SAINT JOAN, Starring Condola Rashad, Will Bring Religious Icon to Broadway This Spring

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) and Barry Grove (Executive Producer) have announced that Manhattan Theatre Club will produce a new Broadway production of Saint Joan, written by Nobel Prize in Literature and Academy Award winner Bernard Shaw and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan (Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Proof), starring three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad (A Doll's House, Part 2, "Billions").

Saint Joan will begin previews Tuesday, April 3, 2018 ahead of a Wednesday, April 25, 2018 opening night at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street).

Three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad (A Doll's House, Part 2) will star as one of history's greatest heroines in a major new production of Bernard Shaw's epic work directed by Daniel Sullivan (Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes).

Set in 15th century France, Saint Joan follows a country girl whose mysterious visions propel her into elite circles. When the nation's rulers become threatened by her popularity and influence, they unite to bring her down and she finds herself on trial for her life. This timeless and powerful play dramatizes the limits of an individual in a society dominated by overwhelming political and religious forces.

Additional casting and creative team will be announced at a later date.

Saint Joan completes the lineup for Manhattan Theatre Club's 2017-2018 season, which also includes the currently running American premiere of Prince of Broadway and the previously announced American premiere of The Children at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre; the world premiere of The Portuguese Kid, The New York premiere of In the Body of the Worldand the world premiere of Dan Cody's Yacht at New York City Center - Stage I; and The New York premiere of Actually and the world premiere of Sugar in Our Wounds at MTC at the Studio At Stage II - Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Series.

Manhattan Theatre Club, under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, has become one of the country's most prominent and prestigious theatre companies. Over the past four and a half decades, MTC productions have earned numerous awards including six Pulitzer Prizes and 23 Tony Awards. MTC has a Broadway home at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and two Off-Broadway theatres at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). Renowned MTC productions include Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes; August Wilson's Jitney; Cost of Living by Martyna Majok; Vietgone by Qui Nguyen; Sell/Buy/Date by Sarah Jones; Heisenberg by Simon Stephens; The Father by Florian Zeller with translation by Christopher Hampton; Fool For Love by Sam Shepard; Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein; Outside Mullingar and Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; Murder Ballad by Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash; Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney; The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg; Wit by Margaret Edson; Venus in Fur by David Ives; Good People and Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire; The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez; Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies; Ruined by Lynn Nottage; Proof by David Auburn; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch; Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally; The Piano Lesson by August Wilson; Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley; and Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller musical. For more information on MTC, visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

Bernard Shaw (Playwright - 1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist; as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891) he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Plays Unpleasant (1898). Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of conventions, his keen dialectic interest, and verbal wit turn the stage into a forum of ideas in plays including Widowers' Houses, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man, The Man of Destiny, Man and Superman, Back to Methuselah, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles and the Lion,Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma, Candida, and Pygmalion. In his masterpiece, Saint Joan (1923), he rewrites the well-known story of the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's plays their special flavor. His complete works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his death.

Daniel Sullivan (Director). MTC directorial credits include Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, The Country House, The Snow Geese, The Columnist, Lost Lake, Accent on Youth, Good People, Time Stands Still, Rabbit Hole, After the Night and the Music, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, Psycopathia Sexualis, and Proof. He has directed over 30 Broadway productions and at least as many Off-Broadway, including ten for The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. He served as Artistic Director of Seattle Repertory Theatre from 1981 - 97. He is the Swanlund Professor of Theatre at University of Illinois, Champaign -Urbana.

Condola Rashad (Joan) recently earned her third Tony Award nomination for her return to the Broadway stage in Lucas Hnath's Tony-nominated new play A Doll's House, Part 2, opposite Emmy Award-winner Laurie Metcalf, Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper and Tony Award-winner Jayne Houdyshell. Rashad began her career onstage and debuted off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club playing a young girl in a brothel in Lynn Nottage's 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined. She was nominated for Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards for her roles in Lydia Diamond's Stick Fly and the late Horton Foote's The Trip To Bountiful, opposite Cicely Tyson. In 2013, Rashad played "Juliet" to critical acclaim on Broadway, opposite Orlando Bloom's "Romeo." Earlier this year, Rashad completed production on the Netflix film Come Sunday, which reunites her with director Joshua Marston and in which she stars opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor. In Spring of 2016, Rashad completed production on Academy Award nominee Milcho Manchevski's independent film Bikini Moon, which she stars in as the title character. Later that year, Rashad was seen co-starring in Joshua Marston's Complete Unknown opposite Michael Shannon and Rachel Weisz, and in Jodie Foster's Money Monster, opposite George Clooney and Julia Roberts. On television, Rashad is known for her series regular role as the young, motivated Assistant District Attorney "Kate Sacker" in Showtime's acclaimed series "Billions", which will return for a third season early next year. Previous television and film credits include a recurring role on NBC's "Smash" and a starring turn in the Lifetime remake of Steel Magnolias, as well as appearances in Sex And The City 2, "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" and "The Good Wife." A graduate of California Institute of the Arts, Condola currently resides in New York.