Vineyard Theatre Sets World Premiere & New York Premiere for 2023-24 Season

Vineyard Theatre has revealed the company’s upcoming 41st Season which will include two full productions. The season will begin with the world premiere of Scene Partners by John J. Caswell Jr. (Wet Brain), Vineyard Theatre’s 2020-21 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award winner, directed by Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin(Hadestown), starring two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway, Happy Days) and the New York City premiere of Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy by Sarah Gancher (Hundred Days, Richard Rodgers Award), directed by Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder). Both productions will open at Vineyard Theatre (108 East 15th Street). 
 
The Vineyard's 2023-2024 Artists-in-Residence include Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Nazareth Hassan, and a.k. payne.  The recipients of The Vineyard’s 2023-2024 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, Colman Domingo Awardand Susan Stroman Directing Award residencies will be announced later this fall. 
 
Artistic Director Sarah Stern says, "We are excited to bring audiences two extraordinary shows this season, written by two of the most gifted and original playwrights in the theatre. John J. Caswell, Jr. was a resident artist at the Vineyard as the recipient of our Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and when he gave us his first draft of Scene Partners, we knew instantly that we had to bring it to the stage. It's a wildly imaginative and deeply felt tale of a woman determined to pursue her dreams in Hollywood, and it will open our season in the fall, directed by the visionary Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin. We are thrilled that the incomparable two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest, whose work we have long admired, will make her Vineyard debut in the role. Sarah Gancher's brilliant Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy is set in Russia in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. election. Acclaimed in its digital version, it is a deeply relevant play for our current moment and we can't wait for audiences to experience it on stage this winter under the inspired direction of Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak. In the spring, we will bring audiences closer to the artistic process that is at the heart of what we do, sharing works in progress by our 2023-24 resident artists including Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Nazareth Hassan, a.k. payne, and more. In a tough time for theatres across the country post-pandemic, we have scaled back the number of shows in our current season, but not their ambition. This is a season that embodies the power and possibility of theatre and we truly can't wait to get underway."
 
Managing Director Suzanne Appel adds, “Our mission to push the boundaries of what theatre can be and do is more relevant than ever at this moment. As our field as a whole considers what it must do to reinvent itself, to welcome new audiences, and to bring those back into our artistic homes who have yet to return post-pandemic, our season artists are ready to deliver unique, bold new work in Union Square, which can’t be missed. Our members will have first access to these productions, and receive total flexibility on the best seats at the best price. They will also be invited behind the scenes this spring to explore our new work in development, thereby sharing in the journey of creation with our artists.”
 
Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy will be produced by special arrangement with Dori Berinstein. The play was originally produced by Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York: Elizabeth Williamson, Artistic Director and Christopher Mannelli, Executive Director. The World Premiere of Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy was produced virtually by TheaterWorks Hartford and TheatreSquared in October 2020.
 
Artistic Director Douglas Aibel will be on sabbatical for the 2023-2024 season. 
 
2023-2024 Season Passes: Become a member with a 2023-2024 Season Pass to ensure great access to all Vineyard Theatre productions for a fraction of the full ticket price. Purchase a pass and use your tickets whenever you choose. Season Passes are now on sale for The Vineyard’s 2023-2024 season. Two-show packages start at just $90. Theatre Artist and Under 40 membership are only $40. All memberships ensure the earliest access to tickets.Vineyard Theatre Members may begin booking their seats to Scene Partners by John J. Caswell, Jr. today, Monday, August 21 at 1pm. To purchase and additional information regarding packages please visit https://vineyardtheatre.org/memberships/ or call the box office at 212-353-0303.
 
Vineyard Theatre 2023-24 Season
 

Scene Partners

By John J. Caswell, Jr.
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Starring Dianne Wiest
 
Previews begin October 26, 2023 
Opening November 12, 2023
Running through December 3, 2023
 
Winter, 1985. 75-year-old Meryl ditches ice-cold Milwaukee for sunny Los Angeles, hell-bent on becoming a movie star. She’s got big dreams, a little money, and a whole lot of nerve. But will the world ever know her for who she really is?  Starring two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest as Meryl, and directed by Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown; Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812), John J. Caswell, Jr.’s (Wet Brain; Vineyard's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award) Scene Partners is a wildly theatrical, hilarious and genre-twisting gallop through the experience of a woman reborn. 
 

Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy 

By Sarah Gancher
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
In Association with Dori Berinstein/Dramatic Forces
 
Previews begin January 25, 2024  
Opening February 8, 2024
Running through March 3, 2024
 
Steve likes Masha; Masha likes Nikolai; and Egor just wants to win a microwave. It’s another day at the office for the workers of St. Petersburg’s infamous (real-life) Internet Research Agency, whose job is manipulating social media to advance Russia’s agenda at home and abroad. Set in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, office comedy meets political satire in Sarah Gancher’s (Hundred Days, Richard Rodgers Award) shape-shifting examination of the power, seduction, and danger of a good story. A New York Times Critic’s Pick in its acclaimed online version, the NYC stage premiere is directed by Tony Award® winner Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder).

About Vineyard Theatre

Under the artistic leadership of Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern, Vineyard Theatre develops and produces new plays and musicals that push the boundaries of what theatre can be and do. For nearly 40 years, The Vineyard has nurtured a community of fearless theatre makers whose work has expanded the form, the field, and the larger culture. Vineyard Theatre has transferred eleven shows to Broadway, seven directly after their acclaimed Vineyard premieres: Lucas Hnath’s Dana H. and Tina Satter’s Is This A Room (both New York Times Best Theatre of 2021); Paula Vogel’s Indecent; Nicky Silver’s The Lyons; Kander, Ebb and Thompson’s The Scottsboro Boys; Bell and Bowen’s [title of show]; and Avenue Qby Marx, Lopez and Whitty (Tony Award, Best Musical). In recent years, four additional shows launched at The Vineyard have been revived in their first Broadway productions: Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive; Lanie Robertson’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar And Grill; Becky Mode’s Fully Committed; and Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women.

From our home in NYC’s Union Square, The Vineyard develops and premieres new plays and musicals which go on to be seen around the country and the world. Recently, Jeremy O. Harris’ play “Daddy” (2019) received its London premiere at the Almeida; Ngozi Anyanwu’s Good Grief (2018) and David Cale’s Harry Clarke (2017) were recorded by Audible; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria (2014), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, transferred to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre; Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning Indecent(2016) aired on PBS’s “Great Performances” and was one of the most-produced plays nationwide in 2019; and Colman Domingo’s Dot (2016) is being adapted into an AMC series. The Vineyard’s first major digital work, Lessons in Survival, was named one of the top theatrical experiences of 2020 by the New York Times and has been viewed by audiences in more than 40 countries.

The Vineyard’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, Susan Stroman Directing Award, and Colman Domingo Award provide residencies to early-career artists and our education programs serve over 700 New York City public high school students annually, culminating in Developing Artists’ REBEL VERSES Youth Arts Festival. The Roth-Vogel New Play Commission is awarded annually to a mid- to late-career playwright to create and develop a new play with The Vineyard. Our work and artists have been honored with numerous awards including Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards, and the company is proud to be the recipient of special Drama Desk, Obie, and Lucille Lortel Awards for artistic excellence and support of artists.

Vineyard Theatre’s leadership includes Artistic Directors Sarah Stern and Douglas Aibel (on sabbatical 23-24) and Managing Director Suzanne Appel.

 

John J. Caswell, Jr.

(Playwright) is a writer originally from Phoenix, a recent fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, and the recipient of the 2020 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award at the Vineyard Theatre. His play Wet Brain won the 2021 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and received its world premiere on the Mainstage Theater at Playwrights Horizons in May 2023, co-produced with MCC Theater. His play Man Cave premiered off-Broadway in 2022 (Page 73 Productions) directed by Obie Award-winner Taylor Reynolds. Additional honors include the 2020 Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, a 2018 MacDowell Fellowship, a 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm Creative Residency, a Play Group membership at Ars Nova, and the 2017 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. John is currently under commission at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Education: Juilliard School, Hunter College, Arizona State University. www.johnjcaswelljr.com | Twitter: @johnjcaswelljr 
 

Rachel Chavkin 

(Director) received the 2019 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Director of a Musical for Hadestown. She is a director, writer and dramaturg, as well as the founding Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based ensemble the TEAM whose work has been seen all over London and the U.K. including The National Theatre, the Royal Court and multiple collaborations with The National Theatre of Scotland. Selected freelance work: Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Ars Nova, A.R.T., Broadway), Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer’s Lempicka (Williamstown), Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (New York Theatre Workshop), Marco Ramirez’s The Royale (Old Globe, Lincoln Center), Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds (Ars Nova, Off-Broadway, national tour), Sarah Gancher’s I’ll Get You Back Again (Round House) and multiple collaborations with Taylor Mac including The Lily’s Revenge, Act 2. In addition to her awards for Hadestown, Chavkin is a recipient of a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Musical, three Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, multiple Lortel Award nominations, two Doris Duke Impact Award nominations and the 2017 Smithsonian Award for Ingenuity along with Dave Malloy, with whom she is developing an adaptation of Moby Dick (World Premiere at the American Repertory Theater). Her first film, Remind Me, was an official selection of the Venice and Beverly Hills Film Festivals. Proud NYTW Usual Suspect and Member SDC.
 

Dianne Wiest 

(Meryl) is an acclaimed actress known for her roles on both stage and screen. She is best known for her Academy Award-winning roles in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets over Broadway, for which she also received a Golden Globe and SAG Award. She has received two Primetime Emmy Awards for her work in Road to Avonlea and In Treatment. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Ron Howard’s Parenthood. Her other recent film roles include Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk alongside Meryl Streep and Gemma Chan, J. Blakeson’s I Care A Lot alongside Rosamund Pike, and Clint Eastwood’s The Mulealongside Bradley Cooper and Laurence Fishburne. Additionally, over the years she has given memorable performances in films such as Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, September, Rabbit Hole, Footloose, Edward Scissorhands and The Birdcage. Dianne can most recently be seen in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series Mayor of Kingstown and will next star in the Paramount Players’ feature Apartment 7A opposite Julia Garner and Jim Sturgess. In addition to her career on screen, Dianne is a force on the stage. She most recently performed her acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days at the Yale Repertory Theater, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. Prior to that, she starred in The New Group’s production of Rasheeda Speaking, directed by Cynthia Nixon, The Cherry Orchard at Classic Stage Company, and Arthur Miller’s All My Sons on Broadway. Other New York theater appearances include The Seagull at Classic Stage Company, Third, Memory House, The Shawl, Hunting Cockroaches, After the Fall, Beyond Therapy, and The Art of Dining.
 

RUSSIAN TROLL FARM: A WORKPLACE COMEDY BIOGRAPHIES
 

Sarah Gancher 

(Playwright) is an Obie Award-winning playwright whose work has been seen on stages worldwide including London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, The Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, Steppenwolf, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, RoundHouse (DC), Seattle Rep, and Ars Nova. (Upcoming: Playwrights Horizons Soundstage.) Recent work includes Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy (Geva Theater, dir. Darko Tresnjak; the online production for Theaterworks Hartford/Theatre Squared/The Civilians, directed by Jared Mezzocchi & Elizabeth Williamson, was selected for the NY Times Top 10 Theater of 2020.) Past collaborations have included Hundred Days and The Lucky Ones with The Bengsons, Anne Kauffman, and Sonya Tayeh; and Mission Drift with Heather Christian, Rachel Chavkin, and The TEAM. Honors include the Richard Rodgers Award, New York Stage and Film Founders’ Award, the James Stevenson Prize for Comedy, The Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, a Toulmin Foundation commission, several Lortel, Drama Desk, and Drama League nominations, and the AR Gurney Prize. An alumna of Ars Nova Play Group, WP Lab, P73, The Orchard Project and The Playwrights’ Realm, she is a current resident at New Dramatists. She also plays jazz and bluegrass violin. MFA: NYU. 
 

Darko Tresnjak 

(Director) won the Tony, the Drama Desk, and the Outer Critics Circle Awards for his direction of A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder. He won an Obie Award for his direction of The Killer, starring Michael Shannon. From 2004 to 2009, Darko was the Artistic Director of The Old Globe Shakespeare Festival. From 2011 to 2019, he was the Artistic Director of Hartford Stage Company. As a director of plays, musicals and operas, Darko has worked at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Theater for a New Audience, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Royal Shakespeare Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Vineyard Theatre Company, Atlantic Theater Company, Alley Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Westport Country Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Santa Fe Opera. Favorite productions include Der Zwerg with Rodrick Dixon, Rear Window with Kevin Bacon, The Merchant Of Venice with F. Murray Abraham and Kate Forbes, The Winter’s Tale with Kandis Chappell, and The Ghosts Of Versailles with Patti LuPone. After a two-year run on Broadway, Darko’s production of Anastasia has been seen in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. He is writing a musical comedy, Ask For The Moon, with composer Oran Eldor. 
 

ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE BIOGRAPHIES 
 

Shayok Misha Chowdhury 

is a many-tentacled writer and director based in Brooklyn. A Mark O’Donnell Prize and Princess Grace Award recipient, Misha was an inaugural Project Number One Artist at Soho Rep, where he recently directed the world premiere of his playwriting debut Public Obscenities "with a swooning hypnotism reminiscent of the best works of neorealism" (New York Times, Critic's Pick). Co-produced by NAATCO and described by The New Yorker as "gorgeously precise," Public Obscenities was nominated for three Drama League and four Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Direction, and the cast won the Drama Desk Ensemble Award for embodying "the transnational world" of Misha's "bilingual play with memorable authenticity, remarkable specificity, and extraordinary warmth.” Misha is also a Jonathan Larson Grant awardee for his body of work writing musical theater with composer Laura Grill Jaye; their as yet unproduced musical How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia was awarded the 2022 Relentless Award in honor of Adam Schlesinger and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Misha was also a collaborator on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. Other recent collaborations: Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special; MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater) with Kameron Neal. A Sundance Fellow, Misha is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of short films including Englandbashi (Ann Arbor Film Festival); The Other Other (Ars Nova); An Anthology of Queer Dreams (Audio Unbound Award finalist); and In Order to Become (The Bushwick Starr). A NYSCA/NYFA, Fulbright, and Kundiman fellow in poetry, Misha has been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly,Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Residencies: Hermitage, Ucross, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, SPACE on Ryder Farm, NYTW 2050, The Public’s Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, Soho Rep’s Writer Director Lab, New York Stage and Film, Drama League, Mercury Store, BRIC. BA: Stanford. MFA: Columbia.
 

Nazareth Hassan 

is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, writing, music, video, and photography. Recent performance works include Untitled (1-5) at The Shed (text published by 3 Hole Press), VANTABLACK at Theatretreffen Stuckemarkt in Berlin, #2112 at Center for Performance Research, and Memory A at Museo Universitario del Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City. Their first collection of poetry and photography Slow Mania will be published in 2025 by Futurepoem. They have released 4 singles, available on all platforms. They were the 2022 resident dramaturg at The Royal Court Theatre. They are a 2023-25 Jerome Hill artist fellow.
 

Mara Nelson-Greenberg

Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Berkeley Rep, and ACT Theatre, among others. Her play Do You Feel Anger? premiered at the 2018 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was produced at Vineyard Theatre in 2019. She is an alum of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group. She received her MFA from UC-San Diego under Naomi Iizuka.
 

a.k. payne 

(she/they) is a playwright, artivist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her plays love on and engage Black lives and languages beyond the confines of linear time to find/remember stories that might create conditions for our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is currently a Van Lier New Voices Fellow, the recipient of the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and of Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. Their work has been developed with the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club's "Groundworks Lab." They are a proud graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the ‘New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker.