Lantern Theater Company Launches 2024/25 Season With THE WANDERERS

 Lantern Theater Company will launch its 2024/25 season with the regional premiere of The Wanderers, a funny, moving, and thoughtful drama by award-winning playwright Anna Ziegler. Guest director Jesse Bernstein directs an ensemble cast that includes Lantern newcomers Robert Daponte, Zoe Nebraska Feldman, Adam Howard, Arielle Siler, and Alanna J. Smith. The Wanderers runs Thursday, September 5 through Sunday, October 6, 2024, at St. Stephen’s Theater in Center City Philadelphia; a complete schedule of performances and audience enrichment events is included in the fact sheet below. Theater critics and members of the press are invited to request press tickets for opening night on Wednesday, September 11 at 7 p.m. by contacting Anne Shuff at ashuff@lanterntheater.org.

The Wanderers is a story about faith – in a higher power, in ourselves, and in the relationships we build – and what happens when that faith no longer sustains us. Set within and outside the Hasidic Satmar community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, The Wanderers is a story of two couples whose separate worlds are more similar than they might at first appear.

We meet Orthodox newlyweds Esther and Schmuli on the night of their wedding and follow them through the early years of their marriage. Also in Williamsburg, but a world away, urbane novelists Sophie and Abe live a more secular life. When luminous movie star Julia Cheever attends one of Abe’s readings and strikes up a correspondence, the cracks in his long union with Sophie threaten to split them apart – just as Esther and Schmuli find themselves deeply at odds about what constitutes a fulfilling life. Featuring Ziegler’s signature mix of sharp wit and deep curiosity about the human heart, this is a story about intimacy, history, generational patterns, and the ache in our heart’s most secret place for the thing that will finally content us.

The Wanderers was commissioned by The Old Globe in San Diego, where it received its world premiere in 2018. Several regional and international productions have followed, including a 2023 run at Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. Philadelphia audiences know Ziegler’s incisive and funny writing from the Lantern’s 2015 production of Photograph 51, about groundbreaking British scientist Rosalind Franklin, and 2019’s The Last Match, about a champion tennis player and the up-and-comer looking to dethrone him.

“Since her international breakout with Photograph 51 almost a decade ago, Anna Ziegler has emerged as one of the most creative and refreshing voices in American theater,” said Lantern Artistic Director Charles McMahon. “Her storytelling is beautifully structured and deeply informed with insight, empathy, and wit. The Wanderers marks the Lantern’s third production of her work, and we continue to be inspired by her extraordinary range and artistry.”

“I’m very excited to be making my Lantern directorial debut, and especially with this play,” said The Wanderers director Jesse Bernstein. “It is a beautiful, intimate portrayal of the restlessness inside us all and the ways we write and rewrite the narratives of ourselves and our loved ones. Why do we wander and what are we trying to find – or escape? And we have a terrific cast to bring that theme to life.”

Lantern Theater Company will delve into the world of The Wanderers on its Lantern Searchlight blog, available online at lanterntheater.org/searchlight. Articles will be published throughout the production’s run, exploring the extraordinary work of Anna Ziegler and Williamsburg’s Satmar community, as well as behind the scenes conversations with the artists.

Tickets for The Wanderers are $30 – $47 and are available online at www.lanterntheater.org or by calling the Lantern Box Office at (215) 829-0395. Discounts are available for students, seniors 65 and up, U.S. military personnel, and groups of 10 or more. Performances of The Wanderers will take place at St. Stephen’s Theater, located at 923 Ludlow Street in Center City Philadelphia. Face masks are welcome, but not required.

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