The 2022-23 season of the Public Theater features a combination of historically rooted works and new works that speak of current cultural changes towards racial justice, impartiality and the rights of persons with disabilities. The season begins with the production of Lorraine Hansbury’s 1959 drama “Hay of the Sun”. This is about Robert O’Hara’s black family moving to a house in a white neighborhood in Chicago (“Slave Play” A Long Day Trip to the Night “). The performance is scheduled to start on September 27th.
This is not the first interpretation of the classic by O’Hara. He also at the Williamstown Theater Festival, S. Directed the 2019 version starring Epatha Merson. (The Public Theater said this would be a new piece, not a remount of the staging in Williamstown.) He is also a playwright. (“barbecue,” “Booty candy”), and in 2010 he wrote his own sequel to Hansbury’s play, “Warning etiquette.”
In the season, the New York premiere of “Cambridge Baldwin and Buckley— Invented by Craig Sargent, developed as a member of the elevator repair service, and supervised by John Collins — from September 24th. The play recreates the 1965 debate between the writer and civil rights advocates James Baldwin and William F. Buckley. Jr., the founder of the National Review and the architect of the 20th century conservative movement, was asked if “American Dream is sacrificing American Negro.” The show premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival last fall.
Oskar Eustis, public artistic director, said he would like to help “return Hansbury and Baldwin to the center of our dramatic tradition.” The towering literary writer, Baldwin, was less successful as a playwright, partly because he was a white cultural gatekeeper for most of the 1960s and 1970s. Handsbury became the first black woman to be staged on Broadway when “Hay of the Sun” premiered on Broadway in 1959, but she died just a few years later in 1965. I did.
“It’s absolutely essential to understand this moment, especially in terms of our relationship with Black and White America,” Eustis said in an interview. “It also says,’Hey, Shakespeare isn’t the only important classic voice.'”
Upcoming show slate balances lessons from the past with insights into the future of the theater. New York premiere of “Where We Belong”, Madeline Saye, Mohegan members are working on Shakespeare and the colonial heritage. Meian Teo oversees a show co-produced with the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library. The performance will start on October 28th.
For Eustis, Sayet’s solo work fits well with the current cultural movement. “It’s a wave that welcomes us, moves us forward, and says,’It’s time to really deal with the legacy of slavery,'” Eustis said. “‘It’s time to really change and radically change the racial relations of this country.'”
An artist who has previously performed his work in public, such as the theater writer Suzan-Lori Parks. James Earmes; Erica Dickerson-Despenza — This season is back with a new play.
Performed in November, Parks’ “Pesticide Year Drama” began as a collection of plays written daily by playwrights from March 2020 to April 2021. This is followed by “The Harder They Come” featuring Jimmy Cliff. Parks songs and books for the winter of 2023. This work is a new musical adaptation of the 1972 Perry Henzell film, a desperate young Jamaican singer (played by Cliff) who wants to be a star but then aspires to be an outlaw. I was driven into the situation. It will be directed by Tony Taccone, co-directed by Sergio Trujillo and choreographed by Edgar Godineaux.
“Longevity in relationships with major artists is very important not only for Susan Lori, but also for making a statement to the field that life in the theater is possible,” Eustis said. “You can actually step into the theater and hone your entire career.”
“Good Bones” written by Earmes (a drama that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022)Fat ham“Currently released at the New York premiere” will be world premiered in the spring of 2023. Directed by Saheem Ali, this play explores gentrification and the rising prices of American dreams. “Shadow / Land” directed by Candis C. Jones by Dickerson-Despenza (who won the Blackburn Award for her play “Cullud Wattah”) is the first article in a 10-play cycle about Hurricane Katrina Diaspora. The public produced it as an audioplay during a pandemic. The performance will also start in the spring of 2023.
Ryan J. Hadad told Off-Broadway in the Winter of 2023 about a stranger he met while navigating a city that wasn’t built due to cerebral palsy. Make a drama debut. And it was presented by the general public. It investigates discrimination in favor of healthy people.
