Roundabout Theatre Company to Present World Premiere of BAD JEWS This Fall

The Roundabout Theatre Company has announced the world premiere production of Bad Jews by Joshua Elias Harmon and directed by Daniel Aukin for the fall season.  Bad Jews will begin preview performances on October 5, 2012 and will open officially on Tuesday, October 30, 2012. This is a limited engagement through December 16, 2012. All tickets for Roundabout Underground productions are $20.

The cast and creative team will be announced shortly.

“I can’t wait for the audience to meet Daphna Feygenbaum. She is an exciting, original, and totally unforgettable character to spend an evening with, and it’s her brutal, hilarious honesty that made me so eager to produce Bad Jews. Roundabout Underground was created to introduce theatergoers to new voices, and I think Joshua Elias Harmon is one you’ll be hearing a lot from. He’s written the kind of play that will make you laugh and leave you talking, and I am thrilled to have Daniel Aukin, who I’ve admired for so many years, guiding this work to its world premiere.”

Bad Jews is a world-premiere comedy about the holy and the holier-than-thou. Daphna Feygenbaum is a Real Jew—just ask the Israeli boyfriend she met on Birthright. So when her cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather’s Chai necklace, it sparks a viciously hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy.

Bad Jews launches the sixth season of Roundabout Underground, an initiative to introduce and cultivate artists in Roundabout’s 62-seat Black Box Theatre, at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street, NYC, NY, 10036). Prior productions include the acclaimed world premieres of Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate (2007), Steven Levenson’s The Language of Trees (2008), Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days (2009), Kim Rosenstock’s Tigers Be Still (2010), David West Read’s The Dream of the Burning Boy (2011) and Andrew Hinderaker’s Suicide, Incorporated (2011).

Roundabout Underground is an initiative to showcase new plays that will either allow an experienced director to go back to his/her creative roots or give a debut production to an emerging writer or director. Robyn Goodman (Artistic Consultant to the Roundabout), who has significant artistic development experience, produces the initiative that continues to be a creative breeding ground for nurturing new talent.

The 62-seat Black Box Theatre, below the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, allows Roundabout to take artistic risks that are better suited for a more intimate space.

Tickets will be available beginning this summer by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212)719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org or at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre box office (111 West 46 Street). The ticket price is $20.00 for all seats. All tickets for Bad Jews will be issued as General Admission passes for first-come, first-served seating on the show date.

Bad Jews will play Tuesday through Sunday evenings at 7:00PM with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 1:30PM.

Roundabout Underground is partially supported by Roundabout Leaders for New Works: Alec Baldwin, Linda L. D’Onofrio, Jodi Glucksman, Sylvia Golden, Caryn and James Magid, Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre, Laura S. Rodgers, Mary and David Solomon / GS Gives, Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Yolanda R. Turocy, Lori Uddenberg, Deborah and Thomas Wallace, and Xerox Foundation.

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JOSHUA ELIAS HARMON (Playwright). Plays include A Boy Named Alice, Bad Jews, Love in the Time of Channukah and an adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin. His work has been produced and developed by Hangar Theatre, Ars Nova, The Lark, Prospect Theater Company and Actor's Express, where he was the 2010-2011 National New Play Network Playwright-in-Residence. He has received fellowships from MacDowell, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Eudora Welty Foundation, and won the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting (2nd Place). He has taught playwriting at Actor's Express, Carnegie Mellon and Horizon Theatre. Graduate of Northwestern (BA), Carnegie Mellon (MFA).

Daniel Aukin (Director). Most recently Daniel Aukin directed the critically lauded 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog at Lincoln Center. Selected credits include The Ugly One by Marius von Mayenburg at Soho Rep, This by Melissa James Gibson at Playwrights Horizons and for Center Theater Group and Paraffin by Adam Rapp at Rattlestick. Also: [sic] (OBIE Award for direction), Mark Schultz’s Everything Will Be Different, Quincy Long’s The Year of The Baby, Melissa James Gibson’s Suitcase and Brooklyn Bridge, Mac Wellman’s Cat’s-Paw and Maria Irene Fornes’ Molly’s Dream (OBIE Award), all world premieres. Also, Itamar Moses’ Back Back Back, Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. His work has been seen at Center Theater Group, Rattlestick, Lincoln Center, The La Jolla Playhouse, The Guthrie, Arena Stage, The Children’s Theater of Minneapolis, Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights’ Horizons and Woolly Mammoth. From 1998-2006 Daniel was Artistic Director of Soho Rep where he developed, produced and occasionally, directed plays by many of the country’s most iconoclastic playwrights and theater-makers including Richard Maxwell, Adam Bock The Flying Machine, Anne Washburn, Big Art Group and Young Jean Lee.

Roundabout Theatre Company is a not-for-profit theatre dedicated to providing a nurturing artistic home for theatre artists at all stages of their careers where the widest possible audience can experience their work at affordable prices. Roundabout fulfills its mission each season through the revival of classic plays and musicals; development and production of new works by established playwrights and emerging writers; educational initiatives that enrich the lives of children and adults; and a subscription model and audience outreach programs that cultivate loyal audiences.

Roundabout Theatre Company currently produces at four theatres each of which is designed specifically to enhance the needs of the Roundabout's mission. Off-Broadway, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, which houses the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre, with its simple sophisticated design is perfectly suited to showcasing new plays. The grandeur of its Broadway home on 42nd Street, American Airlines Theatre, sets the ideal stage for the classics. Roundabout's Studio 54 provides an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for its musical and special event productions. The Stephen Sondheim Theatre offers a state of the art LEED certified Broadway theatre in which to stage major large scale musical revivals. Together these distinctive homes serve to enhance the work on each of its stages.

American Airlines is the official airline of Roundabout Theatre Company. Roundabout productions are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2011-2012 season features Marc Camoletti’s Don’t Dress For Dinner starring Ben Daniels, Adam James, Patricia Kalember and Jennifer Tilly, adapted by Robin Hawdon, directed by John Tillinger; Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit, directed by Moisés Kaufman; Mary Chase’s Harvey starring Jim Parsons, Jessica Hecht & Charles Kimbrough, directed by Scott Ellis. Roundabout’s Tony Award winning production of Anything Goes starring Stephanie J. Block & Joel Grey, directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, is currently playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. The 2011 Tony® Award winning Anything Goes will set sail on a National Tour at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square in October 2012. Following its opening in Cleveland, Anything Goes will cruise into more than 25 other cities during the 2012/2013 season.

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2012-2013 season features Rupert Holmes’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood starring Chita Rivera, directed by Scott Ellis; William Inge’s Picnic directed by Sam Gold; Steven Levenson’s The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin directed by Scott Ellis.

For more information, visit www.roundabouttheatre.org