Lily Rabe to Star in New Group's AN EARLY HISTORY OF FIRE

According to the Boston Globe, Tony nominee Lily Rabe will star in The New Group premiere of her father, David Rabe's new play- An Early History of Fire. The off-Broadway production will be directed by Jo Bonney and will run in thir 2011-12 season.

From one of the most influential playwrights of our time, a world premiere set at the tipping point of the early 1960s. In a Midwestern town, Danny's world is defined by friendship and loyalty. But the bigger world is encroaching, in the form of Karen, back from college in the east, alluring and unsettling because of what she now knows. Still, Danny can't escape the grip of his immigrant father, who is mourning a vanished world of lost prestige and clinging to his only son. Awhirl in longing and confusion, An Early History of Fire marks David Rabe's return to The New Group, following the company's acclaimed revival of Hurlyburly.

David Rabe's first play in New York in 1971 was The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. This was quickly followed by Sticks and Bones, The Orphan, In the Boom Boom Room and Streamers, all produced by Joseph Papp. Hurlyburly came later, as did Those the River Keeps, A Question of Mercy, The Dog Problem and The Black Monk adapted from Chekov. In recent years he has devoted his time more to fiction as he pursued a course begun with the novel Recital of the Dog. Since 2005 he has published A Primitive Heart, a book of stories, and two novels, Dinosaurs on the Roof and Girl by the Road at Night. A fourth novel was completed not long ago, along with several plays. Among his awards are the Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics, Obie, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Tony and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

Jo Bonney's directorial credits include: Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Second Stage); Break of Noon (MCC), Culture Clash's American Night (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Darci Picoult's Lil's 90th (Long Wharf Theatre); Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the War (Public Theatre Lab); Naomi Wallace's The Hard Weather Boating Party (The Humana Festival) and Fever Chart (Public Theatre Lab); Michael Weller's Beast (New York Theatre Workshop); Alan Ball's All that I Will Ever Be (NYTW); Eric Bogosian's subUrbia; Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play and Lisa Loomer's Living Out (Second Stage, NY); Will Power's The Seven (NYTW & La Jolla Playhouse) (L. Lortel Best Musical); Neil LaBute's Fat Pig (MCC & Geffen Playhouse); Some Girl(s) (MCC); Carol Churchill's Top Girls (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Christopher Shinn's On the Mountain (Playwrights Horizons); Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics (Arena Stage); Universes' Slanguage (NYTW/ Mark Taper Forum); Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July (Signature Theatre) (L. Lortel Best Revival); Jose Rivera's Adoration of the Old Woman (La Jolla Playhouse) and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (The Public Theater); Diana Son's Stop Kiss and Anna Deavere Smith's House Arrest (The Public Theater); Jessica Goldberg's Good Thing (The New Group); John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (CSC,NY); Danny Hoch's Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop (USA/Britain); Dael Orlandersmith's Stoop Stories (Studio Theatre, Washington & The Goodman Theatre); numerous solos Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead by Eric Bogosian (USA/Britain). Jo Bonney is the recipient of a 1998 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction and editor of Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century (TCG).

The New Group is currently represented Off-Broadway by One Arm, a co-production with Tectonic Theater Project. Based on an unproduced screenplay by Tennessee Williams, One Arm is adapted for the stage and directed by Moisés Kaufman. The New Group's 2010-11 season also included the world premiere of Tommy Nohilly's Blood From A Stone featuring Ethan Hawke (Obie winner) and the revival of Wallace Shawn's Marie and Bruce starring Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley. In 2009-10, The New Group presented the extended run of Kenneth Lonergan's The Starry Messenger featuring Matthew Broderick, the sold-out revival of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind directed by Ethan Hawke, and the world premiere of the new musical The Kid. Other recent productions include Ian Bruce's Groundswell, Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, Ayub Khan-Din's Rafta, Rafta..., Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want, Jay Presson Allen's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. Additional standouts include David Rabe's Hurlyburly, Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years, Abigail's Party, Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples and Ecstasy, Wallace Shawn's The Fever and Aunt Dan and Lemon, Kenneth Lonergan's This is Our Youth and Kevin Elyot's Mouth to Mouth and My Night With Reg. The New Group is a recipient of the 2004 Tony® Award for Best Musical (Avenue Q).

The New Group and Artistic Director Scott Elliott were honored with a Special 2010-11 Drama Desk Award "for presenting contemporary new voices, and for uncompromisingly raw and powerful productions."

 

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos

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