A Raisin in the Sun

June 25 - July 13 | Main Stage

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Lorraine Hansberry’s masterpiece, Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner S. Epatha Merkerson and Francois Battiste breathe new life into this American classic. Lena Younger (Merkerson) and her son Walter Lee (Battiste) are at odds. Lena wants to use her late husband’s life insurance to move her family out of their cramped apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Walter Lee would rather use the funds to start a business and become an independent man. As their dispute intensifies, the powerful and destructive forces of 1950s America come knocking at the Youngers’ front door. Directed by Obie Award winner Robert O’Hara, Hansberry’s fearless interrogation of hope in the face of racial and economic strife is as provocative and powerful today as when it premiered.

A Raisin in the Sun is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.

Grand Horizons

July 17 - July 28 | Main Stage

Bill and Nancy (Tony Award nominee Jamey Sheridan and Academy, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award nominee JoBeth Williams) have been happily married for fifty years. They can finish each other’s sentences and anticipate each other’s every sigh, snore, and sneeze. But there’s one thing nobody could have anticipated: Nancy wants out. As their adult sons Brian and Ben (Emmy Award nominee Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Tony Award nominee Thomas Sadoski) descend on the Grand Horizons senior living community, the walls of the French family as-they-know-it come crumbling down. Directed by Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman, Bess Wohl’s world premiere play takes an intimate, funny, and painful look at the nature of love over time.

Grand Horizons is a Williamstown Theatre Festival and Second Stage Theater Co-Commission. WTF Commissions are made possible through the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical Commissioning Program.

BEYOND THE FESTIVAL
Grand Horizons will open on Broadway at Second Stage Theater on January 23, 2020.

Ghosts

July 31 - August 18 | Main Stage

With great happiness, Mrs. Alving (Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman) welcomes her painter son Oswald (Tom Pecinka) home from years of living abroad. But when he starts to flirt with the family maid (Catherine Combs), she must intercede to save her son and herself from scandals present and past. Mrs. Alving struggles to find joy in a life bound by the strictures of Pastor Manders (Bernard White) and the spectral chains of mistakes from long ago. Directed by Carey Perloff, Henrik Ibsen‘s vivid and passionate play asks – even now – how far one mother, caught between duty and desire, can or should go to protect her family.

A Human Being, of a Sort

June 26 - July 7 | Nikos Stage

It’s 1906, and at the Bronx Zoological Park, an African-American convict named “Smokey” (Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner André Braugher) is guarding the zoo’s most sensational exhibit: Ota Benga (Antonio Michael Woodard), a Congolese pygmy. As the public’s fascination intensifies and protestors call for Ota’s release, Smokey must grapple with the fact that his own freedom depends on another black man’s captivity. Based on a true story, Jonathan Payne’s world premiere play, directed by Whitney White, exposes the complexity of power and compliance in a world where all lives do not seem to matter equally.

Selling Kabul

July 10 - July 20 | Nikos Stage

Taroon (Babak Tafti), a former interpreter for the US military, lives in hiding from the Taliban in his sister Afiya’s (Marjan Neshat) home in Kabul, Afghanistan. As Taroon restlessly awaits news from the hospital on the eve of his first child’s birth, his brother-in-law Jawid (Omid Abtahi) works to protect him from dangers lurking outside the apartment walls. In this world premiere drama directed by Tyne Rafaeli, Sylvia Khoury examines loyalty, empty promises, and what it means to be left behind.

Selling Kabul is the recipient of the 2018 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, administered by Williamstown Theatre Festival.

BEYOND THE FESTIVAL
Selling Kabul will open Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in March 2020.

Tell Me I’m Not Crazy

July 24 - August 3 | Nikos Stage

Forced into retirement and unsettled by the changing world around him, Sol Koening (Mark Blum) buys himself a gun—and his family is up in arms. His wife Diana (Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee Jane Kaczmarek) thought they’d spend more time together and with the grandkids, but Sol’s new hobby puts a bullet in that plan. Meanwhile, their son Nate (Mark Feuerstein) is trying to be a good stay-at-home dad while his jet-setting wife Alisa (Nicole Villamil) climbs the corporate ladder, and school is calling with concerns about their kid. Directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Sharyn Rothstein’s world premiere comedy asks how one small firearm redefines a family and how two generations confront what it means to succeed and to sacrifice in America today.

Tell Me I’m Not Crazy is a Williamstown Theatre Festival Commission. WTF Commissions are made possible through the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical Commissioning Program.

Before the Meeting

August 7 - August 18 | Nikos Stage

Every day, Gail (Deirdre O’Connell) and the regular members of her early morning group set up for their meeting in the exact same way: Nicole (Midori Francis) makes the coffee, Gail arranges the chairs, and Ron (Arnie Burton) complains. As they forge a path toward sobriety and well-being, they come to rely on the routine and each other. But when Gail’s estranged granddaughter reopens old wounds, Gail knows it will take more than coffee, chairs, and companionship to keep her life from falling apart. Trip Cullman directs Adam Bock’s world premiere play, which examines how to truly make amends on the road to recovery.