New Musicals by Jason Robert Brown, Gavin Creel & More Set for MCC's 2023/24 Season

MCC Theater (Bernie Telsey and Will Cantler, Co-Artistic Directors; Blake West, Executive Director) announced today their 2023-2024 season.

MCC’s season will begin in September 2023 with a World Premiere production from this fall’s company-in-residence, The Playwrights Realm. Mary Gets Hers is by Emma Horwitz and directed by Josiah Davis. In November 2023 will be the World Premiere of Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, written and performed by Tony Award® winner Gavin Creel (Into the Woods), directed by Linda Goodrich (Loud Nite) and originally commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In January 2024, MCC will present the World Premiere of The Connector, a new musical with music and lyrics by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (Parade), a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman (Clive), and conceived and directed by Daisy Prince (The Last Five Years). The season will conclude in April 2024 with the NY Premiere of The Lonely Few, a new rock musical with music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak (Secret Soldiers), a book by Rachel Bonds (Sundown, Yellow Moon), and direction by Trip Cullman (MCC’s Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow) and Ellenore Scott (Titanique). MCC will also present the 23rd Edition of Uncensored, an MCC Youth Company Production in April 2024. Dates, casting, creative teams, and individual ticket on sales will be announced at a later date.

MCC Theater has also announced some of the work they will be developing over the next year. These projects include The Sensational Sea-Minkettes by Vivian J.O. Barnes and directed by Taylor Reynolds and Miss Step, with a book and lyrics by Melissa Li and Kit Yan, music by Melissa Li, direction and co-choreography by Connor Gallagher, and co-choreography by Jay Jackson.

"We are thrilled to work with three astonishing composers this season. We've long admired Gavin Creel, Jason Robert Brown, and Zoe Sarnak, and each of their shows asks a provocative question. What does art do for us? What is our responsibility to the truth? And what does family mean? These are the kinds of conversation starters we thrive on sharing with our audience,” said Co-Artistic Directors Bernie Telsey and Will Cantler. “We're also happy to welcome The Playwrights Realm to a first time Fall residency. Combined with our Youth Company production of UNCENSORED and our ongoing development work on new plays and musicals it will be a busy and very exciting year."

Priority subscriptions for MCC’s 2023/24 season start at $200 and include Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, The Connector, The Lonely Few, and the Playwrights Realm production of Mary Gets Hers, plus unlimited free ticket exchanges, 20% off guest tickets, waived ticket fees, and first access to tickets. MCC also offers a no-frills Flex Ticket package starting at $250.

---

Details for 2023/2024 Include:

A World Premiere from this fall’s Company-in-Residence, The Playwrights Realm
MARY GETS HERS
By Emma Horwitz
Directed by Josiah Davis
Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater
September 11 – October 7, 2023

It’s the 10th century! A plague rages on in Germany! Everyone is turning into foam! When two overzealous hermits find an abandoned orphan named Mary, they scheme a saintly rescue mission to protect her purity at any and all costs. Mary, however, has other plans for herself, in this new play inspired by Hrosvitha of Gandersheim’s closet drama-comedy Abraham, or the Rise and Repentance of Mary. 

Mary Gets Hers is produced by The Playwrights Realm, in residence this fall at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space.

The World Premiere of
WALK ON THROUGH: CONFESSIONS OF A MUSEUM NOVICE
Written and performed by Gavin Creel
Directed by Linda Goodrich
Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater
November-December 2023

Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor and songwriter Gavin Creel (Hello, Dolly!, Into The Woods) had never been to The Metropolitan Museum of Art…until now. Inspired by the countless hours he spent wandering through the world-renowned collections of the museum for a MetLiveArts commission, Walk on Through is a thrilling new musical event featuring 17 original, infectious, pop-infused songs. In his theatrical songwriting debut, Creel takes us on an intimate, relatable journey of discovery and transformation through the lens of the art that captured his imagination. Whether you are a museum lover or a fellow novice, this show invites you to take a walk with Creel and engage with art, song, and the creative process in a fresh and new way.

Originally commissioned by The Met, Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice is now making its off-Broadway debut at MCC Theater.

The World Premiere of
THE CONNECTOR
Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Book by Jonathan Marc Sherman
Conceived and directed by Daisy Prince
Newman Mills Theater
January-February 2024

From Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown (Parade) comes a timely new musical about two talented young journalists on increasingly diverging paths. Set in the late 1990s amid a rapidly changing media landscape we meet a fast-rising journalist, Ethan Dobson, and an assistant copy editor, Robin Martinez, at the revered magazine The Connector. In a world that values the next big sensation, Ethan’s writing prowess and ambition force him to confront how far he’ll go for the ultimate scoop and Robin to consider how far she’ll go to stop him.

With a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman, The Connector will feature Brown leading the band at each performance and reuniting with The Last Five Years and Songs for a New World director Daisy Prince.

The Connector is supported by the Gary Platt Initiative for New Musicals at MCC Theater and the Burton A. Zipser and Sandra D. Zipser Foundation.

The NY Premiere of
THE LONELY FEW
Music and Lyrics by Zoe Sarnak
Book by Rachel Bonds
Directed by Trip Cullman and Ellenore Scott
Newman Mills Theater
April-June 2024

Lila and her band, The Lonely Few, have a standing gig at Paul's Juke Joint in their small Kentucky town. When an established musician, Amy, gives them a chance to join her on tour, they take it. Love blossoms between Lila and Amy on the road, but can it endure? The Lonely Few is a New York premiere rock musical about the forces that launch us from home and the gravitational pull that can bring us back. 

By award-winning film and stage composer Zoe Sarnak (A Crossing, Galileo) and Rachel Bonds (Sundown, Yellow Moon) and directed by Trip Cullman (MCC Theater's Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow) and Ellenore Scott (Titanique).

The Lonely Few is supported by the Gary Platt Initiative for New Musicals at MCC Theater and the Burton A. Zipser and Sandra D. Zipser Foundation.

UNCENSORED
An MCC Youth Company Production
April 2024

An annual highlight of the MCC calendar, the 23rd Edition of Uncensored will feature New York City teens taking over MCC’s main stage to speak their truth. MCC Youth Company’s Performance Lab and Brooklyn Youth Company branches put on exhilarating shows with student-written monologues, scenes, and ensemble pieces.  Uncensored is a celebration of young voices who speak to their experiences, hopes and dreams reflecting on today, while looking toward the future.  Their words are emboldened with music and movement, resulting in a show that will bring you to your feet.

MCC Theater’s Education Programs are supported by The Ruth and Harold Newman Education Fund, The Pinkerton Foundation, The Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, the Tiger Baron Foundation, The Eric Rosedale Playwriting Fund, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and by public funds from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council.

The following organizations provide MCC Theater with General Operating Support: Howard Gilman Foundation, Shubert Foundation, Laurents/Hatcher Foundation, Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, Richenthal Foundation, Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Charles & Lucille King Family Foundation Inc., Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation Inc., Lucille Lortel Foundation, Actors’ Equity Foundation.

MCC Theater’s play development programs are supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Funding for closed caption performances is provided, in part, by a grant from NYSCA/TDF TAP Plus.

ABOUT MCC Theater

MCC Theater is one of New York’s leading nonprofit Off-Broadway companies, driven by a mission to provoke conversations that have never happened and otherwise never would. Founded in 1986 by Bob LuPone (1946-2022) and Bernie Telsey, and later joined by co-Artistic Director Will Cantler, as a collective of artists leading peer-based classes to support their own development as actors, writers and directors, MCC fulfills its mission of through the production of world, American, and New York premiere plays and musicals that challenge artists and audiences to confront contemporary personal and social issues, and robust playwright development and education initiatives that foster the next generation of theater artists and students.

MCC Theater’s celebrated productions include Guadalís Del Carmen’s Bees & Honey, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play, Kate Nash’s Only Gold with a book by Andy Blankenbuehler and Ted Malawer, Donja R. Love’s soft; Ross Golan’s The Wrong Man; Aziza Barnes’ BLKS; Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play; Penelope Skinner’s The Village Bike; Robert Askins’ Hand to God (Broadway transfer; five 2015 Tony Award® nominations including Best Play); John Pollono’s Small Engine Repair; Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Really Really; Sharr White’s The Other Place (Broadway transfer); Jeff Talbott’s The Submission (Laurents/Hatcher Award); Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty (Broadway transfer, three 2009 Tony Award® nominations, including Best Play), Some Girl(s), Fat Pig, The Mercy Seat, and All The Ways To Say I Love You; Michael Weller’s Fifty Words; Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride; Bryony Lavery’s Frozen (Broadway transfer; four 2004 Tony Award® nominations including Best Play, Tony Award® for Best Featured Actor); Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone; Rebecca Gilman’s The Glory of Living (2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist); Margaret Edson’s Wit (1999 Pulitzer Prize); and musicals including Alice by Heart, Ride the Cyclone, Carrie, and Coraline.  Many plays developed and produced by MCC have gone on to productions throughout the country and around the world. 

Over the years MCC has worked with thousands of students through the innovative MCC Youth Company, school partnerships, and student matinee programs.

Executive Director Blake West joined the company in 2006. MCC opened the doors to its new home in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, on January 9, 2019, unifying the company’s activities under one roof for the first time and expanding its producing, artist development, and education programming. MCC founding Co-Artistic Director Bob LuPone sadly passed away on August 27, 2022. MCC continues to honor his fierce need for engagement with the art, the artists, and the audience and remember the profound impact he had on everyone who entered its spaces.

ABOUT PLAYWRIGHTS REALM

The Playwrights Realm, led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Executive Director Roberta Pereira, is devoted to supporting emerging playwrights throughout their careers, helping them to hone their craft, fully realize their vision, and build meaningful artistic careers. To serve this mission, The Playwrights Realm provides comprehensive support to playwrights throughout their creative processes and careers with the Realm Playwrights Program, Writing Fellowship, the Scratchpad Series, and the Page One Residency. 

The Realm also implemented programs to counteract industry gatekeeping and illuminate, for people interested in theater, clear pathways into the field: they inaugurated the Aspiring Playwrights program (a curriculum of free online articles, videos, and services created in conjunction with the organization’s family of artists), and began Script Share (an opportunity for aspiring writers to engage in a one-hour discussion with a theater professional about a particular script). These initiatives followed another vital means of support The Realm launched prior to the pandemic: the Radical Parent-Inclusion Project (RPI), developed in association with Parent Artist Advocacy League for the Performing Arts (PAAL), which seeks to dismantle the barriers preventing parent-artists from succeeding in the theater by illuminating, creating, and tracking new pathways of access and approaches to production. 

In the fall of 2016, The Playwrights Realm produced the world premiere of Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves, which is currently hailed as one of the "25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America’" by the New York Times, and was recently featured on TCG’s "Top 10 Most-Produced Plays in 2018-2019" list. Other previous productions by The Playwrights Realm include Noah Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (in partnership with Baltimore Center Stage, where it was performed before its New York run was canceled due to the pandemic, with The Realm paying the entire creative team in full and the actors through opening night), Anna Moench’s Mothers (2019), Jonathan Payne’s The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd (2018), Don Nguyen’s Hello, From the Children of Planet Earth (2018), Michael Yates Crowley’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias (2017), Jen Silverman’s The Moors (2017), Mfoniso Udofia’s Sojourners (2016), Anna Ziegler’s A Delicate Ship (2015), Anton Dudley’s City Of (2015), Elizabeth Irwin’s My Mañana Comes (2014), Lauren Yee’s The Hatmaker’s Wife (2013), Ethan Lipton’s Red-Handed Otter (2012), Jen Silverman’s Crane Story (2011), Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco's Dramatis Personae (2010), Christopher Wall's Dreams of the Washer King (2010), Anna Ziegler's Dov and Ali (2009) and Anton Dudley's Substitution (2008). 

Photo Credit: Jeff Lorch