Bruce Norris's Downstate Sets Broadway Premiere with K. Todd Freeman and Francis Guinan

Bruce Norris’s award-winning drama Downstate will come to Broadway’s Booth Theatre this fall, in a new production staged by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello. Performances begin October 17, with opening set for November 14.

Downstate is set within a group home in downstate Illinois, where four men convicted of sex crimes live out their days post-incarceration. The play premiered in 2018 in a coproduction of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the National Theatre of London, and ran off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2022. Those productions were all staged by Pam Mackinnon, a frequent Norris collaborator.

This Broadway revival will feature original stars K. Todd Freeman and Francis Guinan, reprising their performances as Dee and Fred. Joining them are Cassie Beck, Adrian Martinez, Al’Jaleel McGhee, Thomas Sadoski, Ivy Wolk, and Liza Colón-Zayas.

The creative team includes scenic designer Scott Pask, costume designer Ann Roth, lighting designer Heather Gilbert, and sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman.

TheaterMania’s review stated “It powerfully reclaims the stage as a home for dangerous ideas, a place where the thoughts we would rather ignore confront us — not with startling moral clarity, but sublime doubt.”

Downstate received Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards for Best Play, with Freeman receiving OCC and Lortel awards for his performance.