Pulitzer Prize-Winning Play SWEAT Makes Boston Premiere At Huntington Theatre Company

Huntington Theatre Company has announced the cast and creative team for the Boston premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Sweat. This "breathtakingly timely" (The Wall Street Journal), Tony Award-nominated play by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage will be directed by Kimberly Senior (Disgraced on Broadway). Sweat begins performances at the Huntington Avenue Theatre (264 Huntington Avenue, Boston) on Friday, January 31, 2020 and runs through Sunday, February 23, 2020. The official press opening night is Wednesday, February 5, 2020. Tickets are now available.

Hailed as "a gripping play with humor and humanity" by Time Out New York, Sweat is based on playwright Lynn Nottage's interviews with residents of Reading, Pennsylvania. The play chronicles years in the lives of a group of friends from this working-class community who are struggling to stay connected as the local factory industry, which has employed them for generations, crumbles. In a neighborhood bar, each of them reaches for their piece of the American dream while their friendships are put to the test. Nottage weaves a tale of trust and doubt, longtime bonds and short-term possibilities. The New York Times raves "Superb...Nottage is writing at the peak of her powers."

Sweat was first performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, the following year it opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater and transferred to Broadway at the beginning of 2017. After a run on Broadway, numerous regional productions throughout the United States and a stop at London's West End, Sweat finally comes to Boston in this moving and urgently relevant new production. Kimberly Senior (The Niceties and the upcoming, Our Daughters Like Pillars at the Huntington) takes the reigns of this play that The New Yorker designated "the first theatrical landmark of the Trump era" at the beginning of what could be our nation's most important presidential election year in history.

The cast of Sweat features (in alphabetical order) Tyla Abercrumbie (Magnolia at The Goodman Theatre, Showtime's "The Chi") as Cynthia, Norton Award winner Marianna Bassham (Yerma and Romeo and Juliet at the Huntington) as Jessie, Norton Award winner Brandon G. Green (An Octoroon at Company One, The Scottsboro Boys at SpeakEasy Stage Company) as Chris, Shane Kenyon (Buzzer at The Goodman Theatre, Hushabye at Steppenwolf Theatre Company) as Jason, Norton Award winner Maurice Emmanuel Parent (Romeo and Juliet, Skeleton Crew at the Huntington) as Evan, Tommy Rivera-Vega (A View from the Bridge at Teatro Vista, Three Sisters at Steppenwolf Theatre Company) as Oscar, Jennifer Regan and Tracey, and Guy Van Swearingen (The Time of Your Life and Taking Care at Steppenwolf Theatre Company) as Stan.

The creative team for Sweat includes set design by Cameron Anderson (Yerma and The Niceties at the Huntington), costume design by Junghyun Georgia Lee (Tiger Style!, Smart People at the Huntington), lighting design by D.M. Wood (The Niceties at the Huntington, 4.48 Psychosis at the Royal Opera House), and sound design and composition by Pornchanok Kanchanabanca (Skylight at the McCarter Theater, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Steppenwolf Theatre Company). The production stage manager is Emily F. McMullen and the assistant stage manager is Jeremiah Mullane.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Lynn Nottage (Playwright) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined was performed at the Huntington Theatre Company in a production directed by Liesl Tommy in 2011. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Her most recent play, Mlima's Tale, premiered at The Public Theater in May 2018. In the spring of 2017, Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination) moved to Broadway after a sold out run at The Public Theater. It premiered and was commissioned by Oregon Shakespeare Festival American Revolutions History Cycle/Arena Stage.

Other plays include By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award, Drama Desk Nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics' Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por'knockers and POOF!. She developed This is Reading, a performance installation based on two years of interviews, at the Franklin Street, Reading Railroad Station in Reading, PA in July 2017. She is working with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on adapting her play Intimate Apparel into an opera, commissioned by The Met/LCT. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory.

Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, Merit and Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters, Columbia University Provost Grant, Doris Duke Artist Award, The Joyce Foundation Commission Project & Grant, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award, Nelson A. Rockefeller Award for Creativity, The Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Helen Hayes Award, the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest's August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. She is also an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.

Kimberly Senior (Director) directed the world premiere of The Niceties (2018) by Eleanor Burgess and will direct the upcoming world premiere of Our Daughters Like Pillars by Kirsten Greenidge at the Huntington. She directed the Broadway premiere of Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, which she previously directed off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater (LCT3) and later at Goodman Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Mark Taper Forum. Her other Off-Broadway credits include The Niceties and Bella Bella (Manhattan Theater Club), Chris Gethard's Career Suicide (produced by Judd Apatow); Discord (Primary Stages); Engagements (Second Stage Theatre), and The Who and the What (Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3). Regional credits include Rapture, Blister, Burn and Support Group for Men (Goodman Theatre); Sheltered (Alliance Theatre); Other Than Honorable (Geva Theatre Center); Buried Child, The Scene, Marjorie Prime, The Diary of Anne Frank, Hedda Gabler, and The Letters (Writers Theatre, where she is a resident director); Sex with Strangers (Geffen Playhouse); Little Gem (City Theatre); Discord, 4000 Miles, and The Whipping Man (Northlight Theatre); Want and The North Plan (Steppenwolf Theatre Company); Inana, My Name is Asher Lev, All My Sons, and Dolly West's Kitchen (TimeLine Theatre Company, where she is an associate artist); Disgraced (American Theater Company); among others. For television, she directed "Chris Gethard's Career Suicide" (HBO). She was a 2013 finalist for the SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award and the Zelda Fichandler Award. Ms. Senior is the recipient of the 2016 Special Non-Equity Jeff Award, the 2016 Alan Schneider Award (TCG), and the 2018 Einhorn Award (Primary Stages).

ABOUT THE Huntington Theatre Company
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The Huntington Theatre Company is Boston's leading professional theatre and one of the region's premier cultural assets since its founding in 1982. Recipient of the 2013 Regional Theatre Tony Award, the Huntington brings together superb local and national talent and produces a mix of groundbreaking new works and classics made current to create award-winning productions. The Huntington runs nationally renowned programs in education and new play development and serves the local theatre community through its operation of the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. The Huntington has long been an anchor cultural institution of Huntington Avenue, the Avenue of the Arts, and will remain so on a permanent basis with plans to convert the Huntington Avenue Theatre into a first-rate, modern venue with expanded services to audiences, artists, and the community. Under the direction of Norma Jean Calderwood Artistic Director Peter DuBois and Managing Director Michael Maso, the Huntington cultivates, celebrates, and champions theatre as an art form. For more information, visit huntingtontheatre.org.