Todd Haimes on SONS OF THE PROPHET

Honestly, I love telling people about this play and this playwright. The story of this production speaks directly to the kind of work that I want Roundabout to be doing in the world of new play development. There's nothing quite like knowing that we're achieving our goals for both the theatre and the artists in this area.

Back in 2007, I opened Roundabout Underground in our Black Box Theatre in the depths of the Steinberg Center as a new home for productions of plays by early-career playwrights. Stephen Karam's play Speech & Debate launched that program with a bang. It was a hit with critics, with audiences, and with everyone at this institution. The show went so beautifully that not only are we now in our fifth season of producing new plays in the Underground, but we also commissioned Stephen to write another play for Roundabout, with the goal of "graduating" him upstairs to the Laura Pels Theatre.

That commissioned play turned out to be Sons of the Prophet, and we've spent nearly three years developing the play with Stephen. It's been a fantastic process, watching this play grow and change, adding great collaborators like director Peter DuBois into the mix, bringing in wonderful actors like Joanna Gleason and Santino Fontana, and seeing the play premiere out of town at the Huntington this past spring. All along, we knew that the play would eventually make its way to the Pels stage, and I can't wait for you to finally see it. If you saw Speech & Debate, you already know how funny this young writer is. But what will surprise you is the new sense of maturity that he has achieved with this piece. Of course, it's still hilarious, but this play also has big ideas, big heart, and big potential.

Sons of the Prophet takes place in Nazareth, PA, where Joseph Douiahy is the put-upon older brother forced to deal with a death in the family, an uncle with declining health, an off-kilter boss, and a medical mystery of his own. The play deals with heritage, health-care, happiness, heartbreak, and much more. Yes, it does sound like there's a lot going on, but to me, it also sounds a lot like real life. We can feel so small when we find ourselves hit with many big problems all at once, but it happens to everyone at one time or another. And what Stephen has managed to do in this play is to show us how one family takes it all on with a big dose of humor and the will to survive anything that comes their way.

I love how ambitious this play is and how each and every character is so vividly-drawn. I remember thinking, after first seeing Speech & Debate, how exciting it was going to be to see what this hugely talented writer did next. Well, now we have the answer, and it's as stunning a piece of work as I could have hoped for. I'm so proud that Roundabout has been a large part of Stephen's career so far, and it's an artistic relationship that I know will continue for a long time to come.

With any new play, it is so important to get feedback, and I hope that you will send me all of your thoughts on Sons of the Prophet. Please comment below with your responses to this new work.

Todd Haimes
Artistic Director, Roundabout Theatre Company

 

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