Brooklyn’s Theater for a New Audience (TFANA) celebrates its 43rd season with debuts by actor David Strathairn, author Denis Johnson and up-and-coming director Flordelino Lagundino. TFANA will also inaugurate a post-show series, Reflections, hosted by essayist and commentator Bianca Vivion Brooks.
TFANA’s 43rd season includes:
September 10 – October 9, 2022 – THE LESSON OF JAN KARSKI
By Clark Young and Derek Goldman
In an acclaimed, tour-de-force solo performance, David Strathairn portrays World War II hero and Holocaust witness Jan Karski, who risked his life to carry his report of the Warsaw ghetto from war-torn Poland to the Allied Nations and the Oval Office only to be disbelieved. Strathairn captures the remarkable life of this self-described “insignificant, little man” and his story of moral courage and individual responsibility.
November 29, 2022 – January 1, 2023 – DES MOINES
By Denis Johnson
The late American author Denis Johnson’s final play Des Moines is one of his most sensationally mysterious works. Chance events—including a plane crash, a rescued wedding ring, a frightening diagnosis, and makeup advice kindly offered to a louche Catholic priest—bring a group of lonely and haunted characters together for a debauch that becomes an unlikely communion. Arin Arbus directs the New York premiere of this searing and tender drama about the specter of death and the stubborn pursuit of grace among those who barely believe in it.
April 29 – May 28, 2023 – FUENTE OVEJUNA
By Lope de Vega
A masterpiece of the Spanish Golden Age, Fuente Ovejuna (1612) is a prophetically modern drama by Lope de Vega, one of history’s most prolific dramatists. It recounts a violent peasant uprising against an aristocratic lord who rapes socially powerless women with impunity and highlights the heroism of one remarkable woman who dares to lead as others shrink in fear. The heroine Laurencia’s brave stand foreshadows movements for systemic change and individual rights that occurred in the ages after Lope. The young director Flordelino Lagundino makes his TFANA debut.
July 9 – August 6, 2023 – ORPHEUS DESCENDING
By Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams’s steamy and lyrical Orpheus Descending is a love story and a tragedy, telling of the passion of a storekeeper’s wife and a wandering guitar player and their doomed escape attempt from a hell of small-mindedness. Set in a dry-goods store in the 1950s deep South, the play’s toxic brew of Jim Crow, xenophobia, and provincialism evokes an American past that unfortunately is not the past, with open acceptance of hatred leading inevitably to violence.
Special Workshop Production: January 26 – February 5, 2023 – RICHARD II & HENRY IV WORKSHOP
By William Shakespeare
Richard II is Shakespeare’s prequel to Henry IV. It tells the story of the indecisive, impulsive, and poetic-minded king whom the strong-willed, practical, and politically savvy Henry Bolingbroke deposed. This powerful and popular play, renowned for its vivid figurative language, introduces the questions of legitimacy and divine right that will launch England on the road to civil war and preoccupy Shakespeare throughout his “Henriad” tetralogy. Readings of Richard II, with Christian Camargo in the title role, will alternate with readings of Matthews’s Henry IV adaptation.
Dakin Matthews’s Shakespeare’s Henry IV is a much-celebrated condensation of the Bard’s two plays about the turbulent reign of England’s Henry Bolingbroke into one 3-act, 3 1/2-hour play. This adaptation’s 2003 production at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre won multiple Tony Awards as well as a special Drama Desk Award.
For more information, subscriptions, visit www.tfana.org
TFANA is located at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217
