Soho Rep. Extends Jackie Sibblies Drury's FAIRVIEW

In response to popular demand, Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) extends the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, directed by Sarah Benson, through July 22. In Fairview, the Frasier family (Mayaa Boateng, Charles Browning, Roslyn Ruff, and Heather Alicia Simms) is gearing up for Grandma's birthday, and Beverly needs this dinner to be perfect. But the silverware's wrong, the radio's on the fritz, her sister Jasmine is drinking, her husband Dayton isn't helping, her daughter Keisha is a typical teenager, and her brother Tyrone might not show up at all!

Fairview opened Sunday, June 17, to great acclaim. In a Critic's Pick review for The New York Times, Ben Brantley calls the play "dazzling and ruthless" and "one of the most exquisitely and systematically arranged ambushes of an unsuspecting audience in years." Zachary Stewart, in Theatermania, calls Fairview "hilarious, provocative, and disorienting." Sara Holdren of New York Magazine, grappling with the "questions of spectatorship" and the "questions of privilege and power" that Fairview prompts, writes that "no two performances [of the play] will ever be the same, but what happened the night I saw it was remarkable-rare and intimidating, unresolved and raw. It left me with the blood pounding in my ears, feeling like a witness to something unwieldy."

The cast for Fairview, which Holdren calls "uniformly excellent,"includes Mayaa Boateng (The Village of Vale at Lincoln Center; The Public's Julius Caesar), Charles Browning (Negro Ensemble Company's The Cost at LaMama) Roslyn Ruff (Suzan-Lori Parks' The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World at the Signature Theatre, All the Way on Broadway), Heather Alicia Simms (Broadway revivals of A Raisin in the Sun and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), Hannah Cabell (Classic Stage Company's As You Like It, Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus at the Signature Theatre), Natalia Payne (Roundabout Theatre Company's The Last Match, Playwrights Horizons' Me, Myself & I), Jed Resnick (Off-Broadway productions of Avenue Q, Rent), and Luke Robertson (feeling. at New Ohio Theatre, Neva at The Public Theater).

Soho Rep. introduced New York audiences to Sibblies Drury's work with the premiere of her "inventive," "pulse-pounding" We Are Proud to Present...(The New York Times, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine Critics' Picks.) In that play, a troupe of American actors stumbles over questions of authenticity and appropriation as they attempt to reconstruct the little-known first genocide of the 20th Century and land in an exploration that hits closer to home. In Fairview, Sibblies Drury takes on the naturalistic family drama, depicting the ways in which we watch and judge each other everyday, and investigating the impact of those actions.

A creative team including Tony Award-winning set designer Mimi Lien (Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812, Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music)-who brought the charged rehearsal studio of We Are Proud to Present... to life-actualizes Sibblies Drury's vision of the Frasier family home in Fairview. Like We Are Proud to Present..., Sibblies Drury's latest workis by turns funny, disorienting, and unsettling.

Sarah Benson says, "We Are Proud ... remains one of my all time highs at Soho Rep. and I am delighted to be welcoming Jackie back and directing her play. Jackie's work engages with some of the thorniest questions in a thrilling theatrical form. She collides intimacy and civic scope to ultimately invite an audience to complete the experience of the play. Never has that been truer than in her new play Fairview."

Fairview illustrates the value of two programs through which Soho Rep. nurtures playwrights: the Writer/Director Lab, through which Sibblies Drury first came to the organization, and which she now co-chairs, and Soho Rep.'s Studio program, where the play was workshopped after being co-commissioned with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In October, this world premiere production will travel to Berkeley Rep.

The creative team for Fairview includes Raja Feather Kelly (choreographer), Tony Award-winner Mimi Lien (scenic designer), Montana Levi Blanco (costume designer), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting designer), Mikaal Sulaiman (sound designer), J. David Brimmer (fight director), Cookie Jordan (hair and wig designer), Ryan Courtney (props master), Garrett Allen (associate director), Will Duty (production manager), Terri K. Kohler (production stage manager), and Mariah P. MacKenzie (assistant stage manager).

Remaining performances of Fairview take place June 19 - July 22 (see schedule above) at Soho Rep., located at 46 Walker Street in Manhattan. Admission tickets are $35 general/$65 premium from June 19 - July 8, and $45 general/$85 premium from July 10 - 22, and can be purchased by visiting sohorep.org or calling 212.352.3101. $30 general rush and $20 student rush (valid school ID) tickets are available at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain for each performance, no advance sales. $0.99 Sunday tickets will be offered on June 24 and July 1 & 8 at 7:30pm and are available first come, first served at the box office only.

Fairview was commissioned by Soho Rep. and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Funding for the commission and development of Fairview was provided, in part, by the Laurents Hatcher Foundation, Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, Table 20 Productions, Venturous Theater Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Really, and Social Creatures. Sibblies Drury's plays have been presented by New York City Players and Abrons Arts Center, Soho Rep., Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., The Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. Sibblies Drury was a dramaturg for Futurity by César Alvarez and The Lisps, Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada, and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received a 2015 Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama, a 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a 2015 United States Artists Gracie Fellow.

Sarah Bensonhas been Artistic Director of Soho Rep. since 2007. Recent credits include: Suzan-Lori Parks In The Blood (Signature Theatre)For Soho Rep: Richard Maxwell's Samara, Ce?sar Alvarez and The Lisps' Futurity (Callaway Award), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon, (Soho Rep. & Theatre for a New Audience), Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney, David Adjmi's Elective Affinities and Sarah Kane's Blasted (OBIE Award, Drama Desk nomination). She has also directed at A.R.T., Woolly Mammoth, and M.T.C. She holds a MFA from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Tom Bullard. In 2016, Benson won a Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise.

Mayaa Boateng is thrilled to make her Soho Rep debut. Credits include: The Villiage of Vale (Lincoln Center); Good Men Wanted (New York Stage & Film, Powerhouse); Julius Caesar (The Public, Delacorte); Song for a Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classical Theatre of Harlem). MFA NYU Graduate Acting.

Charles Browning was last seen in the The Cost at LaMama. Previously, he appeared in the World Premiere of I Sing The Rising Sea at Virginia Stage Company, the World Premiere of The Capables at The Gym at Judson, The Piano Lesson and Dreamgirls at Gallery Players. NY: Classical Theater of Harlem, Target Margin Theater, Classic Stage Company, The Lark, Joe's Pub:Public Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater Regional: Timeline Theater, Goodman Theater and Chicago Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neil Theater Center. He has worked in commercials, industrials, film and television. Education: BFA DePaul University, MFA Columbia University, Oxford University (British American Drama Academy).

Roslyn Ruff's Broadway credits include: All The Way, Romeo & Juliet, Fences(standby for Viola Davis). Off-Broadway: select credits include X or Betty Shabazz v The Nation (The Acting Co, 2018 Drama League Nominee) Death of the Last Blackman (Signature Theatre) Macbeth (CTH) Familiar (Playwrights Horizions) Scenes from a Marriage, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Things of Dry Hours (NYTW, Drama League Nomination), The Piano Lesson (Signature Theatre - 2013 Lucille Lortel Award, Drama League nomination), Macbeth (TFANA), Seven Guitars (Signature - Obie Award) The Cherry Orchard (CTH). Regional credits include work at Two River Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Long Wharf, The Kennedy Center, Indiana Rep, Old Globe, ALLIANCE THEATRE, McCarter Theatre, ART, Yale Rep. Film: The Help, Salt, Life During Wartime, Rachel Getting Married. TV: Divorce, Red Blooded (ABC pilot), Madame Secretary, Doubt, Elementary, Masters of Sex, The Big C.

Heather Alicia Simms is pleased to return to Soho Rep. She was last seen in the critically acclaimed productions of BARBECUE at The Public Theater and Geffen Playhouse. Her Broadway credits include: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, A Raisin in the Sun, Gem of the Ocean and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. She has numerous regional and international theater credits. Television and film credits include Luke Cage, The Last O.G., Seven Seconds, Roxanne Roxanne, Law and Order, Whoopi, Head of State, Broken Flowers, The Nanny Diaries, Red Hook Summer among others. She is a Round 4 Fox Foundation Fellow and a member of The Actors Center.

Hannah Cabell makes her Soho Rep debut in Fairview. Broadway credits include: The Father, A Man for All Seasons. Off-Broadway credits include: As You Like It, Venus, The Moors (Lucille Lortel nom.); Men on Boats, Grounded (Drama Desk nom.), Major Barbara, 3C, Compulsion, Zero Hour, Pumpgirl, Jane Eyre, Mark Smith. Regional: World premieres of The Moors, Marie Antoinette, Compulsion (BACCA nom.), Sarah Ruhl's Three Sisters and In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (BACCA nom.). TV: The Good Fight, The Path, Mr. Robot,Happyish, The Leftovers, Law & Order: CI. Film: Luce (upcoming). Training: MFA, NYU. Recipient of the Annenberg Fellowship for Young Artists.

Natalia Payne's New York theatre credits include: The Last Match (Roundabout Theatre Company), Me, Myself & I (Playwrights Horizons), New Jerusalem (Classic Stage Company), Jailbait (Cherry Lane Theatre), Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (Women's Project), deathvariations (59E59 Theaters). Regional: Watch On The Rhine (Arena Stage), The Last Match (The Old Globe), Three Sisters (Berkeley Repertory & Yale Repertory Theatres), Dirt (Studio Theatre - Helen Hayes nomination), Trouble in Mind (Yale Repertory Theatre), Memory House (Vineyard Playhouse). TV/film: Law & Order: S.V.U, Workin' Moms, Ransom, Murdoch Mysteries, Dark Matter, Reign, Sensitive Skin, Cardinal, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The Word, Crazy Love. Originally from Toronto, Natalia studied acting at Yale University.

Jed Resnick is thrilled to be making his Soho Rep debut, direct from a long run in Avenue Q at New World Stages. Broadway/National Tours: Avenue Q (Princeton/Rod u.s.), Rent (Mark). Regional credits include The Last Five Years (Actors Theatre of Louisville), The Seagull (Peterborough Players), Pregnancy Pact (Weston Playhouse), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Westchester Broadway Theatre, Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep. Other NYC: NYMF, Ars Nova, b-side productions, Fringe Festival. Film: She's Marrying Steve. Proud AEA member and Brown alum. Thanks to the whole Fairview team. Love to my family. @jedres

Luke Robertson's theatre credits include feeling. at the New Ohio, Neva at The Public Theater, Good Television at the Atlantic Theater Company. His film and television credits include Goldless, Mr. Robot, The Americans, Daredevil, Instinct, Vinyl, Elementary, Deception, Forever, and most Law and Orders! He received his MFA from Yale School of Drama.

The Soho Rep. 2017-2018 season is made possible with major support from Kashif Akhter, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Jodi Balsam, Dorothy Berwin, The Berwin Lee Foundation, Jon & Lou Dembrow, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc.,,Howard Gilman Foundation, James Gleick and Cynthia Crossen, Frank Holozubiec, Alfred F. Hubay, The Jerome Foundation, The Laurents/ Hatcher Foundation, Janice Lee and Stuart Shapiro, Victoria Meakin, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Jim and Laura Pizzo, Caryl Ratner, Mace Rosenstein and Louise de la Fuente, The Shubert Foundation, Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust,Studio Usher, the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation, Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, The Tow Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation.

Soho Rep.'s return to Walker Street is made possible with leadership support from The Tow Foundation, Dorothy Berwin, Barry Feirstein, Howard Gilman Foundation, James Gleick and Cynthia Crossen, Janice Lee and Stuart Shapiro, Jim and Laura Pizzo, Caryl Ratner, and The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep. has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theater, serving as a vital center for contemporary theatre artists.

Soho Rep. is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays, performing to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over half aged 18-40.

Critics continue to herald Soho Rep. as a go-to theatre destination for new and original works. New York Magazine says, "this indispensable theater offers more excitement per chair than any space in town," Time Out New York says, "Soho Rep is the best theater in NYC," and The New York Times describes Soho Rep. as "form-twisting, boundary-breaking, and acclaimed" and says, "The downtown powerhouse...regularly outclasses the work done on many of the city's larger stages." In 2015, The Village Voice named Soho Rep. the "Best Off-Broadway Theater Company," and the company was listed in Travel Magazine's 2016 "10 Essential Off-Broadway Theaters."

In 2014, Soho Rep. was honored with a Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement. Over the last decade, Soho Rep. productions have garnered 21 OBIE Awards; the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical; 13 Drama Desk nominations, two Kesselring Awards, The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake and, a special citation in The New York Drama Critics' Circle's 2012-13 awards. In recent years, Soho Rep. has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Debbie Tucker Green, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Daniel Alexander Jones, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Young Jean Lee, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Anne Washburn.

Fairview continues Soho Rep.'s homecoming season, kicked off with Is God Is, which marked the company's return to its intimate Walker Street storefront theater, once described by Hilton Als of The New Yorker as "a 70-seat house filled with big ideas." In September 2016, following the discovery that the company had been producing in the space, since moving into the building 1991, without having obtained the proper Certificate of Occupancy, the potential for returning to its intimate home felt slim. Thanks, however, to a citywide effort including the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment and the Department of Buildings, Soho Rep. has resolved the bureaucratic issues and made the modest renovations required to move back in, having successfully completed a $500,000 building fundraising campaign led by Executive Director Cynthia Flowers and the Soho Rep. Board with leadership support from The Tow Foundation. Overcoming that hurdle has cleared the way for the company to once again do what it has become esteemed for in its life to date: provide a platform for artists to realize work that is consistently big in scope, formally challenging and civically engaged.

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