59E59 Theaters to Present PREJUDICE AND PRIDE, Primary Stages' DIG, and More in Summer 2023 Season

59E59 Theaters (Val Day, Artistic Director; Brian Beirne, Managing Director) has announced their Summer 2023 Season.

"Our Summer season is full of passionate theater organizations who are bringing their discoveries to our stages, and many are now part of our growing ranks of 59E59 Resident Companies,” said Artistic Director Val Day. “This trust in and collaboration with indie theater makers who are known for producing thought-provoking work has increased our ability to present wider scope of work. I'm always looking for surprises, humor, or something that tells a story in ways that I've never seen before, and this season gives us exactly that."

The 59E59 Theaters Summer 2023 Season will begin with the East to Edinburgh Festival; followed by Prejudice and Pride, presented by SamWrites & Nicholas Collett Productions; and Unentitled, presented by The Negro Ensemble Co., Inc.

The season will continue with A Eulogy for Roman, presented by Through the Tollbooth Co.; followed by SMALL, presented by Penguin Rep Theatre and Chita Rivera, in association with Ted Snowdon, Anthony Melfi & The Flying Carpet Theatre Company; and Dig, presented by Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters' Resident Off Broadway Theater Company.

The season will conclude with Cross That River, presented by Love Productions Records; followed by Friends with Amenities, presented by Pendragon Theatre and New Light Theater Project; and The Pool Plays 3.0, presented by The Pool Plays in association with The New Group.

Full casting and creative teams for the productions will be announced at a later date. More information about the shows can be found below. For details regarding tickets and performance schedules, visit 59E59.org.

The 59E59 Theaters Summer 2023 Season will include:

East to Edinburgh Festival

Theater C

July 11-30

East to Edinburgh is a unique showcase of 13 New York shows headed to the world's largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, this summer.

East to Edinburgh was created as a way to help shows get on their feet so companies experience the same production constraints that all shows experience during the Fringe, while giving companies a clean, comfortable, and nurturing space to fine-tune their productions. This year's whirlwind festival features thirteen adventurous productions from around New York and across the US.

SamWrites & Nicholas Collett Productions present

Prejudice & Pride

Book by Sam Wright & Nicholas Collett

Music and Lyrics by Sam Wright

Directed by Nicholas Collett

Theater A

Previews begin July 13

Opening Night is July 18

Limited run through August 20

The hapless Longborn boys have exhausted all the employment options of East Tennessee and must now marry rich before they lose the family farm. Luckily “a young single woman in possession of a good fortune” has just moved into the ranch next door and brought along ridiculously wealthy songstress Darcy Fitzwilliams, not that banjo-picking Bennett Longborn would stoop to woo her for any amount of money.

Thus begins this knee-slapping, foot-stomping, heart-tugging new musical by Sam Wright and Nicholas Collett, updating Jane Austen's classic novel with an American musical twist. This show features a score of 15 original songs composed on banjo and developed with the KC-based folk band Gullywasher.

The Negro Ensemble Co., Inc presents

Unentitled

By Charles White

Directed by Florante Galvez

Theater B

Previews begin July 21

Opening Night is July 25

Limited run through August 6

Set in the heady days of late 2008, with the Obama campaign as a backdrop, an upper-middle class African American family wrestles internalized racism, class anxiety, and each other when a sudden job loss and a revelation about their shared past threaten to upend their comfortable lives. Tempers and tensions boil over at a cherished Long Island vacation home that becomes the focal point of an intense family drama.

Unentitled explores the nature of risk – how much someone would risk to get what they want, and how hard it is to make that choice when history, tradition, and family all hang in the balance.

Through the Tollbooth Co. presents

A Eulogy for Roman

Written and Performed by Brendan George

Conceived and Directed by Peter Charney

Theater C

Previews begin August 8

Opening Night is August 12

Limited run through August 27

Meet Milo, a nervous young man who shares the stage with an urn. But things aren't as dark as they seem.

Milo is trying to give a eulogy for his friend Roman, but the ceremony proves unexpectedly difficult, and attendees are voluntarily enlisted to help him complete the memorial. Together, they celebrate life, confront death, and make a promise of their own.

Penguin Rep Theatre and Chita Rivera, in association with Ted Snowdon, Anthony Melfi & The Flying Carpet Theatre Company, present

SMALL

Written and Performed by Robert Montano

Directed by Jessi D. Hill

Theater B

Previews begin August 12

Opening Night is August 14

Limited run through September 2

Bobby is a small kid from Long Island with a big dream. Soon he's galloping headlong into the strange, obsessive world of professional horse racing. But the track is as dangerous as it is exciting, full of colorful characters and powerful beasts. The jockeys and their associates form a makeshift brotherhood even as they wrestle with the extremes of their sport. But will Bobby outgrow his dream or be consumed by it?

SMALL is a tour-de-force about finding and losing yourself in the messy process of growing up as one young man's dreams unexpectedly lead him from the Belmont racetrack to the Broadway stage.

“The humor and passion of Montano's performance is a tour de force rarely seen at such an extraordinary level” - Hudson Valley News

Primary Stages presents

Dig

Written and Directed by Theresa Rebeck

Theater A

Previews begin September 2

Opening Night is September 20

Limited run through October 22

From the author of Downstairs and Bernhardt/Hamlet, Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck is back with Dig, a poignant and vital new work about growth in all its forms.

Roger is content to hide from the world in his failing plant shop until Megan enters the picture and throws his carefully ordered life of leaves and stems into pure chaos. Humor and emotions fly as Megan's desire for change clashes with Roger's stubbornness and as other people - and their pesky views - keep barging in.

Are we bound to our roots and stuck in one place, or can we prune back the dead matter of our lives and reach for the light? Rebeck's signature wit, intelligence, and depth brings us a riveting play about courage, photosynthesis, and what it means to have a soul worth saving.

Primary Stages is 59E59 Theaters' Resident Off Broadway Theater Company.

Love Productions Records presents

Cross That River

Composed by Allan Harris

Book by Allan & Pat Harris

Directed by Regge Life

Theater B

Previews begin September 13

Opening Night is September 17

Limited run through October 8

The unsettled West of the 1860s provides a new life and new dreams for Blue, a run-away slave, who escapes to Texas to become one of America's first Black Cowboys. This compelling tale of freedom integrates fiction with historical fact, and each song presents a different page in this complicated chapter of American History.

The "smooth-voiced and charismatic" (The New York Times) renowned jazz composer, musician, and singer Allan Harris returns to 59E59 to star as Blue.

Pendragon Theatre and New Light Theater Project present

Friends with Amenities

Written and Performed by Ahsan Ali & Lisa Jill Anderson

Directed by Sarah Norris

Theater C

Previews begin September 14

Opening Night is September 19

Limited run through September 30

Ali has problems. So does Natalie. Ali speaks Urdu. Natalie speaks Kardashian.

Surviving in New York City is never simple. These two NYC transplants dissect the relative chaos of their lives on a single night in an empty Brooklyn apartment. Misunderstandings of language, culture, and life experience threaten to spill over as Ali and Natalie interrogate and challenge each other's assumptions about their lives and try to stumble drunkenly towards common ground.

The Pool Plays, in association with The New Group, presents

The Pool Plays 3.0

Part of Makers Series

Theater C

Previews begin October 8

Opening Night is October 15

Limited run through October 28

Three playwrights. Three plays. One remarkable experience.

The Pool Plays span space and time, taking audiences from Brooklyn, to Delhi, to Berlin; from 1850, to the 1940s, to 2023 as three diverse playwrights bring their vastly different perspectives into one collective dramatic space.

Running throughout the plays are bright, common threads about the shifting nature of identity and about how the past echoes through the present and the future, demanding to be heard.

Antiquated F*ckery

By Jessica Charles

Jasmine and Diggy have passion, humor, and friendship, but what they want are careers.

Playwright Jessica Charles slyly explores the creative struggle of two Black, queer artists trying to make it in an industry that considers them at once too Black and not Black enough.

Jasmine and Diggy gas each other up and tear each other down with razor sharp dialogue as Charles poses the question of whether they can maintain their friendship as each tries to claim their space in a world that needs to hear them but doesn't want to.

The Berlin Diaries

By Andrea Stolowitz

Directed by Will Steinberger

The great-grandfather of Oregon Book Award-winning playwright Andrea Stolowitz kept a journal for his descendants after escaping to New York City in 1939 as a German Jew. Following the complicated lure of genealogy, Stolowitz goes back to Berlin to bring the story of her unknown ancestors out of the archives into the light. The record keeps as many secrets as it shares; how do people become verschollen, lost, like library books?

In this complex, contemporary drama about the search for home, fragmented heritage, and Jewish diaspora, two performers scintillate between characters and locations at the border of reality and memory and the intersection of national history and private lives.

Two Brown Porters

By Naren Weiss

Directed by Rajesh Bose

This dark comedy by Naren Weiss is set in 19th century India during a period of great upheaval seen through the eyes of two friends watching their world transform. Reality is grim, much is absurd, yet nothing is as it seems.

Funny, surreal, and mesmerizing at times, Two Brown Porters explores history both real and imagined. As a precious diamond loaded with significance changes hands under the tightening yoke of imperialism, the fate of an individual and of a nation hangs in the balance. One choice can set momentous events into motion and two humble porters hold the key.

ABOUT 59E59 Theaters

59E59 Theaters was established by the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation in 2004 to grant professional space and expertise to non-profit theater companies premiering their work in New York City. Under the leadership of Val Day, Artistic Director, and Brian Beirne, Managing Director, 59E59 Theaters presents a year-round curated program of Off Broadway plays and musicals that are nurtured and supported through highly-subsidized rental rates as well as production, ticketing, FOH, marketing, and press support.

Photo Credit: Brian Paulette

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