYTW/ Mark Taper Forum); Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July (Signature Theatre) (L. Lortel Best Revival); Jose Rivera's Adoration of the Old Woman (La Jolla Playhouse) and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (The Public Theater); Diana Son's Stop Kiss and Anna Deavere Smith's House Arrest (The Public Theater); Jessica Goldberg's Good Thing (The New Group); John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (CSC,NY); Danny Hoch's Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop (USA/Britain); Dael Orlandersmith's Stoop Stories (Studio Theatre, Washington & The Goodman Theatre); numerous solos Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead by Eric Bogosian (USA/Britain). Jo Bonney is the recipient of a 1998 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction and editor of Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century (TCG).

Director Scott Elliott is the founding Artistic Director of The New Group, where in the 2010-11 season he helmed the recent revival of Wallace Shawn's Marie and Bruce and the world premiere of Tommy Nohilly's Blood From A Stone, which received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. In the 2009-10 season, Elliott directed the new musical The Kid, based on the book by Dan Savage The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. The Kid received numerous honors including an Outer Critics Circle Award (Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical) as well as Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Award nominations (Outstanding Musical). With The New Group, he has produced over 47 plays, 22 of which he directed, including Groundswell, Rafta, Rafta..., The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Hurlyburly, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, and 5 plays by Mike Leigh: Two Thousand Years, Abigail's Party, Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples and Ecstasy. Broadway credits include Present Laughter, Barefoot in the Park, and 3 plays produced by The Roundabout: The Threepenny Opera, The Women and Three Sisters. He is also a film director and screenwriter.

The New Group (Scott Elliott, Artistic Director; Geoff Rich, Executive Director) is currently represented Off-Broadway by One Arm, a co-production with Tectonic Theater Project. Based on an unproduced screenplay by Tennessee Williams, One Arm is adapted for the stage and directed by Moisés Kaufman. The New Group's 2010-11 season also included the world premiere of Tommy Nohilly's Blood From A Stone featuring Ethan Hawke (Obie winner) and the revival of Wallace Shawn's Marie and Bruce starring Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley. In 2009-10, The New Group presented the extended run of Kenneth Lonergan's The Starry Messenger featuring Matthew Broderick, the sold-out revival of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind directed by Ethan Hawke, and the world premiere of the new musical The Kid. Other recent productions include Ian Bruce's Groundswell, Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, Ayub Khan-Din's Rafta, Rafta..., Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want, Jay Presson Allen's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. Additional standouts include David Rabe's Hurlyburly, Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years, Abigail's Party, Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples and Ecstasy, Wallace Shawn's The Fever and Aunt Dan and Lemon, Kenneth Lonergan's This is Our Youth and Kevin Elyot's Mouth to Mouth and My Night With Reg. The New Group is a recipient of the 2004 Tony® Award for Best Musical (Avenue Q).

The New Group and Artistic Director Scott Elliott were honored with a Special 2010-11 Drama Desk Award "for presenting contemporary new voices, and for uncompromisingly raw and powerful productions."