Forrest Malloy's NINA To Premiere At Theaterlab This Winter

Nina, a new play by two-time O'Neill semi-finalist Forrest Malloy, is set to premiere in a strictly limited engagement at Theaterlab from January 23 – February 9, 2025, with an opening set for Sunday, January 26. Directed by Katie Birenboim, Nina invites audiences into the women's dressing room at a prestigious New York City conservatory.

Nina centers on five young actresses in their final year of study who laugh and cry, fight and flirt, compete, plan and dream… until a shocking revelation forces them to confront the foundations of their bonds. As final performances of Chekhov's The Seagull loom, themes of love, art, and unfulfilled potential echo onstage and off. Nina is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes look at the always high-stakes, often ridiculous environment of actor training, illuminating the tensions, intimacy, and even cruelty that define the making of great art and the strongest of female friendships.

The cast of Nina includes Francesca Carpanini (Broadway's All My Sons & The Little Foxes), Jasminn Johnson (Broadway's Ain't No Mo), Lortel recipient Aigner Mizzelle (Broadway's Chicken & Biscuits, nicHi douglas' pray), Katherine Reis (Broadway's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Max's Gossip Girl), and Nina Grollman (Broadway's To Kill A Mockingbird & The Iceman Cometh).

“Some very kind people have called Nina my 'love letter to the theater',” says playwright Forrest Malloy. “For me, Nina is a reaffirmation, maybe to a corpse, but a reaffirmation all the same. While it does deal with questions of ambition and the high price of being an artist, I think the play finds most of its power in the dynamics between its five young women. The gay male fascination with Women has yielded a long line of cultural iterations, some base (the Housewives universe), some vivid and complex (Tennessee Williams, the Housewives universe). I hope Nina takes her subjects seriously but refuses to let them off the hook. And I hope she makes audiences laugh their asses off.” 

“I've spent my entire life — educational, professional, and otherwise – fascinated by relationships between women,” says director Katie Birenboim. “For me, it's not just about ‘girl power' or pink pussy hats (though those are great too), but the complex dynamics that underscore these relationships: with love comes hate, with envy comes admiration, with intimacy comes misdirection, and all the other juicy feelings in between. These juxtapositions and tensions are what make female friendships so strong, so interesting, and so ripe for study and the stage.”

The creative team for Nina includes Wilson Chin (scenic design), Ásta Bennie Hostetter (costume design), Wheeler Moon (lighting design), Brandon Bulls (sound design), Denise J Grillo (props consultant), Jack Serio (consulting producer), and Morgen E. Doyle (production stage manager). Nina is produced by Katie Birenboim and Francesca Carpanini.

Performances of Nina will take place January 23 – February 9, 2025 at Theaterlab, located at 357 W 36th Street, 3rd Floor in Manhattan. Critics are welcome as of Friday, January 24 for an opening on Sunday, January 26. The performance schedule is Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sundays at 2 PM. The anticipated running time is 100 minutes, no intermission. Tickets, which start at $36 for general admission and $45 for reserved seating, can be purchased at www.theaterlabnyc.com.

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