Soho Rep Sets 2016-17 Season

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Sarah Benson and Executive Director Cynthia Flowers, Soho Rep. has continually produced work by bold artists who harness the intimate power of the organization's own 73-seat black box theater, as well as other spaces, to create transformative experiences. Soho Rep.'s 2016-17 season, announced today, comprises two ambitious new works-both characterized by inventive theatrical forms, holistic collaborations, and striking original music-along with an opportunity to get the first "work-in-process" look at a new commission by a celebrated playwright.

At the Connelly Theater (220 E. 4th St.), Soho Rep. welcomes the return of legendary entertainer Jomama Jones in the world premiere of Duat (October 11-November 6, Opening: October 23) by Daniel Alexander Jones. Five years ago, New York audiences and critics alike swooned over the Soho Rep. production of Jones's Radiate. Developed with and directed by Will Davis, Duat additionally features Jacques Colimon, Tenzin Gund-Morrow, Toussaint Jeanlouis, Daniel Alexander Jones, Stacey Karen Robinson, and Kaneza Schaal.

Back home on Walker Street, Soho Rep., in association with John Adrian Selzer, also welcomes back Richard Maxwell, with the world premiere Soho Rep. commission of Samara (April 4-May 7, Opening: April 16). In a departure, the artist, who nearly always also directs his own plays, is handing over the directorial duties to Soho Rep. Artistic Director Sarah Benson. Samara features original music by the legendary Steve Earle, who will also perform in the piece. Joining Earle in the cast are Becca Blackwell, Vinie Burrows, Roy Faudree, Modesto Flako Jimenez, and Paul Lazar. Maxwell's work was seen previously at Soho Rep. in 2001 with Cavemen and in 1999 with Cowboys and Indians.

In January, audiences will be invited to open rehearsals, also being directed by Benson, after a weeklong Studio workshop of a new play by award winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. The piece, which has been co-commissioned by Soho Rep. and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, explores surveillance and interrogation techniques during war and peacetime at home and abroad.

Reflecting upon the 2016-17 season, Benson remarked, "I'm so excited about the upcoming season and how each piece feels like a gigantic creative experiment for all of the artists involved and for Soho Rep.

"Radiate stands out in my mind as an indelible and joyous production. I could not be more thrilled to be welcoming back Daniel and Jomama and their whole family of collaborators again-especially director Will Davis whom I first met in our Writer/Director Lab. This will be Daniel's first time performing in the same piece as Jomama and the first-ever long, sit-down run in New York of one of Daniel's works. Even Jomama is doing something she's never done before-playing a role in a play-which will be new for her fans who have come to know her through her incredible concerts.

"I'm also delighted that Richard is game for the experiment of letting me direct a new play of his. I've been enthralled with his intensely human and exuberant writing for years and can't wait to take on the production together with a great team and cast including Steve Earle. Steve is known for his incredible work in traditionally American genres-folk and country-but he is also interested in embracing more experimental and ancient musical forms in SAMARA.

And, while Jackie's just beginning to write her new play, we're already eager to dive into the process of building the piece together with our colleagues at Berkeley Rep. She's exploring a production element-I won't spoil the surprise-that absolutely has to be tested out with an audience as the play is being created and we're looking forward to sharing the work-in-process with our audiences."

SOHO REP. 2016-2017 PROGRAMMING

Soho Rep. presents
Jomama Jones in
Duat (world premiere)
by Daniel Alexander Jones
Directed by Will Davis
with new music by Samora Pinderhughes, Bobby Halvorson and Jomama Jones
featuring Jacques Colimon, Tenzin Gund, Toussaint Jeanlouis, Daniel Alexander Jones, Jomama Jones, Stacey Robinson, Kaneza Schaal and more

October 11-November 6
Opening: October 23
The Connelly Theater (220 E. 4th St.)
Tickets: $35 general admission tickets, $65 premium seats
$0.99 Sundays: October 16, 30
sohorep.org or (212) 352-3101

In the darkest hour of the night, surrender your heart to call the light.

Two halves of a soul hunt through a hall of records.
A librarian breaks the seal of a mysterious archive.
A teacher and her class prepare the pageant to end all pageants.

Duat conjures a spell of disintegration, transformation and regeneration through an incandescent performance in three parts. A little bit vaudeville, a little bit rock and soul.

Through performance, Daniel Alexander Jones constructs ephemeral living architectures, and vibrant, temporary communities to invite audiences into what he hopes are liberatory, expansive experiences of themselves and one another. Jones creates contexts that are beautiful, rigorous, surreptitiously disorienting, and suffused with truths often lost within absolutes of identity, narrative and social habits. Jones's work has flourished across the United States and internationally, in theatres, cabaret halls, community centers, galleries, alternative performance spaces, and through digital media. An accomplished actor, singer, writer, director and deviser, Jones and his boundary-pushing body of work have consistently disrupted assumptions about Black, Queer and avant-garde performance. Pieces include Phoenix Fabrik, Bel Canto, Clayangels, Blood:Shock:Boogie, Bright Now Beyond, and Phantasmatron. Jones directed premiere productions of plays by Erik Ehn, Ruth Margraff, E. Patrick Johnson, Renita Martin and Shay Youngblood. He was a company member with Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Penumbra Theatre Company and is an alumnus of New Dramatists and the Playwrights' Center. He is an Associate Company Member with Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis. A progenitor of Afromysticism, Jones is also recognized by scholars as a major contributor to the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic. Jones is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Fordham University in New York City and previously served on the faculties of the University of Texas at Austin and Goddard College. Daniel holds degrees from Vassar College, in Africana Studies; and Brown University, in Theatre. Jones was named the Herb Alpert Award winner in Theatre in 2006, was an inaugural Creative Capital Grantee, and has had five projects supported by the MAP Fund. Jones received the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award in 2015.

Will Davis is a director and choreographer known for physically adventurous works. He is the new Artistic Director of American Theatre Company in Chicago. Davis holds a BFA in theatre studies from DePaul University and an MFA in directing from the University of Texas-Austin. His recent directing projects include Sorry Robot for PS122's COIL Festival, and Men on Boats for Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks, which will receive a remount at Playwrights Horizons this July. He also helmed Colossal at Mixed Blood Theatre and the Olney Theatre Center, for which he received a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding direction. He is an alum of the Writer/Director Lab at Soho Rep, and the NYTW 2050 Directing Fellowship. He is currently the artist-in-residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he is developing new work.

Jomama Jones is a legendary entertainer beloved by audiences internationally since the launch of her career in the early 1980s. A fixture on Soul Train and Solid Gold, Jones's R&B hits included Afromatic and Electrify; her turn in Sista Soul and the Colonizers from Mars announced her skills as an actress. Jones left the United States after Reagan's reelection for political and personal reasons. In 2010 she staged a massive comeback, with a sold-out concert at Joe's Pub and the subsequent critically acclaimed Radiate, which premiered at Soho Rep. then toured the nation. Produced by Bobby Halvorson, Jomama released the albums Lone Star, Radiate, and Six Ways Home, and will release the double album Flowering in 2016 on the Aries Records imprint.

Duat was developed with the support of Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre and the New York Voices Commissioning Program; FUSEBOX; La MaMa E.T.C.; the Kimmel Center; the Playwrights' Center; ArtMatters; and The Doris Duke Foundation.

Soho Rep., in association with John Adrian Selzer, presents
Samara (world premiere Soho Rep. commission)
by Richard Maxwell
directed by Sarah Benson
with original music by Steve Earle
featuring Becca Blackwell, Vinie Burrows, Steve Earle, Roy Faudree, Modesto Flako Jimenez, Paul Lazar, and more

April 4 - May 7
Opening: April 16
Soho Rep. (46 Walker St.)
Tickets: $35 general admission tickets, $65 premium seats
$0.99 Sundays: April 9, 23
sohorep.org or (212) 352-3101

The rains will come soon. The roads will wash out and the rivers will grow.
I know.
I thought maybe not being from around here you didn't know.
I know about that.

On the fringes of the frontier, a messenger embarks on an arduous journey to collect a debt from a man he's never met. Friends set out to atone for a mistake that can't be undone. Strangers look for a little bit of comfort wherever they can find it.

A spiritual and visceral celebration about whatever it is we call home.

Funding for Samara is provided, in part, by the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.

Richard Maxwell is a playwright, director and the artistic director of New York City Players. He studied acting at Illinois State University and then became a co-founder of the Cook County Theater Department. He is a Doris Duke Performing Artist. Maxwell has been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and was included in the Whitney Biennial. His latest play, The Evening, which premiered in 2015 was a commission by the 2014 Spalding Gray Award. He directed Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, Really, for New York City Players in March 2016. His latest book, Theater for Beginners, was published by Theatre Communications Group.

Sarah Benson has been Artistic Director of Soho Rep. since 2007. Her directing credits for Soho Rep. include César Alvarez and The Lisps's Futurity, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon, (Soho Rep. & Theater for a New Audience); Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney; David Adjmi's Elective Affinities, and Sarah Kane's Blasted. She has also directed at A.R.T., Woolly Mammoth & M.T.C.. She holds a MFA from Brooklyn College. In 2016, Benson was awarded a Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise.

A protégé of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Steve Earle is one of today's master musical storytellers, whose songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, The Pretenders, Joan Baez and countless others. Throughout his more than 30-year career, Earle has mined the veins of American roots music: country rock and roll, folk and rockabilly. His debut record, Guitar Town, shot to No. 1 on the country charts, and his Grammy Award-winning albums include The Revolution Starts...Now, Washington Square Serenade and Townes. He is host of "The Steve Earle Show: Hardcore Troubadour" Radio, on Sirius XM Radio.

On June 10, his collaborative album with Shawn Colvin, Colvin & Earle, will be released on Fantasy Records. Colvin & Earle, produced by Buddy Miller, reveals a truly creative partnership between these friends who first met nearly three decades ago. His debut novel, I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, was published in 2011, and a second novel and a memoir are forthcoming. Earle is also recognized as an actor from his roles on HBO's "The Wire" and "Treme," both created by David Simon.

Soho Rep. presents
a Studio Workshop
of an untitled new play
co-commissioned by Soho Rep. and Berkeley Repertory Theatre
by Jackie Sibblies Drury
directed by Sarah Benson
January 2017

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Social Creatures and And now I only dance at weddings. The presenters of her plays include Soho Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London. Sibblies Drury hasdeveloped her work at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. She was a dramaturg for Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received the 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and is currently a member of The Writer's Room at Manhattan Theatre Club and Ars Nova.

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