Foundry Theatre to Stage World Premiere of New Play Inspired by OUR TOWN in 2016

The Foundry Theatre will present the world premiere of O, Earth (January 23 - February 20), which marks the debut of Casey Llewellyn. O, Earth takes inspiration from Thornton Wilder's Our Town and passes its themes of love, marriage and death, and the universe that contains us, through the lens of queer and trans culture and history.

A contemporary epic, O, Earth brings a panorama of characters to the stage: Our Town's Emily, George, Simon Stimson, the Stage Manager and Wilder himself join historical LGBTQ icons Gertrude Stein, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera as well as Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi. In this play's ever expanding universe, Llewellyn invites the audience to consider the ways we organize our togetherness.

Thornton Wilder is digging in search of a time capsule buried somewhere on the stage; Emily and George venture out into the unknown; Portia DeRossi stares into the soft light of her refrigerator and wonders if she'll ever be truly happy; and Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera travel back to the land of the living in the belly of a whale. In playful ways, O, Earth unearths our shared history, bringing together those whom society has remembered well, alongside those who deserve to be never forgotten. An interrogation of the "universal," Llewellyn's epic play imagines the radical possibilities within everyone.

O, Earth builds upon The Foundry Theatre's boundary pushing investigation into theatre's radical potential to unpack the ways in which we build the world together, everyday.

Complete casting and creative team information will be announced at a later date.

Casey Llewellyn is a writer and theater maker whose work interrogates identity, collectivity and form. Works for theatre include: The Body which is the Town, Zaide!,Come in. Be with me. Don't touch me., Obsession Piece, The Quiet Way, Existing Conditions (co-written with Claudia Rankine) and I Love Dick, an adaptation for theater of the book by Chris Kraus. Her essay "What We Could Do With Writing" appears in The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind edited by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda and Max King Cap. Ms. Llewellyn has developed work at the MacDowell and Millay Colonies. She has an MFA in Writing for Performance form Brown University.

Dustin Wills is a NYC-based theatre director originally from Texas. He has worked with Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkeley Rep, Berkshire Theatre Group, Yale Opera, Lark Play Development Center, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, and has devised new work for the Teatro L'Arciliuto in Rome, Italy. He is a two-time recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre, a Drama League fellow, and a WTF Boris Sagal directing fellow. MFA: Yale School of Drama.

This production is a part of SubletSeries@HERE: Co-op, HERE's curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical support.