Cast Set for Abe Koogler's STAFF MEAL at Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons has revealed the cast of Staff Meal, a funny and startling play surrounding a group of lonely city dwellers who gather for comfort and connection in an environment of exemplary hospitality, as the world breaks apart. Written by Abe Koogler (Off-Broadway: Deep Blue Sound, Fulfillment Center) and directed by Morgan Green (Playwrights: School Pictures; Co-Artistic Director at The Wilma Theater: Fat Ham), Staff Meal is grounded and ungrounded in a mysterious and beautiful restaurant, where the food is delicious, the service is warm, and some strange power keeps the darkness at bay. Performances take place April 12 – May 19 in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons. The production opens officially on April 28.

The cast of Staff Meal includes Jess Barbagallo (Playwrights: The Trees; Off-Broadway: Help, Director of Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month) as Server, Stephanie Berry (Off-Broadway: the bandaged place, On Sugarland, Sugar in Our Wounds), Susannah Flood (Playwrights: Mr. Burns; The Comeuppance) as Mina, Hampton Fluker (All My Sons on Broadway, Esai’s Table) as Waiter, Greg Keller (Playwrights: The Thanksgiving Play; Off-Broadway: Dig, The Humans) as Ben, Erin Markey (Off-Broadway: Erin Markey; TV: High Maintenance) as Vagrant, and Coral Peña (Off-Broadway: BLKS; TV & Film: Thelma, For All Mankind) as Server. 

The creative team includes Jian Jung (Scenic Designer), Joshua Barilla (Assistant Designer), Kaye Voyce (Costume Designer), Masha Tsimring (Lighting Designer), Tei Blow (Sound Designer), and Steve Cuiffo (Illusion Designer). The Production Stage Manager is Ryan Gohsman, and the Assistant Stage Manager is Ashton Pickering. 

For Koogler, the experience of writing Staff Meal is reflected in the play’s own labyrinthine form, as it chases characters hurtling toward the unknown, and as they whisk us into new theatrical terrain. “I surrendered to each new thing in the play as it happened,” describes the playwright of his process. “On a rare occasion as a writer, you realize there's a whole world alive in your mind that you didn't know was there; when this happens I've learned to try to explore that world as fully as I can.” Koogler aimed to write a play that similarly creates for audiences the feeling of embracing mystery and surprise. 

In recent years, as a global health crisis immediately followed by the advent of AI in various creative workforces threatened to strip our existence of its human touch, the Restaurant has become even more prevalent as a nostalgic symbol of communion and artistry, a place that satiates both human need and desire. Staff Meal literally unpacks this loaded symbolic space joyously situated at the nexus of necessity and frivolity. Koogler examines its particular place in New York life, and against the backdrop of a world in which many known facets of the human experience become rarefied and unceremoniously flicker out. 

“I have often written about bad jobs,” says Koogler. “Staff Meal is about a great job. This restaurant cares for its customers by caring for its staff. Here, beauty and community are more important than efficiency or profit. Because this restaurant is a genuinely good place, it is also fragile.”

As such, Koogler and Green envision this restaurant as a slippery place: simultaneously warm like a cocoon, but with ever-shifting walls. Character and identity similarly become flexible materials in this work, a motif that resonates with Green’s last directorial project at Playwrights Horizons—School Pictures—a minimalist vision in which performer Milo Cramer, with voice and ukulele, vividly colored in the emotional and material worlds of its never-seen characters. (Green also directed Cramer’s Soundstage episode for Playwrights Horizons, BOY FACTORY). Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield brought Koogler and Green together, with Koogler noting that “central to what this play needs is a combination of huge theatricality and restraint and precision, and that’s something I really admire about Morgan’s work; School Pictures was a great example of that.”

Morgan Green says, “Abe and I share many sensibilities: I love the sense of surprise in his work. I was attracted to Staff Meal’s sense of humor (the fact that it’s so funny while being completely serious) and to its lyrical precision. It is so particular and economical while being vividly image-driven.” 

Adam Greenfield says, “Staff Meal is a play that misbehaves, redefining itself the second you have a foothold, playfully shape-shifting as it poses a question that cuts to the heart of this moment in time. Koogler asks, how do we take care of one another when our world falls apart?”  Greenfield continues, “I’m always the most drawn to plays that scare me; these are the plays I feel compelled to pursue. Staff Meal scares me, in that it’s unlike any other play I know, and I’m dying to know what will happen when this existential comedy meets an audience. That feeling, that anxious question is, I think, what keeps me addicted to live theater.”

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances of Staff Meal take place in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons, April 12 – May 19, 2024. The production opens officially on April 28.

Accessibility offerings include an ASL interpreted performance May 7 at 7pm; audio description and touch tour May 16 at 7pm; and a relaxed performance May 18 at 2pm (this is also a mask-required performance). Closed captioning will be offered via the free app GalaPro at all performances after April 30. For discounted tickets to accessible performances, please visit: my.playwrightshorizons.org/access/passport

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