Karen Olivo and Brandon Victor Dixon to Star in The Odyssey at the Delacorte

The Public Theater will kick off its 2015-16 season in September with a free Public Works musical adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, directed by Public Works Director Lear deBessonet, with music, lyrics, and book by Todd Almond.

The production will feature over 200 actors and community members alongside five equity actors, including Brandon Victor Dixon (The Wild Party) as Odysseus, Tony winner Karen Olivo (West Side Story) as Penelope, Taran Killam (Saturday Night Live, Little Shop of Horrors) as Cyclops, Todd Almond (Iowa) as the Singer, and Lucas Caleb Rooney (Golden Boy) as Antinous.

The show will also include cameo group performances by The Bobby Lewis Ensemble, The D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana II, The Marching Cobras, The New York Youth Symphony, and TADA! Youth Theater. The five Public Works community partner organizations are Children’s Aid Society (Manhattan), DreamYard Project (Bronx), Fortune Society (Queens), Brownsville Recreation Center (Brooklyn), and Domestic Workers United (all boroughs, including Staten Island).

"Public Works invites us to radically rethink how we make theater and who has a stake in the work we do," says deBessonet. "Exploring the genre of civic pageantry has given Todd and me a chance to collaborate with literally hundreds of New Yorkers in bringing these beautiful epics to life, and I couldn't be more proud to celebrate three years of immersive community work with The Odyssey."

The Public Works event will run for four nights, from September 4-7, at the Delacorte Theater. Free tickets will be distributed, two per person, at 12pm on the day of the show at the Delacorte Theater and via the Virtual Ticketing lottery at www.publictheater.org.