The Public Theater Announces Post-Show Discussions For NEIGHBORS

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Andrew D. Hamingson) will present post-show discussions following select performances of NEIGHBORS, the second play of the 2009-2010 Public LAB season. The Public LAB Speaker Series, held on Tuesdays following Public LAB shows, consists of engaging conversations with the artists and notable panelists. NEIGHBORS begins performances tonight and runs through Sunday, March 7.

Have you seen the new neighbors? Richard Patterson is not happy. The family of black actors that has moved in next door is rowdy, tacky, shameless, and uncouth. And they are not just invading his neighborhood-they're infiltrating his family, his sanity, and his entirely post-racial lifestyle. This wildly theatrical, explosive play on race marks the major debut of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, member of the Public's Emerging Writers Group. Tickets are $10 for all performances and include free admission to post-show discussions.

On Tuesday, February 23, immediately following the 7 p.m. performance, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson will talk with Daphne A. Brooks (author of Bodies in Dissent: Performing Race, Gender, and Nation in the Trans-Atlantic Imaginary), Chay Yew (Playwright/Director) and Niegel Smith (Director of Neighbors) in a discussion entitled "Racial Masquerade."

On Tuesday, March 2, immediately following the 7 p.m. performance, Playwright Tracey Scott Wilson (The Good Negro) will moderate a discussion on "Writing After August." Playwrights Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Neighbors), Nathan Louis Jackson (Broke-ology), and Katori Hall (The Mountaintop) will talk about their own writing and the shadow of August Wilson.

Public LAB, a vital new play series conceived in association with LAByrinth Theater Company, is designed to respond to new work immediately, and present fresh, raw, and relevant plays that embrace The Public's history as a theater receptive to the big issues, the public issues of our time. In so doing, this innovative program creates a new model for the ways in which The Public engages with our artists and audience. With minimally designed productions and short rehearsal periods, Public LAB gives writers the essential opportunity to develop new work with a director, designers, and actors and to see their work in front of an audience. Public LAB also provides our audience with access to new plays in development at affordable ticket prices. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported Public LAB with one of the largest grants ever received by the Public Theater.

DAPHNE A. BROOKS is an associate professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University, where she teaches courses on African-American literature and culture, performance studies, critical gender studies, and popular music culture. She is the author of two books: Bodies in Dissent: Performing Race, Gender, and Nation in the Trans-Atlantic Imaginary (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), winner of the Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR, and Jeff Buckley's Grace (New York: Continuum, 2005). Brooks is currently working on a new book entitled Subterranean Blues: Black Women and Sound Subcultures-From Minstrelsy Through the New Millennium (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

KATORI HALL is a playwright-performer hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Her plays include Hoodoo Love, Remembrance, Hurt Village, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, The Mountaintop (Olivier Nominee for Best New Play), WHADDABLOODCLOT!?!?, The Hope Well and Pussy Valley. Her awards include the 2009-10 Lark (PONY) Fellowship, Kate NeAl Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Recently, she was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival.

Nathan Louis Jackson's plays include Broke-ology (Lincoln Center Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival), When I Come To Die, The Mancherios, and The Last Black Play. He has participated in The Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, William Inge 24 Hour Play Festival, Ebony Theater's "The Word" (monthly poetry slam), and Kansas State Speech Team. His directing credits include The Colored Museum, The Island (Ebony Theatre). His awards include two-time AFA Prose Interpretation Champion, two-time Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award Winner, Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, ACTF Region V Best Acting Partner, President of Ebony Theatre and Recipient of the Kennedy Center's Gold Medallion. He wrote for NBC's "Southland" and now writes for FX's "Lights Out."

BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS was a member of the 2009 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group. His plays include Appropriate, The Change and Heart. He is an alum of the Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab, a former New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting Fellow, and a member of Ars Nova Playgroup. Honors include the Princess Grace Award (for Neighbors), the Dorothy Strelsin Fellowship and a Fulbright Arts Grant.

MARGO JEFFERSON is a New York-based cultural critic. Her book, On Michael Jackson, was published by Vintage in 2006. She was a book, theater and arts critic for The New York Times for 13 years and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Her reviews and essays have also appeared in Bookforum, The Washington Post, Salon, The Nation, Grand Street, VOGUE, O, and Newsweek. She wrote and performed a theater piece, Sixty Minutes in Negroland, at The Cherry Lane Theater in 2001 and The Culture Project in 2002. She now teaches Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College and Writing at Columbia University.

Niegel Smith recently completed a TCG New Generations Fellowship as Artistic Leadership Associate at The Public Theater and is a founding member of 425D, a director's lab. His New York directing credits include Ether Steeds (Fringe Award - Best Ensemble), We Declare You a Terrorist, Metro Psalm, Rainy Days & Mondays (Fringe Award - Fringe Encores), Maud- The Madness, One For The Road and LIMBS: A Pageant. He is Associate Director to Bill T. Jones on the new musical FELA! and has assisted directors Jo Bonney, James Lapine, Kristin Marting, Richard Nelson and George C. Wolfe. Niegel, a graduate of Dartmouth College, has received grants and fellowships from Theater Communications Group, the Van Lier Fund, and the Tucker Foundation. As PERMISO with Co-Artistic Director Todd Shalom, Niegel has co-conceived and staged so you're one of them now?, this was the only place i knew to go, December 31, Procession and Fallout, mass rituals in public settings.

TRACEY Scott Wilson is an accomplished playwright whose most recent theatrical production, The Good Negro, won The Sundance Institute's Time Warner Storytelling Advancement Fund and received a successful production at The Public Theater. Past production highlights include The Story (Public Theater and Long Wharf Theatre, starring Phylicia Rashad), Exhibit #9 (New Perspectives Theatre and Theatre Outrageous), Leader of the People (New Georges Theatre), and Order My Steps for Cornerstone Theater's Black Faith/AIDS project in Los Angeles. Tracey earned two Van Lier Fellowships from the New York Theatre Workshop, a residency at Sundance Ucross and Sundance Theatre Laboratory, and is the winner of the 2001 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, the 2003 AT&T Onstage Award, the 2004 Whiting Award, the 2004 Kesselring Prize, the 2007 Weissberger Playwriting Award, the 2007 Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, and was the 2009 writer-in-residence at the O'Neil Theater Center.

CHAY YEW was awarded the Obie for his direction of Julia Cho's Durango at The Public. He's also earned a Drama-Logue Award for Direction. His other directing credits include productions at New York Theatre Workshop, Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Goodman Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Huntington Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse, Empty Space, Cornerstone Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, East West Players, National Asian American Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, Gala Hispanic Theatre, Singapore Repertory Theatre, among others. His opera credits include the world premieres of Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang's Ainadamar (co-production with Tanglewood Music Center, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Rob Zuidam's Rage D'Amors (Tanglewood). As a playwright, his works include Red, Porcelain, A Language of Their Own, Wonderland and A Beautiful Country. His plays have been produced by the Public, Royal Court (London), Manhattan Theatre Club, Long Wharf, Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, Wilma Theatre, amongst others.

THE PUBLIC THEATER (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Andrew D. Hamingson, Executive Director) was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, and productions of classics at its downtown home and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day onstage and through extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 42 Tony Awards, 149 Obies, 40 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. The Public has brought 52 shows to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk; On the Town; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog/Underdog; Elaine Stritch at Liberty; Take Me Out; Caroline, or Change; Well; Passing Strange; and, most recently, the current Tony Award-winning revival of Hair. www.publictheater.org.

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