FALCON GIRLS World Premiere & More Set for Yale Repertory Theatre 2024-25 Season

Yale Repertory Theatre has revealed its 2024–25 season of five productions. 

The season will open with the world premiere of falcon girls, playwright Hilary Bettis’s achingly funny and brutally honest coming-of-age memoir, directed by May Adrales, October 10–November 2.
 
Next up will be the Philadelphia Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre, and Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Macbeth in Stride, created and performed by Whitney White, directed by Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky, and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly. The musical reimagining of Lady Macbeth as the story of an ambitious Black woman will be performed December 5–14.
 
The season will continue in 2025 with Eden by Steve Carter, directed by Brandon J. Dirden. The blistering tale of strife between two Black American and Caribbean immigrant families in 1920s New York City will play January 16–February 8.
 
Nikolai Gogol’s outrageously anarchic comedy of small-town grift and incompetence, The Inspector, will be newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky, and run March 7–29.
 
The season will conclude with Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, April 25–May 17. Mara Vélez Meléndez’s savagely funny revenge saga will be directed by Javier Antonio González.
 
“I am delighted that Yale Rep will return to a season of five productions in the year ahead. The field-leading artists who will be joining us offer a joyful array of aesthetic sensibilities, personal perspectives, and cultural experiences,” said Artistic Director James Bundy. “The stories they will bring to vivid life for New Haven audiences ask provocative questions about our shared human history as well as our current moment.”
 
Subscriptions­—$127.50 for previews, $150 for weekdays, $200 for weekends and matinees—are available now online at yalerep.org, by phone (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Box Office (1120 Chapel Street). Individual tickets will go on sale at the end of the summer.
  
World Premiere

falcon girls 

By Hilary Bettis
Directed by May Adrales
October 10–November 2
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
 
This is a true story. It's the 90s in rural Falcon, Colorado. Six teenage girls on the FFA horse judging team are determined to make it to nationals come hell or high water. But to do that, they must grapple with jealousy, rivalries, sex, Jesus, AOL chat rooms, impossible expectations, and rumors of a serial killer. Hilary Bettis's falcon girls is an achingly funny and brutally honest coming-of-age memoir––and a love letter to the girls she grew up with and the horses who saved their lives.  

Hilary Bettis is a critically acclaimed playwright, TV writer, and filmmaker. She grew up with horses and chickens in rural Colorado, and with a Chicana mother and Southern Methodist father. Her work is a culmination of these cultures, exploring the American identity through a working-class Latiné lens. Her plays have been developed and produced all over the U.S. and Mexico, including at Roundabout Theatre, New Georges, The Sol Project, Yale Rep, Miami New Drama, Studio Theatre, Alley Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, the Lark Playwrights Workshop at Second Stage, O’Neill NPC, amongst others. She is currently under commission at Roundabout Theatre, Miami New Drama, Untitled Theatricals, and is writing a musical with Grammy-winning composer Julio Reyes Copello. Bettis won the 2019 Writers Guild of America Award for her work on the Emmy Award-winning FX series The Americans. She wrote for the Emmy-nominated Hulu miniseries The Dropout. She is an alumnus of The Sundance Institute Episodic TV Lab, a graduate of The Juilliard School, a board member of New Georges, and proud member of the WGAEast. She lives in New York with her husband and two small humans who cry a lot. She’s represented by CAA and Brillstein.
 
May Adrales (Director) is a director, artistic leader, teacher, and mother; she has directed over 30 world premieres. Her work has been seen most recently at Manhattan Theatre Club (Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone and Poor Yella Rednecks; Felicia Anchuli King's Golden Shield), Second Stage (Rajiv Joseph’s Letters of Suresh), Signature Theatre, LCT3, MCC, Atlantic Theater Company, The Public Theater, WP, New York Theatre Workshop, The Huntington Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, Two River Theater Company, Milwaukee Rep, and South Coast Rep. She was awarded the prestigious Ammerman Award at Arena Stage and Theater Communications Group’s Alan Schneider award for freelance directors and was a finalist for the Zelda Fichandler SDCF awards. She is a Drama League Directing Fellow, Van Lier Directing Fellow, WP Lab Director, SoHo Rep Writers/Directors Lab and New York Theatre Workshop directing fellow, TCG New Generations Grantee, SDC Denham Fellowship, and Paul Green Directing Award. She served as an Associate Artistic Director at Milwaukee Rep, Artistic Associate at The Playwrights Center, Artistic Associate at The Public Theater, and Director of Artistic Programs and Artistic Director at The Lark. She serves on the board of Theater Communications Group. May has directed and taught at Juilliard, Harvard/ART, ACT, Fordham, NYU, and Bard College. May has served on faculty at David Geffen School of Drama and Brown/Trinity MFA program. M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama. She is currently an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Theatre Program at Fordham University. mayadrales.net
 
The Philadelphia Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company, 
and Brooklyn Academy of Music Production of

Macbeth in Stride

Created and Performed by Whitney White
Directed by Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky
Choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly
December 5–14
University Theatre (222 York Street)
 
The Queen is centerstage. In a stacked setlist of original pop, rock, gospel, and R&B bangers, OBIE Award winner Whitney White subverts one of Shakespeare’s most iconic tales. The arc of Lady Macbeth is reimagined as the story of an ambitious Black woman, told through her own contemporary perspective of femininity, desire, and power with a capital P. Dazzlingly theatrical, Macbeth in Stride brings Lady M’s herstory into the 21st century with energy, humor, and swagger to spare.
 
Yale Rep’s 2024–25 Will Power! education program will include a 10AM performance of Macbeth in Stride on December 12 for high school students from New Haven Public Schools, entirely free of charge. For more information on the program, please contact Senior Artistic Producer Amy Boratko at amy.boratko@yale.edu.

Whitney White she/her (Creator) Broadway: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. London: The Secret Life of Bees (The Almeida). Off- Broadway: Soft (MCC Theater), On Sugarland (New York Theatre Workshop), What to Send Up When It Goes Down (The Public Theater, ART, Woolly Mammoth), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (Second Stage, WP Theatre), For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad (Soho Rep), A Human Being of a Sort (Williamsburg). Writing and composition: Macbeth in Stride (American Repertory Theater, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company), Semblance (NYTW). Awards: Herb Alpert, Jerome Fellowship, Rolex Arts Initiative. Television writing: Boots Riley’s I’m A Virgo (Amazon, Media Res). Whitney is an Associate Artist at Roundabout Theatre and Associate Director at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.
 
Taibi Magar (Co-Director) New York/Off-Broadway: The Half-God of Rainfall (New York Theatre Workshop);Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Signature Theatre, Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival); Capsule (The Public Theater); Claudia Rankine’s Help (The Shed); Blue Ridge, The Great Leap (Atlantic Theater Company); Is God Is (Soho Rep.); Master (The Foundry, New York Times Critic’s Pick); Underground Railroad Game (Ars Nova, NYT Critic’s Pick). International: Hamburg Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne), Soho Theatre (London). Selected regional: Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Alley Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, Seattle Rep. Awards: 2018 OBIE Award, 2019 SDC Breakout, Lucille Lortel nomination, 2022 Stephen Sondheim Fellowship, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Fellowship, The Public Theater Shakespeare Fellowship. Taibi serves as Artistic Director of Philadelphia Theatre Company. Training: M.F.A., Brown University; Lincoln Center Directors Lab; NYTW Usual Suspect.
 
Tyler Dobrowsky (Co-Director) New York/Off-Broadway: The Public Theater. Regional: American Repertory Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre, The Gamm Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company. Tyler currently serves as Artistic Director of Philadelphia Theatre Company. Previously served as Artistic Associate Director and Director of New Play Development at Trinity Repertory Company and Practitioner in Residence at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University. Teaching: Brown, NYU, Rhode Island College, UPenn.
 
Raja Feather Kelly (Choreographer) is a choreographer and director, and the artistic director of the dance-theatre-media company the feath3r theory, for which he has created 18 premieres, most recently Ugly Part 3: Blue (Chelsea Factory) and The Absolute Future (NYU Skirball). Kelly's work appears on stages across the country, including Girls at Yale Rep, Bunny Bunny at UC San Diego, and most recently, Teeth at Playwrights Horizons. His choreography was seen in White Girl in Danger at Second Stage Theater. He choreographed the Broadway musicals Lempicka and A Strange Loop (premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon), winner of two Tony Awards, including Best Musical. His Off-Broadway collaborators include Lileana Blain-Cruz, Sarah Benson, and Michael R. Jackson. His work has been seen at Playwrights Horizon, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Soho Rep and New York Live Arts, among many other venues. He's worked on two Pulitzer Prize-winning productions and has received a Princeton Arts speaker Fellowship, three Princess Grace Awards, an OBIE Award, an Outer Critics Circle honor, and many others. Upcoming: The Fires at Soho Rep.

Eden

By Steve Carter
Directed by Brandon J. Dirden
January 16–February 8
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
 
1927, San Juan Hill, a six-block stretch of Manhattan where tensions run deep between its populations of Black Americans and Caribbean immigrants. Eustace, recently transplanted from the South, falls in love with the girl next door, Annetta. But her ironfisted father, Joseph, an ardent Garveyite, has arranged for her to marry another man from the West Indies to protect his bloodline. In Steve Carter’s blistering saga, Eden, clashing ideologies and youthful passions threaten dangerous consequences for two families and their community. 
 
Steve Carter (Playwright) Horace E. “Steve” Carter, Jr. was an American playwright, best known for his plays involving Caribbean immigrants living in the United States. Mr. Carter received the Living Legend award at the 2001 National Black Theatre Festival. He was Victory Gardens Theater’s first playwright-in-residence beginning in 1981, and he also served as playwright-in-residence at George Mason University. Carter’s Pecong (winner of the Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work) premiered at Victory Gardens in the 1989–1990 season and received subsequent productions at London’s Tricycle Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and Newark Symphony Hall. His plays Eden (winner of an Outer Critics Circle Award, an AUDELCO Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award) and Nevis Mountain Dew received Midwest premieres; and Dame Lorraine, House of Shadows, Shoot Me While I’m Happy, Spiele ’36, or the Fourth Medal, and Root Causes all premiered at Victory Gardens. Mr. Carter died at the age of 90 in 2020.
 
Brandon J. Dirden (Director) recently appeared on Broadway starring in the Tony Award-winning production of Take Me Out and Skeleton Crew for which he received a Drama Desk nomination.  He also appeared on Broadway as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Tony Award-winning production of All the Way, with Bryan Cranston; as well as in the Tony Award winning revival of August Wilson's Jitney; Clybourne Park; Enron; and Prelude to a Kiss. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in The Piano Lesson, for which he won OBIE, Theatre World, and AUDELCO awards; The First Breeze of Summer, Day of Absence (Signature Theatre); Detroit ’67 (The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem); Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop); and as Brutus in Julius Caesar (Theatre for a New Audience). On screen he has appeared in The Good Wife, For Life, Evil,The Big C, Public Morals, Manifest, The Get Down, The Accidental Wolf, Blue Bloods, The Quad, the FX miniseries Mrs. America, and four seasons of FX’s The Americans as Agent Dennis Aderholt. He has directed numerous plays by Dominique Morriseau and August Wilson and recently Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress for Two River Theater. Brandon is an Associate Arts Professor on the faculty of Tisch Grad Acting at NYU; a frequent volunteer at the 52nd Street Project; and a proud member of both Actors’ Equity Association and Fair Wage On Stage. 
 

Nikolai Gogol’s 

The Inspector

Newly Adapted and Directed by Yura Kordonsky
March 7–29
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
 
An entire town is plunged into terror as it frantically hides its grift and incompetence from the prying eyes of an undercover inspector. But the cons are about to get conned: the mysterious stranger accepting every bauble, coin, and advance thrown his way is not who he seems to be. Everyone is on the take––or the make––in this outrageously anarchic comedy of errors. Yura Kordonsky’s adaptation of Gogol’s timeless masterpiece, The Inspector, is both the moving drama of a community desperate for a better life and a farce exposing the absurd lengths to which they go in its pursuit.
 
Yale Rep’s 2024–25 Will Power! education program will include 10AM performances of The Inspector on March 25 and 26 for high school students from New Haven Public Schools, entirely free of charge. For more information on the program, please contact Senior Artistic Producer Amy Boratko at amy.boratko@yale.edu.
 
Yura Kordonsky (Director) Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Yura received his M.F.A. degrees in acting and directing from the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theatre Arts, Russia, under the direction of Lev Dodin. He has taught, performed, and directed internationally since 1989. Directing credits include his original play Disappearance and House of Bernarda Alba (Maly Drama Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia); Uncle Vanya, The Marriage, Crime and Punishment, Marble, Bury Me Under the Baseboard, and Zinc Boys (Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest, Romania); The Lower Depths, The Cherry Orchard (Hungarian Theatre, Cluj, Romania); The Encounter (UNESCO ITI congress, Manila, Philippines); Fatherlessness (Orkeny Szinhaz, Budapest); Last Day of Youth (National Theatre “Radu Stanca,” Sibiu, Romania); The Seagull, Erendira (German National Theatre, Timisoara, Romania); The Heart of a Dog, Romeo and Juliet (National Theatre, Bucharest); Peer Gynt, Oedipus Rex, The Bald Soprano (Wesleyan University); A Diary of a Madman (West End Theatre, Gloucester, Massachusetts); and Canterbury Tales (Riverside Theater, New York), among others. International awards include Golden Light, Governor’s Award, and Bravo Award for Best Production (Russia), Union of European Theatres’ Award for Best Production (Italy), multiple UNITER Awards for Best Production and Best Director (Romania), and the Special Prize of the Romanian Ministry of Culture. In the U.S., he has taught at Wesleyan University, where he served as Professor and Chair of Theater Department, Columbia University, UC San Diego, George Washington University, Colgate University, and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. He currently serves as Associate Chair of Directing and Professor in the Practice of Directing at David Geffen School of Drama.
 

Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members

By Mara Vélez Meléndez
Directed by Javier Antonio González
April 25–May 17
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
 
Early one morning, Lolita, a young Boricua trans woman arrives at a suspicious (let’s say evil) Wall Street office with a mission: to take down all seven members of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board. Much to her surprise, the receptionist who welcomes her has, more than a story to tell, a show to put on. A revenge saga giving existential drag extravaganza, Mara Vélez Meléndez’s savagely funny play takes aim at the unelected officials who think they know what’s best for the people––and for our own bodies––and the elected ones who appoint them.
 
Mara Vélez Meléndez she/her (Playwright) is a playwright born and raised in Puerto Rico. Her Off-Broadway debut took place in 2022 with Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, produced by Soho Rep and The Sol Project. Mara was a 2023 MacDowell Fellow, a 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, and a member of Ars Nova's PlayGroup. She also adapted the Spotify/Gimlet podcast, Case 63, starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac. Other plays include Baby, I Fell In Love With The Computer (2023 Ars Nova Out Loud), This Is Not The Oxcart (Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission Finalist), and Thelma and Louise and the Time Machine (2022 Breaking The Binary Theater Festival). Playwriting M.F.A.: Hunter College.
 
Javier Antonio González (Director) is a playwright, director, and filmmaker who has served as the founding artistic director of CABORCA. Some of their authorial work with the company includes Lying Lydia; Distant Star (adapted from Roberto Bolaño’s novel); Zoetrope; Open up, Hadrian; Barceloneta, de noche; FLORIDITA, my Love; and their first feature film, The Entitlement. In 2016, they directed their original translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for Teatro en el Parque. Their work has been published in the anthologies Plays and Playwrights 2011 (New York Theatre Experience), Encuentro: Latine Performance for the New American Theater (Northwestern University Press), and in the journals Revista Conjunto (Casa de las Americas, Havana), The Puerto Rico Review, and Los Bárbaros (Spain). Javier holds a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico and an M.F.A. from Columbia University School of the Arts. They were a Van Lier Directing Fellow and a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. Recent directorial work: Electra and the devised work Inspired by French Cinema at Barnard College, The Lower Depths at NYU, and Iphigenia Among the Taurians at The New School.

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