Photos: First Look at DOWNSTATE at Playwrights Horizons - Now Extended!

Playwrights Horizons has extended the New York premiere of Bruce Norris's provocative, critically lauded play Downstate, directed by Pam MacKinnon, to December 22.

Downstate surrounds a registered address in Downstate Illinois, where four men convicted of sex crimes share a group home, living out their days post-incarceration. Audiences witness a single day within the home where Fred (Francis Guinan), Dee (K. Todd Freeman), Gio (Glenn Davis), and Felix (Eddie Torres) tightly cohabitate: four random lives thrust into shared space by only one chilling commonality. They have all been released back from their respective sentences into the permanent prison of an excommunicated existence.

On this summer day, the elderly, disabled Fred meets a visitor who has likewise been trapped in a half-life: Andy (Tim Hopper), a prisoner of the trauma Fred inflicted on him as a child. When Andy shows up to confront his childhood abuser, it becomes hard to locate the line between justice and retribution. Refusing cathartic responses and rushed moralism-and intricately problematizing both impulses towards righteous revenge and undue forgiveness-Downstate's environment, and its sprawling connotations, open into larger questions about the risks of a moment in discourse propelled by dogmatism on both sides of the political spectrum.

The Downstate creative team includes Todd Rosenthal (Set Designer), Clint Ramos (Costume Designer), Adam Silverman (Lighting Designer), Carolyn Downing (Sound Designer), TKTK (Stage Manager), and Thomas Dieter (Assistant Stage Manager).

Downstate marks the return of Bruce Norris to Playwrights Horizons following productions of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park, as well as The Qualms and The Pain and the Itch.