Theater News

Antoinette Nwandu, Tina Satter Plays Announced for Vineyard's 2019-20 Season

Nwandu’s most recently produced play in New York was ”Pass Over” at Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3.

Kenji Fujishima
New York City Off-Broadway
Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu or, the Saddest Song will receive its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre next year.
Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu, or The Saddest Song will receive its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre next year.
(© David Gordon)

Vineyard Theatre has announced two productions of the company's upcoming 2019-20 season: Tina Satter's Is This a Room in the fall, and the world premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu, or The Saddest Song in spring 2020. The winter 2020 production will be announced at a later date.

Is This a Room is described as follows: "A true story, still unfolding. June 3, 2017. A 25-year-old former Air Force linguist named Reality Winner is surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated, and then charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in US elections. Reality remains in jail with a record-breaking sentence. The FBI transcript of her interrogation is the heart of Is This a Room, conceived as a play and directed by Obie Award-winner Tina Satter, in which an extraordinary human drama unfolds between the complex and witty Reality, and the agents who question her. As Reality's autonomy shrinks before her eyes, a simmering real-life thriller emerges, asking what it is to have honor in this American moment, and how the personal can reverberate globally." The play originated with a limited run in January at the Kitchen.

Tuvalu is described as follows: "Los Angeles in the mid-nineties and twelve-year old Jackie is at a crossroads. She's just been accepted to a private school in Brentwood, the affluent, white neighborhood that also happens to be ground zero for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. At home, the Lord is alive and well, the rent's past due, and Momma's boyfriend just came back to town. Sexuality and spirituality, race and class, love and violence collide as Jackie attempts to make sense of her life in relation to the women in her real and imaginary landscapes. With an astonishing mix of humor, tenderness and theatrical daring, this coming-of-age story explores the barriers that keep Jackie from finding her authentic self, and the cost of overcoming them." Danya Taymor, who directed last year's LCT3 production of Nwandu's Pass Over, will direct this production.