Theater News

Naomi Iizuka’s Ghostwritten Added to Goodman 2008/2009 Season

Naomi Iizuka
Naomi Iizuka

The world premiere of Naomi Iizuka’s Ghostwritten has been added to the Goodman Theatre’s 2008/2009 season. Lisa Portes will direct the production.

In the play, an American woman travels to Southeast Asia and strikes a bargain with a mysterious stranger. Twenty years later, she’s become an acclaimed chef and is successful beyond her wildest dreams — until the stranger from her past reappears to collect on an old debt. Iizuka’s other plays include Strike-Slip, 36 Views, and War of the Worlds (written in collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company).

As previously announced, the Goodman will also present Turn of the Century, a new musical by Tony Award winners Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), which focuses on a down-on-her-luck singer named Dixie Wilson and a womanizing piano player named Billy Clark who become superstars. Nine-time Tony winner Tommy Tune will direct the show.

Lynn Nottage will return to the Goodman with Ruined, about a savvy businesswoman, caught in the civil war of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who protects and profits from the women whose bodies have become a battleground. Kate Whoriskey will direct the production.

Tony Award winner Brian Dennehy will star in Eugene O’Neill’s classic drama Desire Under the Elms, to be directed by Robert Falls, the Goodman’s artistic director. The production will be part of a showcase of O’Neill’s work.

Finally, the theater will co-present Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yohen at the Silk Road Theatre Project. The play, to be directed by Steve Scott, focuses on a decades-long marriage between a divorced Japanese woman and an African American soldier which is threatening to come apart.

For more information, visit www.goodmantheatre.org.