World Premiere of THE BRIGHTEST THING IN THE WORLD & More Announced for Yale Rep 2022-23 Season

Yale Repertory Theatre has announced its 2022-23 season of four plays.

The season will begin with Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, running October 6-29. James Bundy, who directed Albee's A Delicate Balance at Yale Rep in 2010, will stage this new production of the explosively comedic and harrowingly profound masterpiece.

The world premiere of The Brightest Thing in the World by Leah Nanako Winkler, directed by Margot Bordelon, will play November 25-December 17. The funny and compassionate new play was commissioned by Yale Rep with support provided by Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre.

Next up will be Mojada, playwright Luis Alfaro's reimagining of Medea through the unforgettable story of an undocumented family caught in the grip of the American immigration system. Directed by Laurie Woolery, the play will be performed March 10-April 1.

The season will conclude with the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christina Anderson, April 28. -May 20. The poignant and quietly subversive story of justice, legacy, and forgiveness will be staged by Resident Director Tamilla Woodard, making her Yale Rep directing debut.

"I am delighted that all of us can look forward to a season of such beauty and complexity at Yale Repertory Theatre. The distinguished playwrights and directors with whom we will be working at our theater offer a magnificent array of aesthetic sensibilities, personal perspectives, and cultural experiences," said Artistic Director James Bundy. "The stories they will bring to life on our stages ask provocative questions about our shared human history as well as the current moment."

Yale Repertory Theatre will continue to follow all evolving protocols set forth by city, state, and University entities to help ensure the health and comfort of its artistic, production, and administrative personnel and Yale Rep audiences.

Subscriptions for Yale Rep's upcoming season will go on sale in the coming weeks. Individual tickets will be available in late summer.

ABOUT THE SEASON

Edward Albee's

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Directed by James Bundy
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
October 6-29, 2022

It's 2AM and George and Martha are just getting started. The middle-aged married couple, a once-promising historian and his boss's frustrated daughter, welcome a younger professor and his wife for a nightcap-only to ensnare them in increasingly dangerous rounds of fun and games. An unblinking portrait of two American marriages, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is Edward Albee's explosively comedic and harrowingly profound masterpiece.

Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928, and began writing plays 30 years later. His plays include The Zoo Story (1958), The Death of Bessie Smith (1959), The Sandbox (1959), Fam and Yam (1959), The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award), Tiny Alice (1964), A Delicate Balance(1966, Pulitzer Prize; 1996, Tony Award), Malcolm (1966), Everything in the Garden (1969),Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung: Two Inter-Related Plays (1969), All Over (1971), Seascape(1974, Pulitzer Prize), Listening (1975), Counting the Ways (1975), The Lady from Dubuque (1977-78), The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981), Finding the Sun (1982), Marriage Play (1986-87), Three Tall Women(1991, Pulitzer Prize), Fragments (1993), The Play About the Baby (1997), The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? (2000, 2002 Tony Award), Occupant (2001), Knock! Knock! Who's There!? (2003), At Home at the Zoo (Act 1: Homelife, Act 2: The Zoo Story) (2004), and Me, Myself & I (2008). He was a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980. In 1996 he received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005, he was awarded a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.

James Bundy has served as Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean of David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre since 2002. He teaches in the Acting program at the School and in the Theater Studies program in Yale College. During his tenure, Yale Rep has produced more than thirty world, American, and regional premieres, nine of which have been honored by the Connecticut Critics Circle as Best Production of the year and two of which have been Pulitzer Prize finalists. Through WILLPOWER!, an educational program initiated in 2004, Yale Rep has provided low-cost theater tickets and classroom visits to thousands of middle and high school students from Greater New Haven. The Binger Center for New Theatre, founded in 2008, has enabled the theatre to commission more than fifty artists to create new work. James has directed productions at the Mark Taper Forum, Theater for a New Audience, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater Festival, The Acting Company, California Shakespeare Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and The Juilliard School Drama Division. He served from 2007-13 on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group. Previously, he worked as Associate Producing Director of The Acting Company, Managing Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, and Artistic Director of Great Lakes Theater Festival. James is a graduate of Harvard College and David Geffen School of Drama; he also trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

World Premiere

The Brightest Thing in the World

By Leah Nanako Winkler
Directed by Margot Bordelon
Commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
November 25-December 17, 2022

It's classic rom-com. Beguiling Lane works in a bakery and in short order wins over cool customer Steph with her warmth, wit, and homemade desserts. Their blossoming relationship also opens the door to romance for Lane's older sister Della, who hasn't been on a date in years. But the skies dramatically darken as each woman must come to terms with her own limitations. The Brightest Thing in the World is a funny and compassionate new play about people we all know and people we all love.

Leah Nanako Winkler is a Japanese American playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Kentucky. Her plays include Kentucky (Page 73/Ensemble Studio Theater), God Said This (Primary Stages/ Humana Festival of New American Plays), Death for Sydney Black (terraNova Collective), Two Mile Hollow (simultaneous world premiere: First Floor Theater, Artist's at Play, Theater Mu/Mixed Blood, Ferocious Lotus), Hot Asian Doctor Husband (Theater Mu), and Nevada-Tan (Audible), and more. Accolades include the Yale Drama Series Prize, Peabody Award, the Francesca Primus Prize, the Mark O'Donnell Prize, the Jerome New York Fellowship, and most recently a Steinberg Playwright Award. TV: Ramy, New Amsterdam, Love Life. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, Ma Yi Lab, East West Players Writers Group. She serves on the board of Page 73. MFA: Brooklyn College.

Margot Bordelon is a New York-based director who specializes in new work. Yale Rep: peerless by Jiehae Park. Off-Broadway and New York credits include Do You Feel Anger? (Vineyard Theatre), Eddie and Dave (Atlantic Theater Company), Plot Points in Our Sexual Development (LCT3), Too Heavy for Your Pocket (Roundabout Underground), The Pen (Premieres NYC), A Delicate Ship (Playwrights Realm), Still (Juilliard), Wilder Gone (Clubbed Thumb), The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play (DODO). Margot has directed productions regionally at ACT Seattle, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alliance Theatre, American Theater Company, Marin Theater Company, and Steppenwolf. She has developed work at Ars Nova, Berkeley Rep, Cherry Lane, The Lark, Ma-Yi, MTC, New Dramatists, NYTW, P73, Playwrights Horizons, Portland Center Stage, Primary Stages, The Public, PWC, Rattlestick, the Wilma, and Woolly Mammoth. Upcoming: Something Clean (Roundabout Underground), You Lost Me (Denver Center), ...what the end will be (Roundabout). B.F.A., Cornish College of the Arts; M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama.

Mojada

A Medea in Los Angeles
By Luis Alfaro
Directed by Laurie Woolery
University Theatre (222 York Street)
March 10-April 1, 2023

Medea, a Mexican seamstress of extraordinary skill, barely survived the perilous border crossing into the United States and lives uneasily in a borrowed Los Angeles house with her husband Hason and their young son Acan: the tension between their traditional values and assimilation is a matter of life and death. Blending wry humor, tragedy, and mysticism, Mojada unleashes the power of Euripides' ancient tale through an unforgettable story of an undocumented family caught in the grip of the American immigration system.

Luis Alfaro is a Chicano playwright born and raised in downtown Los Angeles. He is Associate Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group at the Music Center of Los Angeles County. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; United States Artists; Ford Foundation Art of Change; Joyce Foundation; Mellon Foundation and is the recipient of the PEN America/Laura Pels International Foundation Theater Award for a Master Dramatist. He was the inaugural Playwright-in-Residence for six seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2013-2019); Playwright's Ensemble at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre (2013-2020); Inaugural Latinx Playwrights at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (2021); and Ojai Playwrights Conference member since 2002. His plays include Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada and have been seen at regional theatres throughout the United States and Europe. Luis spent two decades in the Los Angeles Poetry and Performance Art communities.

Laurie Woolery is a director, playwright, community activist, and citizen artist, who has worked at theaters across the country including The Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, New York City Center/Encores! Off Center, Trinity Repertory, Goodman Theatre, Kennedy Center, Cornerstone Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, and Yale Rep, where she has directed Manahatta, El Huracán, and Imogen Says Nothing. She is the Director of Public Works at The Public Theater, where her musical adaptation of As You Like It was named one of "The Best Theater of 2017" by The New York Times and is returning this summer to Free Shakespeare in the Park. Recently, Laurie directed the rolling world premiere of Eliana Pipes's Dream Hou$e at the Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre and Baltimore Center Stage. She produced the documentary Under the Greenwood Tree and curated the national public art project The Seed Project. Laurie has developed new work with diverse communities ranging from incarcerated women to residents of a Kansas town devastated by a tornado. She creates site-specific work that ranges from a working sawmill in Eureka to the banks of the Los Angeles River. Laurie is a founding member of The Sol Project, and a proud recipient of the Fuller Road Fellowship for Women Directors of Color, a 2020 United States Artist recipient and the 2021 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities. www.lauriewoolery.com

the ripple, the wave that carried me home

By Christina Anderson
Directed by Tamilla Woodard
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
April 28-May 20, 2023

1992. Janice lives with her family in an Ohio suburb-a world away from her childhood in 1960s Kansas, where her activist parents fought to integrate public pools and taught Black children how to swim. When she is asked to return and speak at a ceremony honoring her father, she must decide whether she is ready to reckon with her political inheritance and a past she has tried to forget. the ripple, the wave that carried me home is a poignant, transporting, and quietly subversive story of justice, legacy, and forgiveness.

Christina Anderson is a playwright, tv writer, educator, and creative. She is currently represented on Broadway as a book writer of Paradise Square. Her plays have appeared at The Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre (Good Goods, 2017), Kansas City Rep, and other theaters in the United States and Canada. Awards and honors include: 2020 United States Artists Fellow, MacDowell Fellowship, Lucille Lortel Fellowship, Lily Awards Harper Lee Prize, Herb Alpert Award nomination, Barrymore nomination, and New Dramatists Residency. Her work has appeared multiple times on the annual Kilroy's List, an industry survey of excellent new works by female playwrights. Christina's plays include How to Catch Creation; the ripple, the wave that carried me home; Man in Love; pen/man/ship; The Ashes Under Gait City; and Blacktop Sky. She has taught playwriting at Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase College, and served as the interim Head of Playwriting at Brown University. Christina worked as a television staff writer on the CBS drama, Tommy. Current projects include producing an album of instrumental hip hop music titled The Montage Flow and writing her first tv pilot The Only Isaac. She is a graduate of David Geffen School of Drama.

Tamilla Woodard is Chair of the Acting program at David Geffen School of Drama and a Resident Director at Yale Rep. She is the co-founder of the site-specific international partnership, PopUP Theatrics, proudly served as the co-Artistic Director of Working Theater in New York, and she was the Associate Director of the Tony Award-winning Hadestown on Broadway in its premier season. Prior to joining Working Theater, Tamilla was the BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater. Tamilla has directed at theaters nationally and internationally, including at WP Theater, The Alliance, Baltimore Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Classical Theater of Harlem, The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts with TheaterWorksUSA, and The Cleveland Public Theatre, among others. Recently named one of 50 Women to Watch on Broadway, Tamilla is also a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and a proud board member of Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. She received her MFA in Acting from David Geffen School of Drama.

ABOUT YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theatre in residence at David Geffen School of Drama, has championed new work since 1966, producing well over 100 premieres-including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists-by emerging and established playwrights. Seventeen Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and ten Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Established in 2008, Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre has distinguished itself as one of the nation's most robust and innovative new play programs. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 60 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of more than 30 new plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theaters across the country.

Yale Repertory Theatre is supported by CT Humanities, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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