New York Theatre Workshop Announces Lineup for 2018/19 Season of NEXT DOOR AT NYTW

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) (Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Jeremy Blocker) is proud to announce the 2018/19 season of Next Door at NYTW in the Fourth Street Theatre, NYTW's 65-seat black box space.

Next Door at NYTW provides a home for companies and artists who are producing their own work. This initiative provides each project with subsidized resources and space for development and performance in the Fourth Street Theatre. As part of an ongoing effort to expand support for artists at every stage of their careers, this series served nearly 100 additional artists in the first year alone.

Next Door at NYTW expands the existing Artist Workshop roster, including the Dorothy Strelsin Mondays @ 3 reading series, Larson Lab studio projects, and summer developmental residencies at Adelphi University and Dartmouth College, by inviting audiences to see more fully-realized work by a wide variety of voices.

For its second season, Next Door at NYTW will host ten productions, beginning in July 2018.

2018/19 NEXT DOOR Series:

THIS AMERICAN WIFE

Created & Performed by Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley

Produced by Caitlin Crombleholme and Jen Hoguet

July 25 - August 4, 2018

On screens across the world, women call themselves "Real Housewives" while they scream, sob, and scam their way to the top. Meanwhile, spiraling in shame in their bedrooms, Michael and Patrick clandestinely binge on the gaudy lives and savvy strategies of these expert performance artists. A raucous multimedia theatre work, This American Wife tracks Michael and Patrick's obsessions with intimacy, queerness, and the deep desire to see and be seen.

1969: THE SECOND MAN

Concept, Music & Lyrics by Jacob Brandt

Book by Dan Giles

Directed by Jaki Bradley

Produced by Madeleine Foster Bersin

August 24 - September 9, 2018

After he became the second man to walk on the moon, reporters asked Buzz Aldrin if he wished he had been the first. "I really didn't want that," Buzz claimed, "because of the added heartache." Why is it so hard to believe him?

A folk-rock fable for the runner-up in all of us, 1969: The Second Man explores competition and collective achievement through the story of one small man who became one giant myth. Jacob Brandt's rueful, raucous song cycle comes to theatrical life with playwright Dan Giles, director Jaki Bradley, and a seven-piece band. www.1969thesecondman.com

DEAD ARE MY PEOPLE

A play with music by Ismail Khalidi

Directed by Leah Gardiner

Original compositions by Hadi Eldebek

Produced by Noor Theatre

October 2018

Dead Are My People follows Nicola, a young Syrian man who flees to the U.S. from famine-stricken Mount Lebanon during World War I. Once there, he hopes to track down his uncle Tanios, who emigrated West years before. Finding few traces of his kin, Nicola must ultimately navigate the treacherous terrain of the Jim Crow South. Grappling with the legacies of white supremacy, immigration, and assimilation, Dead Are My People is an unexpected and timely journey to the core of the American experience. Dead Are My People is Noor Theatre's first full-length play commission.

INTELLIGENCE

By Helen Banner

Directed by Jess Chayes

Produced by Lucy Jackson in association with Dutch Kills Theater

January 10 - February 2, 2019

Sarah McIntyre, a presidential appointee parachuted into the Foreign Service, has been assigned two wary young diplomats to develop her pet project: New Training Scenarios for the Resolution of Intractable Global Situations. The three begin to role-play, led by a charismatic woman experienced in persuading men to lay down arms.

Suddenly, a rebel group lashes out in a distant country, destroying the tenuous peace recently negotiated by McIntyre. The women's role-playing becomes increasingly charged, pushing them deeper into the bodies and minds of violent insurgents. Meanwhile, as Washington undergoes its own regime change, their work becomes active weaponry for Sarah's political enemies.

Intelligence is a semi-immersive play developed by playwright Helen Banner and director Jess Chayes that pulls the audience into a Washington, D.C.basement conference room, for an intense experience of how we code and decode others and ourselves through our imaginations. Intelligence received developmental support as part of the 2017 Artist Residency Program of The Drama League of New York, and the New Georges JAM.

BONNIE'S LAST FLIGHT

Written by Eliza Bent

Directed by Annie Tippe

Produced by Caroline Gart
February 4 - March 3, 2019

Bonnie's Last Flight is a three-part play set on a plane. Our audience makes the trip as passengers: sitting on a tarmac before takeoff, floating at cruising altitude, and buckling down for the wild and rocky descent back to land.

It's Jan's retirement flight. Everyone knows, except for Greig, Jan's best friend and coworker of many years. As Greig waxes nostalgic, Jan worries about life post-retirement. LeeAnne, a klutzy newbie flight attendant with a dark past, must avoid her ex on the plane while Captain, a waggish pilot with a weakness for unlimited Bloody Mary Brunches, is caught in a love triangle. Erik, the co-pilot with a heart of gold, can't get a word in edgewise. Presiding over the flight is Mark Twain, of course.

In a comedy set on everyone's least favorite mode of transit, we must reckon with our crew's dreams and regrets and ask ourselves: What is the best way to live and how?

Little Lord's

SKINNAMARINK

Created by Little Lord

Directed by Michael Levinton

March 8 - 23, 2019

SKINNAMARINK: What is this play about? Who wrote this play? Why did they write it? Would you like to grow up without being able to write? Who is a greedy girl? What is a glutton? What is important about the sun and the moon and the wind and the rain and a bug and a bee and a-BELL BELL BELL BELL BELL BELL BELL. Based on the deceptively simple yet rich language in "McGuffey's Eclectic Readers" - a series of 19th-century American schoolbooks that taught generations how to read, think, and behave - SKINNAMARINK is part ritual, part recess, part recruitment. Attendance is mandatory.

SKINNAMARINK received developmental support as part of the 2018 Impact Residency Program of the Drama League and LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and through residencies with Target Margin Theater and Drop, Forge & Tool.

EH DAH? QUESTIONS FOR MY FATHER

Book, Music, and Lyrics by Aya Aziz

Directed by Arpita Mukherjee

Produced by Hypokrit Theatre Company

March 28 - April 14, 2019

Eh Dah? Questions for my Father follows the lives of a family divided across continents and cultures in a turbulent political landscape. Set in Egypt and America, this contemporary musical by Aya Aziz explores what it means to live in post a 9/11 world. Recipient of The Best Book and Best Individual Performance awards at New York Musical Festival 2016.

TRAGEDY IN SPADES: A Crime Documentary

Directed and co-created by Katie Brook

Written and co-created by Liza Birkenmeier

Produced by Katie Brook/Tele-Violet

April 19 - May 4, 2019

OBSESSED WITH A MURDER IN HER RURAL TOWN, VETERINARIAN AND AMATEUR FILMMAKER LORNA DAS UNCOVERS SOME OF THE HARROWING DETAILS THAT LED TO AN UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY IN THIS THRILLING 1994 CRIME DOCUMENTARY.

Tragedy in Spades: A Crime Documentary is a live-performance deep-dive into the true-crime genre. The text, a fabrication by playwright Liza Birkenmeier, echoes the current cultural sensationalism of true-crime murder mystery and appeals to small-town 90s nostalgia. With choreography byKatie Rose McLaughlin O'Neil and a sound score created by Chris Giarmo and Taylor Brook, Flier's Thumb, Missouri, and its fictional horrors come to life and accumulate over time. Obsessed and disgusted with our cultish fascination with dead girls, we consider our own participation in this violent, misogynistic genre.

[VEIL WIDOW CONSPIRACY]

A World Premiere

By Gordon Dahlquist

Directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar

Developed and produced by NAATCO

(The National Asian American Theatre Company)

May 27 - June 23, 2019

[Veil Widow Conspiracy] is built around nested versions of a story from 1922 Xinjiang in Western China: a political murder mystery dramatized in a 2010 big budget Hollywood film, then amended via DVD extra interviews with the cast and crew, in censorship negotiations with the Chinese government, and finally by two lovers in a futuristic, dystopian Brooklyn, without the means to watch the film, one describing it to the other by memory in the dark.[VWC] explores the slippery tension around what we call the truth, knowing reality and fiction each have an angle, and no metaphor comes without an agenda.

Tickets for Next Door at NYTW will be available for each production on a first-come, first-served basis, online at NYTW.org, by phone at 212-460-5475, or in-person at the NYTW Box Office. Standard ticketing fees apply. Ticket prices vary by production. New York Theatre Workshop members and donors receive discounted tickets for the Next Door at NYTW series.

The New York Theatre Workshop 2017/18 season will conclude with the New York Premiere of THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND by MarcusGardley (X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation), directed by NYTW Usual Suspect and Obie Award winner Lileana Blain-Cruz (Red Speedo; Pipeline). THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND will begin previews on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, with an opening night set for Monday, July 30 for a limited run through Sunday, August 12, 2018.

Season memberships are available at www.nytw.org or 212-460-5475.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NYTW:

www.nytw.org