Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons has lifted the curtain on its 2024–2025 season, with world premieres from Sarah Mantell, Ryan J. Haddad, Jordan Harrison and more.
The season will kick off in September with the world premiere of Book of Travelers/Magnificent Bird, a new collection of solo musical plays written and performed by Gabriel Kahane. The two works, described as "concept albums" in press notes, will perform in repertory on alternating nights. The first follows Kahane on a 9,000-mile train journey, meeting strangers as he travels through a divided country. The second piece chronicles an offline year and its surprising challenges. Annie Tippe will direct in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
Breaking the Binary Theatre is co-producing a world premiere for Sarah Mantell's In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot in October on the Mainstage Theater. Part queer love story and part speculative fiction, the play follows a band of queer warehouse workers traveling from job to job as oceans rise and coastlines recede. Sivan Battat will direct.
Next up will be an Off-Broadway premiere for This Is My Favorite Song, written and performed by Francesca D'Uva. The piece fuses stand-up with "original digital-pop bangers," exploring life after loss. Performances will begin in November, with Sam Max directing.
Moving into 2025, Jordan Harrison (Marjorie Prime) will bring his new work The Antiquities for a world premiere run beginning in January, a co-production with Vineyard Theatre and Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Performing on the Playwrights Mainstage, the work takes place decades in the future in a museum dedicated to memorializing human life in the early 21st century.
Ryan J. Haddad will perform in the world premiere of his new work Hold Me in the Water beginning in April 2025 on the Mainstage. The solo play sees Haddad recounting his first love. Danny Sharron is directing.
Casting, dates, and creative teams are to be announced, along with an additional production to perform in spring 2025.
"This season feels like a homecoming to me, a return to the essential, human purpose of theatre," says Artistic Director Adam Greenfield in a statement. "In this collection of works, we see great artists wrestling with some very real threats to humanity: climate change, unbridled technology, authoritarianism, indifference, coronaviruses. But in the midst of these rocky and unnerving times, each of these stories ultimately is searching for solace in connection with others. The experience of live theatre—specifically in an intimate space like ours—uniquely carries the ability to confront the fragility and transience of our relationships, our selves, our societies, and our species; to amplify the singularity of being alive, and to share the mystery of that experience with others. We’re delighted to introduce Playwrights Horizons' 2024-25 season: the premiere of six daring new works from a wildly diverse roster of artists, ranging in scale from cosmic to cozy, and each an experience unlike anything else.”
Various season ticket packages are available at PlaywrightsHorizons.org.
