Scott Rudin Pulls Out of Producing CLYBOURNE PARK; Broadway Transfer in Jeopardy

CLYBOURNE PARK, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Bruce Norris, opened in Los Angeles on January 25th to rave reviews and it was announced on January 18th, one week into LA previews, that the show would open on Broadway on Thursday, April 12th at the Walter Kerr Theatre. 

Today, Michael Riedel reports in The New York Post, and BroadwayWorld.com has confirmed, that lead producer Scott Rudin has backed out of producing the Broadway production, which is now agressively hunting for a new producer to bring the show to the Greate White Way. 

The original cast of the 2010 world premiere Playwrights Horizons production (Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos and Frank Wood), currently performing at Center Theater Group’s Mark Taper Forum through February 26, was expected to make the move to Broadway.

The entire original Playwrights Horizons’ off-Broadway cast, along with original director Pam MacKinnon, has also reunited for the Los Angeles production which began previews January 11 and continues through February 26.

In CLYBOURNE PARK, which also won the Olivier Award for Best New Play, Norris imagines the history of one of the more important houses in literary history, both before and after it becomes a focal point in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic “A Raisin in the Sun.” In 1959, the house, which is located in a white neighborhood at 406 Clybourne St. in Chicago, is sold to an African-American family (the Younger family in “A Raisin in the Sun”). Then in 2009 after the neighborhood has changed into an African-American community, the house is sold to a white couple. It is through this prism of property ownership that Norris’ lacerating sense of humor dissects race relations and middle class hypocrisies in America.

CLYBOURNE PARK features scenic design by Daniel Ostling, costume design by Ilona Somogyi, lighting design by Allen Lee Hughes and sound design by John Gromada. The production stage manager is C.A. Clark.

Other plays by Bruce Norris include “The Infidel” (2000), “Purple Heart” (2002), “We All Went Down to Amsterdam” (2003 – Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), “The Pain and the Itch” (2004 – Jefferson Award) and “The Unmentionables” (2006), all of which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre. His work has also been produced at Lookingglass Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre (Washington, D.C.), The Royal Court Theatre (London) and The Staatstheater Mainz (Germany). He is the recipient of the 2009 Steinberg Playwright Award, the Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama, and the Kesselring Prize, Honorable Mention.