The Flea Theater Announces 2016 Spring Season

Artistic director Nigel Smith has announced the productions slated for the Flea Theater's spring 2016 season, including two world premieres and one U.S. premiere. All three productions will feature the Bats, the Flea's resident acting company.

The U.S. premiere of Kristiana Colón's But I Cd Only Whisper, directed by David Monteagudo, will run from February 18-March 14. Set at the tail end of the Vietnam War, the story follows veteran Beau Willie Brown who attempts to return to the family and life he left behind. Inspired by and including extracts from Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, But I Cd Only Whisper moves through time and space fusing the physical and the poetic to explore the affects of trauma, society, and self.

The world premiere of Wolf in the River, written and directed by Adam Rapp, then comes to the Flea from March 10-May 2. The play "explores love and neglect, the challenges of poverty, the dangerous cost of shiftlessness, the simple notion of leaving a place behind, and the value of a girl."

The Place We Built, written by Sarah Gancher and directed by Danya Taymor, rounds out the spring season. The world premiere play takes place in a deserted neighborhood in post-communist Budapest where a group of young bohemians build a bar. Reclaiming a Jewish identity their parents' generation abandoned after the Holocaust, they create a vibrant new subculture, combining big ideas and intense debates with wild abandon and outrageous parties. But as authoritarianism and antisemitism make a surprise comeback in Hungary, they must fight to save the place they built.

"I'm incredibly excited to welcome back Adam Rapp and to introduce our audiences to two exceptional playwrights: Sarah Gancher and Kristiana Colón," says Smith. "Rapp pulls us to the rural south, and Colón yanks us back to 1970s New York City, introducing us to desperate yet hopeful families struggling for survival and empathy; while Gancher takes us to an exuberant community of artists and activists in contemporary Budapest who are plagued by their oppressive government. These searing new plays, featuring our resident company The Bats, are daring calls to our consciousness and hearts — celebrating our humanity and questioning our resolve to act."

For tickets to But I Cd Only Whisper, click here.
For tickets to Wolf in the River, click here.
For tickets to The Place We Built, click here.