AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS Joins Geffen Playhouse's 2022/23 Season

Ava: The Secret Conversations will join The Geffen Playhouse 2022/2023 season lineup to complete the full season, it was announced today. Written by and starring Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated Elizabeth McGovern (Once Upon a Time in America, Downton Abbey), Ava: The Secret Conversations will make its U.S. premiere in Geffen Playhouse's Gil Cates Theater. The play had its world premiere in London in January 2022. The Geffen Playhouse production will be directed by Tony Award-nominated Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Present Laughter).

Ava: The Secret Conversations will begin previews on Tuesday, April 4, 2022, and opening night is Thursday, April 13, 2022.

"I either write the book or sell the jewels. I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels." So says legendary Hollywood icon Ava Gardner (Elizabeth McGovern) to her ghost writer Peter Evans as they begin work on her tell-all biography that will shock Tinseltown. But as Peter attempts to glean the juicy details about her life story, her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, and her turbulent relationship to Howard Hughes, an altogether different and unexpected journey unfolds in this theatrical glimpse into the private life of Hollywood's original femme fatale.

The 2022/2023 Gil Cates Theater season will launch with the Tony Award-winning Stephen Daldry production of playwright Matthew López's The Inheritance, making its West Coast premiere and directed by Mike Donahue. The Inheritance first premiered in London at the Young Vic in 2018 before moving to New York and making its Broadway premiere in November 2019.

The season will continue in the Gil Cates Theater with the West Coast premiere of playwright Lee Edward Colston II's epic drama The First Deep Breath, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, which chronicles the depths families will go to hide their skeletons from the outside world and one another. Next up will be the U.S. premiere of Ava: The Secret Conversations, written by and starring Elizabeth McGovern and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel.

Closing the Gil Cates Theater lineup will be playwright Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, a deeply moving story that takes place the night before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, after delivering his history-altering "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. The Mountaintop will be directed by Patricia McGregor, who returns to Geffen Playhouse after directing the critically acclaimed and sold-out run of Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole on the Gil Cates Theater stage in 2019, which was also co-written by McGregor and Colman Domingo.

The 2022/2023 Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater season will be a full lineup of world premieres and commence with be Drama Desk Award-nominated mentalist Vinny DePonto and co-writer Josh Koenigberg's Mindplay. Keeping in the spirit of the Geffen's long tradition of magic, Mindplay is an entirely new theatrical event in which your thoughts play a leading role. Next up will be a new original musical from Zoe Sarnak and Rachel Bonds, The Lonely Few, featuring Tony Award winner Lauren Patten (Jagged Little Pill). The Lonely Few is a love story between two women searching for a sense of home. Rounding out the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater lineup will be actor and playwright Ramiz Monsef's The Ants, a horror play infused with darkly humorous social commentary. Monsef previously appeared at the Geffen in Guards at the Taj (2015) and Mysterious Circumstances (2019).

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