Theater News

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Announces Mainstage Season

Jonathan Tolins, Lucy Thurber, and more Rattlestick veterans will participate in the theater’s Alumni Jam.

Buyer & Cellar playwright Jonathan Tolins will participate in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Alumni Jam.
Buyer & Cellar playwright Jonathan Tolins will participate in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Alumni Jam.
(© David Gordon)

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has announced the mainstage programming for its upcoming season as well as its weeklong September mini-festival of free staged readings entitled "F*ck~ng Good Plays Festival."

The first mainstage production will be Basil Kreimendahl's Orange Julius, a Page 73 coproduction directed by Dustin Wills. In Orange Julius, Nut grew up the youngest child of Julius, a Vietnam vet, in 1980s and 90s working-class America. As Julius suffers the toxic effects of Agent Orange, Nut worries their time together may run out before they can embrace something essential about their relationship. Paging through forgotten photo albums and acting out old war movies about brothers-in-arms, Nut leaps through time and memory, tracing the complex intimacy between father and child when the child is transgender, fighting for a mutual recognition before it's too late. Performances begin January 11, 2017 in advance of a January 22 opening and run through February 12.

Next will be the Amoralists' production of Ken Urban's Nibbler (February 23- March 19). Set in the summer of 1992 in Medford, N.J., Adam and his gang of friends face life after high school. But when the fivesome encounter a mysterious visitor from another world, their lives are forever changed.

The third selection will be Martin Zimmerman's Seven Spots on the Sun (May-June 2017), directed by Weyni Mengesha. The play is set in an unnamed Central American country where a civil war changes the people who had to cope with profound violence and loss, and face the conflicts of revenge, justice, and forgiveness. Through the production, Rattlestick partners with The Sol Project, a new initiative that advocates for the production of Latino work by off-Broadway theaters.

F*ck~ng Good Plays Festival (September 10-17) will feature the following seven works: Draw The Circle, written and performed by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen; We Are Among Us, written and directed by Stephen Belber; Lady Tattoo, written by Meg Miroshnik and directed by Margot Bordelon; Talkin' to this Chick Sippin' Magic Potion, written by Juilliard playwright James Anthony Tyler and directed by Sandra Daley; Radio Island, written by Liza Birkenmeier; How to Catch Creation, written by Christina Anderson; and Ghetto Baptism, written by David Zheng and directed by David Mendizabal.

An Alumni Jam will also be held on Wednesday, September 14, featuring excerpts of new plays by Rattlestick Alumni Writers including Martyna Majok (Ironbound), Laith Nakli (Shesk Yak), Dael Orlandersmith (Horsedreams), Adam Rapp (The Hallway Trilogy), Jonathan Tolins (Buyer & Cellar), and Lucy Thurber (The Hilltown Plays).

For more information about the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater season, click here.

Featured In This Story

Nibbler

Closed: March 19, 2017

Orange Julius

Closed: February 12, 2017