Filmmaker Abel Ferrara To Make Broadway Debut Directing SHORT EYES Revival

Filmmaker Abel Ferrara has been signed on to helm the revival of Miguel Pinero's 1974 play "Short Eyes". This will mark Ferrara's Broadway debut.

"Short Eyes" is meant to hit the Main Stem in a limited run for the 2010-11 season. Casting has not yet begun.

Producers for the show have also been named and include Carl Rumbaugh, Susan Batson, Antone Pagan and Charles Rosen. There is already a producing history between Rumbaugh and Batson, who worked together during "A Raisin In The Sun".

"Short Eyes" is a 1974 drama written by playwright Miguel Piñero. The play premiered off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater on 28 February 1974, and transferred after 54 performances to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre on Broadway on 23 May 1974. Short Eyes, prison slang for a pedophile, was written for a prisoners' writing workshop during Pinero's incarceration for armed robbery.

The play is set in an unnamed House of Detention in New York City, the prisoners of which are predominately black or Hispanic. One day, a new prisoner is brought in: Clark Davis, a young, middle-class white man accused of raping a young girl. His fellow prisoners immediately turn on him - child molesters are considered the lowest form of prison life - except for Juan, one of the institution's older prisoners, who treats him with dignity. While Davis insists he doesn't remember raping the girl, he admits that he has molested several other children.

According to Variety, "Rumbaugh, who pegged the production's capitalization costs at $2.7 million, said he anticipated producers would begin looking to fill the play's cast of about a dozen actors with thesps who have previously worked with Ferrara."

Production designer Frank DeCurtis will do the sets, with Leonard Soloway signed on as general manager.