Irondale NextGen Initiative Will Launch With MISS JULIE

Irondale Ensemble Project will launch its newly established Irondale NextGen initiative this fall with a new adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, directed and adapted by Emilio Maxwell Cerci, running November 27 through December 19, 2026, at The Space at Irondale in Downtown Brooklyn.

Cerci relocates Strindberg's Midsummer Eve setting to New Year's Eve, inviting audiences into a celebration already underway. With music playing and drinks available at the bar, theatergoers will find themselves among the party guests as Julie and Jean begin dancing in their midst. What starts as a festive gathering gradually gives way to the drama, with the audience invited to join the countdown to midnight as the characters' relationships take a consequential turn.

Created to give a new generation of directors, performers, and theater makers within the Irondale community opportunities to develop and lead projects of their own, NextGen draws on the philosophy and practices developed by Irondale's founders and longtime ensemble over the past 43 years. The initiative gives artists a creative playground to learn through doing, test their own ideas, take risks, and develop their own approaches to collaborative creation.

With Miss Julie, Cerci brings his own perspective to a classic text, continuing Irondale's longstanding practice of revisiting classic works through a contemporary lens. His interest in Strindberg's 1888 drama began while earning his MFA in directing at Columbia University, where work on a scene from the play in a class with acclaimed director Anne Bogart led him to question how much, or how little, has changed since Strindberg wrote it nearly 140 years ago.

Cerci's adaptation looks at the relationships between Julie, Jean, and Christine through the lens of power, examining how wealth, gender, sexuality, and social status shape who holds it, who is protected by it, and how quickly it can shift. Each character enters the story with their own desires and agendas while remaining subject to forces larger than themselves.

'We like to think we've evolved far beyond the world Strindberg was writing about, but when you really start pulling this play apart, so many of the same structures are still with us,' said Cerci. 'Wealth still offers protection. Gender and sexuality still shape who is allowed to hold power and how that power is used, and while everyone believes they have some control over the situation, we are all answering to something larger. That's what made me want to come back to Miss Julie and ask what this play has to say about us now.'

A recent graduate of Columbia's MFA directing program, Cerci has worked at Irondale across production, design, and creative roles. Miss Julie brings those experiences together, giving him the opportunity to draw on Irondale's ensemble practice alongside the tools and ideas he developed at Columbia as he takes the helm of NextGen's inaugural production.

'From the beginning, Irondale has been a place where artists learn by doing, and NextGen gives another generation the opportunity to take the practice we've developed together and find their own way into it,' said Terry Greiss, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Irondale. 'Emilio has been part of this community in so many different capacities, and we're excited to give him the space to lead, experiment, and bring his own point of view to the work.'

'Returning to an older text and asking what it has to say about the world we're living in has always been an important part of the way we work at Irondale,' added Jim Niesen, Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Irondale. 'Miss Julie gives us an extraordinary amount to wrestle with: class, power, gender, desire, and the systems that shape all of them. It feels very true to Irondale that NextGen should begin by taking a work like this and asking a new set of questions of it.'

The production makes full use of The Space at Irondale, allowing the action to emerge organically from the New Year's Eve celebration rather than beginning with a traditional separation between stage and audience. As the party gives way to the play, spectators can settle into their seats or remain part of the surrounding environment, creating an unusually fluid relationship between the audience and the unfolding drama.

The cast features Rivka Rivera as Miss Julie, Jacqueline Joncas as Christine, and [TBD] as Jean. Rivera is a longtime member of the Irondale community, having appeared in Irondale Ensemble's production of alice...Alice..ALICE and serving as a Senior Teaching Artist for the company's education initiatives. Joncas is Irondale's Associate Director and a member of the ensemble, having appeared in the company's five most recent ensemble productions.

The creative team includes Hilarie Blumenthal (costume design), Ken Rothchild (scenic design), and Cerci (lighting and sound design).