ORPHEUS DESCENDING (Closed)

“The glittering Maggie Siff (“Mad Men,” “Billions”) stars in the superheated Southern drama at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, where she scorched the boards as Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing,” in 2013.­” - The New Yorker

“One of the most highly anticipated productions of the summer.” - New York Magazine

Orpheus Descending
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Erica Schmidt
July 9 – August 6, 2023

Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes plus one intermission

 

Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending tells the story of the passion of two outcasts—Lady Torrance, a storekeeper’s wife and daughter of a murdered Sicilian bootlegger and Val, a wandering guitar player—and their attempt to escape from a Southern Hell.

Set in a small town dry-goods store in the Deep South, Orpheus Descending is a toxic brew of racist violence, bigotry, misogyny, sexual passion and longing for liberation.

Maggie Siff (Billions, Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy) plays Lady Torrance and Pico Alexander (Catch 22, Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock and A.R. Gurney’s What I Did Last Summer) is Valentine Xavier.

Erica Schmidt, who adapted and directed Shakespeare’s Macbeth for seven schoolgirls entitled Mac Beth (“raucously exuberant”) and this season’s Lucy which she wrote and directed (“seamlessly layered, extraordinarily entertaining and …cleverly detailed”), stages, in her TFANA debut, this seldom-seen Williams masterpiece.

Featuring Pico Alexander, Molly Kate Babos, Michael Cullen, Matt DeAngelis, Mary Glen Fredrick, Gene Gillette, Laura Heisler, Prudence Wright Holmes, Brian Keane, Julia McDermott, Ana Reeder, Maggie Siff, Kate Skinner, Fiana Tóibín, James Waterston, Dathan B. Williams

Amy Rubin, Scenic Designer
Jennifer Moeller, Costume Designer
David Weiner, Lighting Designer
Justin Ellington, Sound Designer/Composer
Cookie Jordan, Hair & Wig Designer
Andrew Wade, Voice Director
John Lahr, Production Dramaturg
Lorenzo Pisoni, Physical Movement Coordinator
Justin Cox, Properties Supervisor
Shane Schnetzler, Production Stage Manager
Xavier Clark, Dialect Coach

 

Endowment support for this production is provided by The Howard Gilman Foundation Fund for Classic Drama.

 

 

Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2022-2023 Season Sponsors.

Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in the New York Community Trust, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.

Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.