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April 2024

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Hayes Theater

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APRIL 2024 – HAYES THEATER

MOTHER PLAY

BY

PAULA VOGEL

DIRECTED BY

TINA LANDAU


WITH
CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER, JESSICA LANGE, JIM PARSONS
Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) has written a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.

It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis (Jessica Lange) is supervising her teenage children, Carl (Jim Parsons) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger), as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful roller coaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.

CALENDAR

 

CAST & CREATIVES

CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER

CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER returns to Second Stage Theater where she appeared in A Parellelogram, Bachelorette, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Little Fish. Other credits - Broadway: To Kill a Mockingbird, Glass Menagerie, The Cherry Orchard, Peter and The Starcatcher, Les Misérables, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Broadway: The Oldest Boy, Merrily We Roll Along, A Small Fire. Select Film/TV: “The Gilded Age,” “Bull,” “Louie,” “The Good Wife,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Good Behavior,”

“Elementary,” Diane, The Visit, Breakable You. Tony Award, Outer Critics Circle, three Drama Desk Award wins. Member of The Actors Center. NYCLU Michael Friedman Freedom Award recipient. UMichigan graduate. Training to be an end-of-life doula. 

JESSICA LANGE 

JESSICA LANGE. Acclaimed as one of the greatest actresses of her generation, Jessica Lange has dazzled the screen with over 30 credits to her name. Lange has won a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Emmys, five Golden Globes, and one SAG Award. On Broadway, she received the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards for her performance as Mary Tyrone in A Long Day’s Journey into Night, a role she also performed in the West End. She made her Broadway debut in A Streetcar Named Desire and was also seen starring in The Glass Menagerie. Lange stared in the television series “American Horror Story,” as well as “Grey Gardens,” “Feud: Bette and Joan,” and “The Politician.” Her films include Blue Sky, Frances, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Country, Rob Roy, Cape Fear, Tootsie, Music Box, and Sweet Dreams.

JIM PARSONS 

Jim Parsons continues to skillfully navigate the entertainment industry as an award-winning actor and producer.

He will soon begin production on Just by Looking at Him. The film is an adaptation of Ryan O’Connell’s novel of the same name. Parsons will star alongside O’Connell in the comedy.

In December 2022, Parsons starred alongside Ben Aldridge in Focus Features’Spoiler Alert based on Michael Ausiello’s acclaimed memoir of the same title. Parsons' That’s Wonderful Productions produced the film, which was nominated for Outstanding Film – Wide Release at the GLAAD Media Awards.

He recently led the Off-Broadway revival of A Man of No Importance, the 2002 musical featuring a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty, and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens for The Classic Stage Company. He received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for his performance and the show was nominated for Drama League, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Parsons' breakout role was that of Sheldon Cooper from the CBS smash hit The Big Bang Theory. The show was the #1 comedy in America and in many parts of the world. The Big Bang Theory also made history as the longest running multi-camera sitcom ever with 279 shows.

BY PAULA VOGEL

Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award nomination, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession  and A Civil War Christmas. In June 2020, she founded Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate, a uniquely curated virtual reading series designed to become a widely accessible platform for powerful, overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists. Lifetime achievement awards include American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, and the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and her memoir will be published by Penguin Press. She teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. www.paulavogelplaywright.com 

DIRECTED BY TINA LANDAU

Tina Landau is a writer and director whose work has been produced on Broadway and Off, internationally and regionally, and most frequently at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago where she is an ensemble member. Known for her original, large-scale musical and ensemble work, Tina’s been recognized by the Tony Awards, Drama Desks, Drama League, Outer Critics, Lucille Lortel, and Obies among others. Her Broadway credits include The Spongebob Musical (also conceiver; Drama Desk & Outer Critics Circle winner Best Direction and Best Musical, 12 Tony Award noms), Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, and the revival of Bells are Ringing (Tony noms.) Tina both wrote and directed the plays Ms. Blank for President (with Tarell McCraney, Steppenwolf), Space (Steppenwolf, The Taper, The Public NYC), Beauty (La Jolla Playhouse), Stonewall: Night Variations (En Garde Arts), and the musicals Floyd Collins (composer Adam Guettel) and Dream True (composer Ricky Ian Gordon). Off-Broadway, she’s directed premieres including three plays of Tarell McCraney, Head of Passes (the Public, also Steppenwolf and Taper), In the Red and Brown Water (Public, also Alliance and McCarter) and Wig Out! (Vineyard), as well as Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats (Signature), Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas (NYTW), and many of the plays of Chuck Mee. As an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, her over 20 productions include McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays, The Tempest, and The Time of Your Life (also Seattle Rep, ACT). She was an Artist-in-Residence at Little Island in NYC, and is the co-author, with Anne Bogart, of The Viewpoints Book. Tina recently opened A Transparent Musical at Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, and her new musical Redwood (book and co-lyrics, with composer Kate Diaz) will premiere next season at La Jolla Playhouse, starring Idina Menzel.