Theater News

Work by John Patrick Shanley, José Rivera, and More Set for Powerhouse Season

Vassar College and New York Stage and Film have announced the lineup for their annual collaboration.

A new play by John Patrick Shanley will receive a reading as part of the Powerhouse Theatre season.
A new play by John Patrick Shanley will receive a reading as part of the Powerhouse Theatre season.
(© David Gordon)

Vassar and New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater has announced its 32nd season of productions and readings at Vassar College.

The mainstage season will be headlined by two fully staged productions of new plays written and directed by women. Transfers (June 30-July 10), written by Obie Award winner Lucy Thurber and directed by Jackson Gay, portrays two young men from the Bronx as they vie for acceptance to an elite college. Then, in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves (July 21-July 31), it's a Saturday in winter somewhere in the suburbs and a high school girls’ soccer team warms up for its indoor game. Lila Neugebauer directs.

The season will also include a musical workshop of Another Word for Beauty, with book by Academy Award nominee José Rivera, music and lyrics by Grammy winner Héctor Buitrago, and direction by Steven Cosson. The new show will receive its East Coast premiere following its world premiere engagement at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The musical workshop presentations will also include Taylor Mac’s first-ever 12-hour marathon performance of material from A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, codirected by Mac and Niegel Smith, for one day only, on July 30.

Another major feature of the musical workshops at Powerhouse will be a new adaptation of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd by Santino Fontana. Fontana was commissioned by Roundabout Theatre Company to adapt this classic work, in which he will also star.

Academy Award, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley will return to Powerhouse with a reading of his comedy The Portuguese Kid. The Readings Series will also feature Stephen Belber’s We Are Among Us, Jocelyn Bioh’s Nollywood Dreams, Dan LeFranc’s Rancho Viejo, Stephen Nathan’s The Ways of Necessity, and Tim Blake Nelson’s Socrates.

Other artists to be featured in this summer's series include John Slattery (Mad Men), who will direct a reading of Lorien Haynes’ new play Good Grief and How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor, who will bring his first play, Sacred Valley, to the Reading Series.

Two "Inside Look" workshops will include the new play Fingersmith by Alexa Junge, an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel about a female pickpocket set in Victorian England, with direction by Bill Rauch and the return of Joanna Murray-Smith to Powerhouse, with her newest play Fury, with direction by Mark Brokaw.

Additionally, the Powerhouse Season will provide an artistic residency for the new musical Head Over Heels, with a book by Jeff Whitty and music by The Go-Go’s, directed by Michael Mayer with musical supervision by Tom Kitt.

Members of the noted Powerhouse Theater Training Program will present Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, adapted and directed by Mark Lindberg, while Andrew Willis-Woodward will direct a reimagining of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.