Due to popular demand, Labyrinth Theater Company extends The Insurgents to March 13. The Insurgents is an explosive new play by Lucy Thurber, the Obie Award-winning playwright and Labyrinth Theater Company member.
Directed by
Jackson Gay, The Insurgents follows Thurber's The Hill Town Plays, the wildly ambitious 2013 five-play cycle, and finds the playwright incorporating historical figures-Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner,
John Brown and Timothy McVeigh-into her work for the first time. Following the 2011 world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, Thurber has re-written the play, adding new characters and plot elements in preparation for the New York premiere, February 5-March 8.
The play follows Sally Wright, an American wanderer, who returns to her dead-end rural northeast town after losing her athletic scholarship. At home, she's forced to face her beer guzzling father, wayward brother and the dearth of hope in her impoverished town. Sally soon starts carrying her shotgun wherever she goes and buries herself in books about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner,
John Brown and Timothy McVeigh. She begins escaping into an interior world where their spirits talk to her, telling stories of their resistance to injustice. Yet even as she immerses herself in the lives of insurgents and clutches her shotgun to her chest, the bleak oppression of a life without opportunity threatens to poison her spirit.
"With The Insurgents, I didn't want to write about the people who wanted to get away," says Thurber. "I wanted to write about the people who actually wanted to stay where they came from and who are having an impossible time doing that." Inspired by the lives of some of the most dynamic and controversial figures in American history, The Insurgents examines the lies and injustice that history has handed down to us and the actions people take when they finally decide that enough is enough.
Performances of The Insurgents will now take place through March 13 (see schedule above) at Bank Street Theater, located at 155 Bank Street in Manhattan. General admission tickets are $25 with no service fees and can be purchased by visiting
labtheater.org or by calling
212.513.1080.
The cast of The Insurgents includes
Cassie Beck as Sally Wright,
Dan Butler as
John Brown/Peter,
Craig muMs Grant at Nat Turner/Jonathan,
April Matthis as Harriet Tubman/Coach and
Aaron Roman Weiner as Timothy McVeigh/Jimmy.
The creative team includes
Raul Abrego (sets),
Paul Whitaker (lights),
Jessica Ford (costumes),
Daniel Baker (sound), Ben Wexler (vocal arranger) and
Rhonda Picou (production stage manager).
An intimate Conversation Series is ongoing and will accompany select performances of The Insurgents. Participants include playwright
Dominique Morisseau (Feb 25, post-show) and
John Brown scholar Lou DeCaro (March 12, post show) who will join the creative team and Labyrinth Theater Company staff for select pre and post show talks. Director
Jackson Gay will host pre-show talks at 7pm on March 4. Conversation Series includes a complimentary beer with each ticket purchased and is sponsored by Lagunitas Brewing Company
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