Photo Flash: First Look at SMART PEOPLE at Kitchen Theatre Company

Kitchen Theatre Company launches its 2017-2018 Season with Smart People, a sharp and provocative new comedy by Lydia R. Diamond. Summer L. Williams, Associate Artistic Director of Company One Theatre (Boston, MA), directs. Performances of Smart People began at the Kitchen Theatre Company in The Percy Browning Theatre on September 3. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Smart People poses big questions about whether our beliefs and prejudices are hard-wired into us by exploring the intersecting lives of four Harvard intellectuals: Brian, a white neuro-psychiatrist studying the brain's response to race; his Chinese-Japanese American lover Ginny, a tenured professor of psychology studying race and identity among Asian-American women; Brian's friend Jackson, an African-American surgical intern on rotation in one of the university's teaching hospitals; and Valerie, an African-American who has recently graduated with her MFA in Acting. With barbed wit, Diamond asks questions about our beliefs and prejudices as she depicts these four characters search for love, success, and identify in a complex world.

The ensemble cast features Bryce Michael Wood ( King Lear and Spamalot at Connecticut Repertory Theatre) as Jackson, Folami Williams ( Othello at Classic Stage Company and Concrete Orange at the Guthrie Theater) as Valerie, Jake Lee Smith ( Buried Child and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at NYU) as Brian, and Shannon Tyo ( Kentucky at Ensemble Studio Theatre and The White Snake at The Old Globe) as Ginny.

Smart People was commissioned by McCarter Theatre Center and originally produced at the Huntington Theatre Company supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant.