Pascale Armand, Fedna Jacquet & More to Star in BAD KREYOL World Premiere

Signature Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club have revealed the cast of their world premiere co-production of Dominique Morisseau’s Bad Kreyol, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, which will play October 8 – December 1 on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Bad Kreyol kicks off Signature’s 2024-25 season with this work commissioned by the organization, which concludes the playwright’s critically acclaimed Premiere Residency.

Morisseau’s work at Signature has, throughout her residency, burrowed into the fault lines of America’s stratified socioeconomic landscape. In this play set in Port-au-Prince, Morisseau turns her knack for meticulous social anatomization outward.

Manhattan Theatre Club is working with Morisseau again following the 2021 Tony Award-winning, sold-out run of Skeleton Crew, which received three Tony nominations and earned Phylicia Rashad her second Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play.

Bad Kreyol follows Simone, first-generation Haitian American, and her cousin Gigi, Haitian born and raised, who reunite to honor their grandmother’s dying wish for them to reconnect. Simone’s pilgrimage back to her ancestral homeland forces both cousins to confront their differing world views, the presence of NGOs in Haiti, and the plagued dynamic between Haiti and the U.S.

Bad Kreyol’s cast includes Pascale Armand (Broadway: Eclipsed, The Trip to Bountiful) as Gigi, Fedna Jacquet (Broadway: Ain’t No Mo; Off-Broadway: Gloria: A Life) as Lovelie, Andy Lucien (Off-Broadway: sandblasted, The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias) as Thomas, Kelly McCreary (Broadway: Passing Strange; TV: “Grey's Anatomy”) as Simone, and Jude Tibeau (Regional: What Will Happen To All That Beauty, The Hot Wing King) as Pita. Casting by Sujotta Pace; additional casting by Caparelliotis Casting.

Morisseau said, “My residency with Signature has given me such a gift as a playwright that I'm only realizing as it comes to an end how much comfort it has provided me. For the past five to seven years of my life (thank you, pandemic), I have not known the angst that many of us playwrights are familiar with, that unsettled feeling of not knowing where the play you have written will be produced, if anywhere. I forgot what it has meant to be without a theater home, with no brick and mortar to call yours as a playwright. I have been privileged and very fortunate to have the peace of mind that the work I'm creating will not go into the abyss, that there is a whole community ready to welcome my new pages and prepare them for the stage. I'm also pleased and excited that, as the residency comes to a close, Manhattan Theatre Club has joined with Signature to produceBad Kreyol.”