TRYING by Joanna McClelland Glass to Close Out Palm Beach Dramaworks' 2023-24 Season
Trying, which runs from May 24-June 9, 2024, is a memory play based on the playwright’s stint as secretary to Francis Biddle.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Mar. 29, 2023
Joanna McClelland Glass' Trying, a huge hit for Palm Beach Dramaworks in 2007, has been added to the company's 2023-24 schedule, replacing Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy as the final play of the season. Trying, which runs from May 24-June 9, 2024, is a memory play based on the playwright's stint as secretary to Francis Biddle, who served as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's attorney general and later was a judge at the Nuremberg trials.
"We've been hoping to revive Trying for a few years and when the opportunity arose, we jumped at the chance," said Producing Artistic Director William Hayes. "PBD celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2024-25, and one way we want to mark the occasion is by bringing back a couple of plays that were extremely popular with our audience. When we got the rights to stage Trying, we decided there was no time like the present to get it on our schedule. It's a funny and touching piece, and we're delighted that our patrons will have the chance to see it again - or see it for the first time."
Subscriptions for the 2023-24 season are on sale now. For those who have already purchased subscriptions that include the fifth and final play of the season, there is no need to contact the box office; their confirmation will acknowledge that they will now be seeing Trying.
Palm Beach DRAMAWORKS' 2023-24 SEASON
LOBBY HERO
October 13-29, 2023
Four New Yorkers involved in a murder investigation - a slacker security guard in a Manhattan apartment building, his by-the-book boss, a rookie cop and her macho partner - face moral and ethical dilemmas in this comic drama by the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Manchester by the Sea. The play explores issues of racism and sexism, and whether it's ever honorable to do the wrong thing for the right reason.
THE MESSENGER (World Premiere)
December 8-24, 2023
A meditation on the connections between past, present, and future, and on the choice between speaking up and speaking out regardless of the consequences or remaining silent for the sake of self-preservation. Inspired by the life of Hungarian Holocaust survivor Georgia Gabor, the play interweaves her story with that of a young American woman facing racial discrimination in this country in 2020.
THE CANCELLATION OF LAUREN FEIN (World Premiere)
February 2-18, 2024
Lauren Fein and her wife, Paola Munoz, are professors at a prestigious American university. They live with Dylan, their 16-year-old African American foster son whom they've cared for since he was a baby. When Professor Fein's actions run afoul of the university's "diversity, equity, and inclusion" policies, her groundbreaking research, her career, and her family are all put in jeopardy.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
March 29-April 14, 2024
This Pulitzer Prize-winning, groundbreaking play changed American theatre in the person of its everyman tragic hero, Willy Loman, a dime a dozen, disappointed, disillusioned, and delusional traveling salesman with a skewed vision of the American Dream. All he wanted, the playwright wrote in his memoir, was "to count." Or as Willy's wife, Linda, implores, "Attention must be paid."
TRYING
May 24-June 9, 2024
In 1967, feisty Sarah Schorr, a 25-year-old from rural Canada, goes to work as secretary for 81-year-old Francis Biddle, the patrician former US Attorney General. The brilliant Biddle is now frail, sometimes befuddled, and always irascible. Inspired by the playwright's experiences as Biddle's secretary, the piece is a tender yet unsentimental portrait of two disparate people navigating their vast differences to form a bond of mutual admiration, consideration, and respect.
Palm Beach Dramaworks is a professional, nonprofit theatre company founded in 2000 and located in the heart of downtown West Palm Beach. Each season, the award-winning company produces five mainstage shows and offers a wide variety of programs for students at the theatre, in schools, and online. Committed to fostering the future of theatre, PBD has become a hub for playwrights in Florida and around the country to nurture their work through initiatives including the annual New Year/New Plays Festival. PBD is a member of Theatre Communications Group, Florida Professional Theatres Association, and the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County. palmbeachdramaworks.org
The Don & Ann Brown Theatre is located in the heart of downtown West Palm Beach, at 201 Clematis Street. For ticket information contact the box office at (561) 514-4042, or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.
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