NYTW's 2016-17 Season Will Include Daniel Craig & David Oyelowo-Led OTHELLO & More!

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) (Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Jeremy Blocker) has just announced its complete 2016/17 Season. The season will kick-off in Fall 2016 with NAT TURNER IN JERUSALEM by NYTW 2050 Fellow Nathan Alan Davis(Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea), directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian (The Convert). It is followed by the previously announced production of William Shakespeare's OTHELLO, directed by NYTW Usual Suspect and Tony Award winner Sam Gold (Fun Home) and featuring David Oyelowo (Royal Shakespeare Company's The Histories, Selma) in the title role and Daniel Craig (Betrayal, Spectre) as 'Iago', in Winter 2016. Spring 2017 will bring THE OBJECT LESSON, by Geoff Sobelle (all wear bowlers), directed by NYTW Usual Suspect David Neumann (Restless Eye), with scenic installation by Steven Dufala. The season will conclude with NYTW Usual Suspect Mfoniso Udofia's SOJOURNERS and HER PORTMANTEAU, presented in repertory, directed by NYTW Usual Suspect and former 2050 Fellow Ed Sylvanus Iskandar (The Mysteries). Performance schedules, casting and full creative teams will be announced at a later date.

In August 1831, Nat Turner led a slave uprising that shook the conscience of the nation. Turner's startling account of his prophecy and the insurrection was recorded and published by attorney Thomas R. Gray. NYTW 2050 Fellow Nathan Alan Davis makes his New York debut with a timely new play that imagines Turner's final night in a jail cell in Jerusalem, Virginia, as he is revisited by Gray and they reckon with what has passed and what the dawn will bring. Woven with vivid imagery and indelible lyricism, NAT TURNER IN JERUSALEM examines the power of an individual's resolute convictions and their seismic reverberations through time. The production is scheduled for Fall 2016, with dates to be announced.

Actor-illusionist-inventor Geoff Sobelle's "virtuosic" New York Times Critics Pick THE OBJECT LESSON comes to NYTW for a strictly limited engagement. This immersive theatrical installation turns the theatre into a storage facility of gargantuan proportion where audiences are free to roam and poke through the clutter. Sobelle transforms this makeshift attic into a space of reflection and wonder as he unpacks our relationship to everyday objects: breaking, buying, finding, fixing, giving, losing, winning, trading, selling, stealing, storing, collecting, cluttering, clearing, packing up, passing on, buried under... a world of things. THE OBJECT LESSON is a meditation on the stuff we cling to and the crap we leave behind. The production begins performances in Spring 2017, with dates to be announced.

In a two-part theatrical event, NYTW Usual Suspect Ed Sylvanus Iskandar brings to life the singularly poetic world of playwright and NYTW Usual Suspect Mfoniso Udofia's SOJOURNERS and HER PORTMANTEAU. Performed in repertory, these two chapters of Udofia's sweeping, nine-part saga, The Ufot Cycle, chronicle the triumphs and losses of the tenacious matriarch of a Nigerian family.

In SOJOURNERS, a young, pregnant Abasiama struggles with the responsibilities of her arranged marriage as her husband becomes seduced by 1970s American culture. Intent on finishing her university studies so that she can return to Nigeria, Abasiama weighs her dreams and obligations as she attempts to move forward. Decades later, the full impact of her decision erupts when Abasiama's family is reunited in HER PORTMANTEAU. As Nigerian traditions clash with the realities of American life, Abasiama and her daughters must confront complex familial legacies that span time, geography, language and culture. Presented in two parts, this heartrending pairing probes into the ties that bind mothers and daughters and how we define home. SOJOURNERS and HER PORTMANTEAU are produced in association with The Playwrights Realm (Katherine Kovner, Artistic Director Roberta Pereira, Producing Director) who premieredSOJOURNERS last winter in a limited engagement world premiere production. The two plays will be presented in rep at NYTW in Spring 2017, with dates to be announced.

2016/17 Season membership packages are now on sale at www.nytw.org or by calling 212-460-5475 (Monday-Friday noon-6pm; closed Saturday and Sunday).

OTHELLO is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Beginning May 6 at NYTW is the world premiere of a new folk opera, HADESTOWN, by singer-songwriterAnaïs Mitchell, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812). Previews for HADESTOWN begin Friday, May 6, 2016, with an opening night set for Monday, May 23, 2016.

New York Theatre Workshop, now in its fourth decade of incubating important new works of theatre, continues to honor its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape all our lives. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village, NYTW presents four new productions, over 80 readings and numerous workshop productions for over 45,000 audience members. NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs, including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies and artist fellowships. Since its founding, NYTW has produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent; Tony Kushner's Slavs! andHomebody/Kabul; Doug Wright's Quills; Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus; Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen'sAftermath; Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher; Enda Walsh's Once; and seven acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW's productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, seventeen Tony Awards and assorted Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NYTW:

www.nytw.org