Cast Set for SUMP'N LIKE WINGS at Mint Theater Company

Mint Theater Company has revealed the cast for the New York Premiere of Sump'n Like Wings by Lynn Riggs, author of more than thirty plays including Green Grow the Lilacs, the basis for Rodgers & Hammerstein's landmark musical Oklahoma! Written in 1925, Sump'n Like Wings was published in 1928. 

Raelle Myrick-Hodges directs a cast that features Julia Brothers (Broadway: Relatively Speaking, written and directed by Elaine May; Off-Broadway: Clever Little Lies), Andrew Gombas (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It - The Drilling Company's Shakespeare in the Parking Lot); Carmeron Anika Hill (Broadway: Dear Evan Hansen; National Tours: Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, Oklahoma!); Traci Hovel (Off-Broadway debut!); Lukey Klein (Off-Broadway debut!); Richard Lear (The Normal Heart; God of Carnage Off Broadway revival with Christiane Noll & David Burtka); Mariah Lee (Broadway and National Tour: Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird); Mike Masters (Face the Music - City Center Encores!; National Tour: 101 Dalmatians: The Musical);  Buzz Roddy (Off-Broadway: The Night of the Iguana. (A)loft Modulation, The Show-Off); Lindsey Steinert (Off-Broadway debut!); and Joy Avigail Sudduth (Off-Broadway: Leaving the Blues, Waiting for Giovanni, Walk Hard).

Mint will offer audiences the rare opportunity to see this 99-year-old play, which remains a resonant and compelling story about love, family and home. This Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street) will begin September 21st for a limited run through November 2nd. Opening Night is set for Thursday October 10th.

The creative team will include Junghyun Georgia Lee (set design), Emilee McVey-Lee (costume design), Isabella Gill-Gomez (lighting design), Sean Hagerty (sound design), Chris Fields (props design), and Amy Stoller (dialects & dramaturgy). Jeff Meyers will be Production Stage Manager, along with Miriam Hyfler and Arthur Atkinson, Assistant Stage Managers.

“A good play often means different things to different people. As the father of a 16yr-old, for me Sump'n Like Wings is a play about parenting — I see that everywhere. You may see it as a play about growing up, or about friendship, or family, or about the need for independence or freedom — and the dangers that accompany both. Riggs has written a remarkable play about home. I'm grateful that we get to introduce it to you,” said Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank. 

"When I began looking into the production history of Sump'n Like Wings, all I could find were a few ‘squibs' in the papers announcing that one producer or another had purchased an ‘option,' but no production. I started to wonder if I might have another World Premiere on my hands, like Becomes A Woman (and others). My hopes were dashed when I confirmed that the play was performed for a single night by the Detroit Playhouse at the Institute of Arts, on November 27th 1931, then a year later, November 13th 1932, in Brussels (Quelque chose comme des Ailes). Three New York producers took out options on Sump'n Like Wings, but those options all lapsed without a production.  Until now!” 

Sump'n Like Wings is the story of Wille Baker, a 16-year-old girl too proud and too wild for the life she's living. Her mother runs the dining room in the hotel her uncle owns. Willie is stuck helping her, squirming under her thumb while her uncle argues for tenderness and compassion. Sump'n Like Wings is a story of the lessons learned by families about freedom and limits — about love, respect, and safety. It's a story about home and about leaving home.

Sump'n Like Wings is set in Oklahoma, six years after the Indian and Oklahoma Territories combined to become the 46th state in the Union in 1907. Lynn Riggs owes his lasting fame to the musical named after his home state, Oklahoma!, based on his acclaimed 1930 play Green Grows the Lilacs. 

EnrichMINT Events
 

EnrichMINT Event With Jace Weaver

Saturday September 28th, following the Matinee
 

Get more insight into the life & career of Lynn Riggs from Jace Weaver, the Founding Director of the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia. Weaver has written about Riggs several times, including in his seminal work of Native American literary history, That the People Might Live: Native American Literature and Native American Community. From Jace Weaver's Forward to The Cherokee Night and Other Plays: “Silence — even taciturnity — seldom makes for great drama, but Lynn Riggs knew Oklahomans. More so than his contemporary John Steinbeck, he heard them and gave them voice. In his preface to Green Grows the Lilacs, writing of the task of a dramatist, he concluded, ‘And sometimes, his characters may do stirring things he could never have calculated. And sometime, if he is fortunate, he may hear from the people he has set in motion (as Shakespeare and Chekhov often heard) things to astonish him and things to make him wise.'” Free & open to the public, on  Saturday September 28th, following the matinee performance.

Jesse Marchese, Dramaturgical Advisor

Wednesday October 9th, following the matinee
 

Lynn Riggs’s identity, as a gay Cherokee, made him particularly sensitive to issues of sexuality and presumed gender roles in Indian Territory and the early years of Oklahoma’s statehood. This discussion will explore the way in which those themes emerge in his body of work, including Sump’n Like Wings and beyond. Free & open to the public, on Wednesday October 9th, following the matinee performance.