New Streaming Theater Company New Normal Rep Announced, Featuring Inaugural Four Play Season

New Normal Rep, a new streaming theater company dedicated to producing reflective and inclusive plays, has announced its inaugural four play season featuring works by playwrights Julia Blauvelt (Airline Disaster, Youthful Journeys of the World), Jack Canfora (Fellow Travelers, Jericho, and Poetic License), Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated playwright Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics, Two Sisters and a Piano), and Obie winner and Pulitzer nominee Nikkole Salter (In the Continuum, Carnaval).

All productions will be streamed on demand at: NewNormalRep.org.

Jericho, the first play, which streams March 4 - April 4, will be directed by four-time Academy Award nominee Marsha Mason (The Goodbye Girl, Chapter Two); and feature Golden Globe and an Obie Award winner and Emmy nominee Jill Eikenberry (Uncommon Women and Others, "LA Law").

The second play, Two Sisters and a Piano, written and directed by Nilo Cruz, streams April 21 - May 23 and will star Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-winner Jimmy Smits (Anna in the Tropics, "The West Wing," "LA Law"). Additional details will be announced in the coming weeks.

NNR, New Normal Rep exists not in spite of the pandemic, but because of it.Dedicated to presenting new and lesser known plays, via the internet, NNR will present works with divergent perspectives that explore the historical, cultural, and psychological forces that have helped to shape our 21st Century lives.

NNR is committed to anti-racism training as well as partnership with BIPOC organizations to ensure that diversity is present in the curation of our seasons and the assembling of our companies.

Above all, NNR is dedicated to producing deeply entertaining, engaging and illuminating work. NNR streaming productions strive to be as unZoom-like as possible. While actors will prerecord their performances from their respective homes, green screen technology and state of the art editing will be utilized to realize quality productions.

NNR has announced details of its first two plays:

JERICHO

by Jack Canfora

directed by Marsha Mason

with C.K. Allen, Jill Eikenberry, Eleanor Handley, Jason O'Connell,

Michael Satow & Carol Todd

Streaming March 4 - April 4

Several years years after tragedy impacted their lives, a family comes together once again for Thanksgiving dinner. While family members struggle to come to terms with residual anger, grief and guilt, Jack Canfora's thought-provoking play explores how people cope with personal and collective catastrophe. Displaying surprising humor and biting wit, this Jericho, Long Island clan exposes their desperate strategies for resolution and redemption. Jericho is a play about September 11. It is also a traumatic-Thanksgiving-dinner-with-the-family play and a play about being Jewish. Canfora wrote Jericho in the first decade of the 2000s as an inquiry into America's burgeoning tribalism. More than a decade later, Jericho's themes of division remain timely in this humorous work that resolves into a meditation on the pains and satisfactions of living after a tragedy. Jericho premiered in 2013 at 59E59 Theatres.

TWO SISTERS AND A PIANO

written & directed by Nilo Cruz

starring Jimmy Smits

Streaming April 21 - May 23

Set in 1991, during the Pan American Games in Havana and while the Russians are pulling out of Cuba, this play portrays two sisters, Maria Celia, a novelist, and Sofia, a pianist, serving time under house arrest. Passion infiltrates politics when a lieutenant assigned to their case becomes infatuated with Maria Celia, whose literature he has been reading. Two Sisters and a Piano premiered in 1999.

Details about the third and fourth plays by Nikkole Salter and Julia Blauvelt, along with online social events, Q&As and more, will be announced in the coming weeks.

"This is a significant moment. We opt to work, to create theatre. We are thrilled about the creation of New Normal Rep and this dynamic inaugural season," says Jack Canfora, Artistic Director. It began with casual conversations at the beginning of the pandemic and expanded into something substantive, NNR is a theatre company for our world today. We strive to illuminate and warm, to offer eclectic stories from diverse voices that will intrigue and unite us, and so much more."

"As theater people, we always knew that our craft had value," says Jill Eikenberry, founding artist, NNR. "But since the plague has descended on us and the possibility of theater has been taken away, we have come to understand more deeply our need to tell stories and the audiences need to hear them."

"Online theater is a New Medium with unique challenges, but we also believe it presents unique opportunities," says Sally Kilingenstein-Martell, Executive Producer, NNR. "For too many years, high quality theater has felt out of reach financially and culturally to too many people. New Normal Rep can, in a small way, aims to help in bridging this disconnect by providing affordable, diverse, high quality theater to a literally limitless audience."

The New Normal Rep Board of Directors includes: Jeffrey Bean, Jack Canfora, Jill Eikenberry, Melanye Duschene Finister, Eleanor Handley, Melissa Joyner, Sally Klingenstein-Martell, Maria Gabriella Landers, John Schaeffler, Carol Todd

Tickets for upcoming NNR productions are $25, $10 for students and theater professionals, and can now be purchased at www.NewNormalRep.org. Four-play subscriptions are available for $100, and include free access to special programming including live play-readings, special Q&A discussions and virtual happy hours.