New York Premiere of Candrice Jones' FLEX to Open at Lincoln Center Theater This Summer

Lincoln Center Theater will present the New York premiere of FLEX, a new play by Candrice Jones, directed by LCT Resident Director Lileana Blain-Cruz. FLEX will begin previews Friday, June 23 and open on Thursday, July 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street).

FLEX tells the story of a girls' high school basketball team from Plainnole, Arkansas. It's 1997, and the women of the Lady Train team are inspired by the successes of the WNBA. With aspirations of going pro, they must first navigate the pressures of being young, Black, and female in rural Arkansas. Will their fouls off the court tear their team apart? Or can they keep their pact to stick together through hell or high water? This powerful new play by Candrice Jones celebrates the fierce athleticism of women's basketball with all the adrenaline and swagger of a four-quarter game.

Complete casting and design team for FLEX will be announced at a later date.

Candrice Jones

(Playwright) is a Steinberg playwright, and educator from Dermott, Arkansas. Candrice has been a fellow at Callaloo for poetry at Brown University and in London. She has also been a VONA Playwriting Fellow, and CalArts MFA Critical Studies recipient. Candrice's primary goal is to write love letters for and to women of the American South. From 2014-2018, she produced Re-Imagining the Self, a ten-minute play showcase hosted by Little Rock Central High National Historic Site and the Weekend Theater. She is the author of the full-length play, Crackbaby (Wasserstein Prize Nomination) and FLEX (developed at the 2020 Humana Festival of New American Plays; co-world premiered by TheatreSquared and Theatrical Outfit). She has been a resident fellow at Ground Floor housed by the Berkeley Rep, the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, and MacDowell's Colony of the Arts. She is scheduled to be a resident playwright at Djerassi's Colony of the Arts in the fall of 2024. Candrice was a 2019-20 Many Voices Fellow and 2020-21 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. In 2022, she was awarded with the Celebrate! Maya award. Currently, Candrice lives in Little Rock where she is working on play and musical commissions, and raising her daughter, Zora.

Lileana Blain-Cruz

(Director) is a director from New York City and Miami. A Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater her credits include Thornton Wilder's' The Skin of Our Teeth (Tony nomination) Pipeline and the LCT3 productions of Marys Seacole (Obie Award) and War (also Yale Repertory Theatre). Recent projects include: White Girl in Danger (Vineyard / Second Stage); The Listeners (Opera Norway); Dreaming Zenzile (NYTW / National Black Theatre); Marys Seacole (LCT3, Obie Award); Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding's ...(Iphigenia) (MASS MoCA, Arts Emerson, The Kennedy Center); Hansel and Gretel (a film for Houston Grand Opera); Afrofemononomy (PSNY); Anatomy of a Suicide (Atlantic Theater Company); Fefu and Her Friends (TFANA); Girls (Yale Rep.); Faust (Opera Omaha); Fabulation, Or the Reeducation of Undine (Signature Theatre); Thunderbodies and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (Soho Rep.); The House That Will Not Stand, Red Speedo (New York Theatre Workshop); Water by the Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum/CTG); The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA The Negro Book of the Dead (Signature Theatre, Obie Award); Henry IV, Part One and Much Ado About Nothing (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); The Bluest Eye (The Guthrie); Salome (JACK); Hollow Roots (the Under the Radar Festival at The Public). She is the recipient of the Drama League's 2022 Founders Award for Excellence in Directing. Lileana was named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist, a 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Upcoming: Stranger Love (LA Philharmonic).

This season, in addition to FLEX, Lincoln Center Theater is also producing The Coast Starlight, a new play by Keith Bunin, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, currently in previews, and opening at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on Monday, March 13; Lerner & Loewe's Camelot, featuring a book by Academy and Emmy Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin, based on the original book by Alan Jay Lerner, and direction by Bartlett Sher, which will begin performances this Thursday, March 9 and open on Thursday, April 13 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater; as well as additional productions to be announced.

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