Doctor Who's Billie Piper to Make American Stage Debut in Yerma
(© Johan Persson)
Billie Piper (Doctor Who) will bring her 2017 Olivier Award-winning performance in Federico García Lorca's Yerma to the Park Avenue Armory, March 23-April 21. Directed and adapted by Simon Stone, the production originated at London's Young Vic Theatre in 2016, with a return engagement this past summer.
Lorca's play is set in 20th-century provincial Spain, where a woman is driven mad in her desire, yet inability, to have a child. In Stone's adaptation, "Piper plays a blogger and journalist who becomes obsessed with her own fertility. Once she and her partner decide to have a child, Piper becomes interpellated into an identity defined exclusively by childbearing." Her infertility not only impacts her own life, but it also begins to destroy her relationships with others.
Staged inside the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the production unfolds within a glass well, sequestering the audience from the world of the play. The New York mounting will feature the entire original cast, which also includes Maureen Beattie, Brendan Cowell, John MacMillan, Charlotte Randle, and Thalissa Teixeira. Yerma has scenic design by Lizzie Clachan, costumes by Alice Babidge, lighting by James Farncombe, music and sound by Stefan Gregory, and video by Jack Henry James.
