Trip Cullman Will Direct Leslye Headland's CULT OF LOVE on Broadway as Part of Second Stage's Fall Season

Leslye Headland's Cult of Love is headed to Broadway later this year as part of Second Stage Theater's upcoming fall season. Additionally, Donald Margulies’ Lunar Eclipse will open off-Broadway this fall.

Emmy Award-nominee Leslye Headland’s (Bachelorette, “Star Wars: The Acolyte,” “Russian Doll”) play, CULT OF LOVE, will play on Broadway at the Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street), directed by Drama League Award-nominee Trip Cullman (2ST’s Lobby Hero, Choir Boy). This production will mark Ms. Headland’s Broadway debut.

The New York premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies’ (Dinner with Friends, Collected Stories) play, LUNAR ECLIPSE, will be directed by Drama League Award-winner Kate Whoriskey (2ST’s The Apiary, 2ST’s Clyde’s), off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street). The production will  star Tony Award-winner Reed Birney (Mass, The Humans) and Drama Desk Award-nominee Lisa Emery (“Ozark,” A Kind of Alaska). 

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

“I’m excited and proud to be working with these incredible artists next season,” said Interim Artistic Director Bennett Leak.  “I have had the opportunity to collaborate with several of them at Second Stage and I look forward to joining forces once again. We will welcome audiences back for Season 46, where they can expect another year of innovative artists and bold plays by living American writers.”

Full Season Subscriptions are now available, 5-Play packages are $425. For those 30 years of age and younger, Flip the Script 5 Play packages are $150. To purchase a subscription, please visit 2ST.com or call 212-246-4422. Subscribers receive early access to a winter festival of plays and readings by new American writers.  

CULT OF LOVE

New York Premiere on Broadway at Hayes Theater

By Emmy Award Nominee Leslye Headland

Directed by Drama Desk Award Nominee Trip Cullman

Performances begin Wednesday, November 20

Opening Thursday, December 12

It’s the holiday season for the Dahl family! The four adult children return to their childhood home with partners in tow. The Dahl traditions include singing carols in harmony at the drop of a hat, but the gathering is anything but harmonious. Old conflicts resurface, new issues battled, and dinner is taking absolutely forever to be served. Will the love the Dahls have for each other be enough to get them through, or will this be their last Christmas together? 

Emmy® Award nominee Leslye Headland (Bachelorette, “Star Wars: The Acolyte,” “Russian Doll”) has written an equally heartwarming and heartbreaking new play about the things that bind families together... or tear them apart.  

Leslye Headland is an Emmy®-nominated writer, producer and director. She returns to Second Stage Theater, which produced her play, “Bachelorette,” in its Uptown Series, and her play, “The Layover,” off-Broadway at the Kiser Theater.  Headland began her career writing and directing the “Seven Deadly Plays” series, which included both Bachelorette and Assistance, with IAMA Theatre Company. Her film directorial debut was an adaptation of “Bachelorette,” starring Kirsten Dunst, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. 

Headland recently completed “Star Wars: The Acolyte” for the Disney+ streaming platform. She serves as writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner. Headland served as writer, producing director and showrunner for Netflix’s acclaimed series “Russian Doll.” The series was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards and nine Creative Arts Emmy Awards, winning three for production design, cinematography and contemporary costumes. She recently directed and executive produced the pilot for the Freeform series “Single Drunk Female.” Headland’s additional TV writing/directing credits include pilots for HBO, ABC and NBC, as well as “Terriers” (FX), “BluntTalk” (Starz), “SMILF,” “Black Monday” (Showtime), and “Heathers” (Paramount). Headland’s other film credits include writing the 2014 remake of “About Last Night,” starring Kevin Hart and writing/directing “Sleeping with Other People,” starring Jason Sudeikis, which also premiered at Sundance in 2015. 

 Leslye Headland is an Emmy®-nominated writer, producer and director. She returns to Second Stage Theater, which produced her play,Bachelorette, in its Uptown Series, and her play, The Layover, off-Broadway at the Kiser Theater.  Headland began her career writing and directing the “Seven Deadly Plays” series, which included both Bachelorette and Assistance, with IAMA Theatre Company. Her directorial debut was an adaptation of “Bachelorette,” starring Kirsten Dunst, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Headland served as writer, producing director and showrunner for Netflix’s acclaimed series “Russian Doll” (co-created by Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler). The series was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards and nine Creative Arts Emmy Awards, winning three for production design, cinematography and contemporary costumes. She recently directed and executive produced the pilot for the Freeform series “Single Drunk Female.” Headland’s additional TV writing/directing credits include pilots for HBO, ABC and NBC, as well as “Terriers” (FX), “BluntTalk” (Starz), “SMILF” and “Black Monday” (Showtime), and “Heathers” (Paramount). Headland’s other film credits include writing the 2014 remake of “About Last Night,” starring Kevin Hart and writing/directing “Sleeping with Other People,” starring Jason Sudeikis, which also premiered at Sundance in 2015. 

Trip Cullman (Director). Broadway: The Rose Tattoo, Choir Boy, Lobby Hero (Tony nom., Best Revival), Six Degrees of Separation (Tony nom., Best Revival), Significant Other. Select Off Broadway: I Can Get It For You Wholesale (Best Revival, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle) (CSC); The Lonely Few, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, YEN, Punk Rock (Obie Award), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City (MCC); Days Of Rage, The Layover, The Substance of Fire, Lonely I’m Not, Bachelorette, Some Men, Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage); Unknown Soldier, The Pain Of My Belligerence, Assistance, A Small Fire (Drama Desk nomination, Best Direction), The Drunken City  (Playwrights Horizons); Choir Boy (MTC); Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theatre); The Mother, I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic); Roulette (EST); The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick); The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center); Dog Sees God (Century Center); US Drag (stageFARM); and several productions with The Play Company. London: The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, PA (Tricycle). Select regional: Berkeley Rep, Geffen, Arena, Alliance, Old Globe, La Jolla, South Coast Rep, Bay Street, Williamstown Theater Festival.

LUNAR ECLIPSE

New York Premiere at off-Broadway’s Tony Kiser Theater

By Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies

Directed by Drama League Award-winner Kate Whoriskey

Starring Tony Award-winner Reed Birney and Drama Desk Award-nominee Lisa Emery

Performances begin Wednesday, October 9

Opening Wednesday, October 30 

Maybe forgetting yourself once in a while is a good thing.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends, Collected Stories) comes a stirring new play about the fragility of memory and the passage of time.

Late on a summer night, in a field on their Kentucky farm, a long-married couple, George (Birney) and Em (Emery), have come to watch a lunar eclipse. As the seven stages of the celestial phenomenon unfold, the two sip bourbon and reflect on land and legacy, and children and dogs.  But as more and more is revealed, they realize they are as much a mystery to each other as the heavens above.  Lunar Eclipse is the funny, moving, universal story of a couple reckoning with the time they’ve spent on earth and the time they have left.

Donald Margulies (Playwright) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends and was a finalist twice for Sight Unseen and Collected Stories. His many plays include Long Lost, The Country House, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Brooklyn Boy, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong With This Picture?, Found a Peanut, Coney Island Christmas, God of Vengeance, the Tony Award-nominated Time Stands Still, and the Obie Award-winning The Model Apartment. His work has been seen on- and off-Broadway at MTC, Primary Stages, Roundabout, and The Public Theater; and at major regional theaters across the United States and in cities all over the world including London, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Tokyo, Mumbai, Berlin, Vienna, Sydney, Bucharest, Copenhagen, and Paris. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation and has been a fellow at MacDowell and the Hermitage Artists’ Retreat. Honors include the two Dramatists’ Guild/Hull-Warriner Awards, the Sidney Kingsley Award for Achievement by a playwright, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award, the William Inge Award, and the Thornton Wilder Prize. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The film of his screenplay, The End of the Tour, premiered at Sundance and was nominated for Film Independent Spirit and USC Scripter Awards. A proud lifetime member of both the Writers’ and Dramatists’ Guilds, he is a Professor in the Practice of English and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University.   

Kate Whoriskey (Director) is a prolific theater director whose work has been seen on Broadway, off-Broadway and regionally. On Broadway, she directed Clyde’s, Sweat and the revival of The Miracle Worker. Off Broadway credits include The Apiary, Letters from Max, All the Natalie Portmans, Ruined, Songs for a New World, Her Requiem, How I Learned to Drive among others. She has directed acclaimed productions at theaters across the country including the Goodman, the Geffen, South Coast Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, Shakespeare Theatre, The American Repertory Theatre, the Huntington, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, and Arena among others. Her opera direction has been seen at the Chatelet in Paris and Teatro Municipal in Brazil.  

Reed Birney (George) has been working in film, television, and theater for decades. Among his earliest credits are Albert Innaurato’s Broadway comedy Gemini in 1974 and Arthur Penn’s Four Friends in 1981. A celebrated member of the New York theatre community, Reed has won a Tony and numerous other awards and nominations for plays including The Humans, Casa Valentina, Man from Nebraska, Uncle Vanya, Blasted, and Circle Mirror Transformation. Most recently he starred opposite his son Ephraim Birney in Chester Bailey at Irish Rep, and in the highly successful run of Donald Margulies’ Lunar Eclipse at Shakespeare & Company. On television, he can be seen recurring opposite Kim Kardashian in the current season of “American Horror Story.” He was also recently seen in Peacock's “Poker Face,” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” Other TV credits include HBO’s “Succession” and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as the Apple TV+ series “Home Before Dark.” He is also well known for his performance as Vice President Donald Blythe in the Netflix series “House of Cards.” In film, Reed received a Gotham Award nomination for his performance in the Bleecker Street feature Mass opposite Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, and Martha Plimpton. The film’s cast was also honored with the Robert Altman award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Reed also appeared in The Menu opposite Ralph Fiennes. Other recent film credits include the Universal/Blumhouse thriller The Hunt and Netflix’s The Forty-Year-Old Version and Lost Girls, as well as Strawberry Mansion. Later this year he will be seen in Kevin Costner’s epic western, Horizon: An American Saga.  Reed lives in New York.

Lisa Emery (Em) is an award-winning actress, best known for her role of Darlene Snell in Netflix’s crime drama “Ozark” alongside Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. Additional television credits include “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” “Blindspot,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Sinner,” “Jessica Jones,” and “Elementary.” She was last seen on stage in the Broadway revival of Six Degrees of Separation in 2017. She has also been seen in Second Stage Theater’s production of Lonely, I’m Not in 2012, following her role in Atlantic Theater Company’s double bill of The Collection & A Kind of Alaska: Two Plays by Harold Pinter in 2011, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.