Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons, Celia Keenan-Bolger Will Lead Paula Vogel's MOTHER PLAY on Broadway

Second Stage Theater (Carole Rothman, President and Artistic Director; Lisa Lawer Post, Interim Executive Director) today announced that Tony Award winner Celia Keenan-Bolger, Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award winner Jessica Lange, and Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Jim Parsons will star in the world premiere, MOTHER PLAY, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel and directed by Tina Landau.

Part of Second Stage’s 45th Anniversary Season, this limited engagement will begin previews Tuesday, April 2nd and will officially open on Thursday, April 25th, 2024 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street).

From Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) comes MOTHER PLAY, a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.

It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis is supervising her teenage children, Carl and Martha, as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful rollercoaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.

MOTHER PLAY will feature scenic design by David Zinn, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Jen Schriever, and sound design by Jill BC Du Boff. Casting is by The Telsey Office.

Bios:

Celia Keenan-Bolger returns to Second Stage Theater where she appeared in A Parallelogram, Bachelorette, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Little Fish. Other credits - Broadway: To Kill a Mockingbird, Glass Menagerie, The Cherry Orchard, Peter and The Starcatcher, Les Misérables, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Broadway: The Oldest Boy, Merrily We Roll Along, A Small Fire. Select Film/TV: “The Gilded Age,” “Bull,” “Louie,” “The Good Wife,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Good Behavior,” “Elementary,” Diane, The Visit, Breakable You. Tony Award, Outer Critics Circle, three Drama Desk Award wins. Member of The Actors Center. NYCLU Michael Friedman Freedom Award recipient. UMichigan graduate. Training to be an end-of-life doula.

Jessica Lange. Acclaimed as one of the greatest actresses of her generation, Jessica Lange has dazzled the screen with over 30 credits to her name. Lange has won a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Emmys, five Golden Globes, and one SAG Award. On Broadway, she received the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards for her performance as Mary Tyrone in A Long Day’s Journey into Night, a role she also performed in the West End. She made her Broadway debut in A Streetcar Named Desire and was also seen starring in The Glass Menagerie. Lange stared in the television series “American Horror Story,” as well as “Grey Gardens,” “Feud: Bette and Joan,” and “The Politician.” Her films include Blue Sky, Frances, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Country, Rob Roy, Cape Fear, Tootsie, Music Box, and Sweet Dreams.

Jim Parsons most recently appeared onstage in the 2022 Off-Broadway revival of A Man of No Importance for The Classic Stage Company (Lucille Lortel Award nomination). Parsons also starred on Broadway in An Act of God, the Broadway revival of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Harvey, The Normal Heart (Theater World Award; Drama Desk Award, Best Ensemble, Tony Award, Best Revival), and The Boys in the Band (Tony Award, Best Revival). He recreated his role in the HBO film version “The Normal Heart” (Emmy Award nomination). In December 2022, Parsons starred In Focus Features’ Spoiler Alert based on Michael Ausiello’s acclaimed memoir of the same title. Parsons' That’s Wonderful Productions produced the film, which was nominated for Outstanding Film – Wide Release at the GLAAD Media Awards. Parsons starred in Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood” for Netflix and received an Emmy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for his work on the limited series.

Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award nomination, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. In June 2020, she founded Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate, a uniquely curated virtual reading series designed to become a widely accessible platform for powerful, overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists. Lifetime achievement awards include the American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival's Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, and the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence.Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and her memoir will be published by Penguin Press. She teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. www.paulavogelplaywright.com

Tina Landau is a writer and director whose work has been produced on Broadway and Off, internationally and regionally, and most frequently at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago where she is an ensemble member. Known for her original, large-scale musical and ensemble work, Tina’s been recognized by the Tony Awards, Drama Desks, Drama League, Outer Critics, Lucille Lortel, and Obies among others. Her Broadway credits include The SpongeBob Musical (also conceiver; Drama Desk & Outer Critics Circle winner Best Direction and Best Musical, 12 Tony Award noms), Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, and the revival of Bells Are Ringing (Tony noms.). Tina both wrote and directed the plays Ms. Blakk For President (with Tarell McCraney, Steppenwolf); Space (Steppenwolf, The Taper, The Public NYC); Beauty (La Jolla Playhouse); Stonewall: Night Variations (En Garde Arts); and the musicals Floyd Collins (composer Adam Guettel) and Dream True (composer Ricky Ian Gordon). Off-Broadway, she’s directed premieres including three plays of Tarell McCraney, Head Of Passes (the Public, also Steppenwolf and Taper); In The Red and Brown Water (Public, also Alliance and McCarter); and Wig Out! (Vineyard); as well as Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats (Signature), Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas (NYTW), and many of the plays of Chuck Mee. As an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, her over 20 productions include McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays, The Tempest, and The Time Of Your Life (also Seattle Rep, ACT). She was an Artist-in-Residence at Little Island in NYC, and is the co-author, with Anne Bogart, of The Viewpoints Book. Tina recently opened A Transparent Musical at Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, and her new musical Redwood (book and co-lyrics, with composer Kate Diaz) will premiere next season at La Jolla Playhouse, starring Idina Menzel.

Second Stage Theater’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The Season is supported by a grant from the Howard Gilman Foundation.

Second Stage Theater 45th SEASON

Second Stage Theater’s 45th Anniversary Season will kick off with the world premiere of Guggenheim Fellow Jen Silverman’s (Collective Rage) play, SPAIN. Directed by Tyne Rafaeli (The Coast Starlight) and starring Marin Ireland, SPAIN will begin performances in November off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street). Previews begin November 8, prior to a November 30 opening at the Tony Kiser Theatre.

The fall will also see the return to Broadway for Sarah Paulson in Obie Award-winner and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ (The Comeuppance, An Octoroon) acclaimed play APPROPRIATE. This all-new production will be directed by Lila Neugebauer (2ST’s Mary Page Marlowe) at the Hayes Theater. Previews begin November 29, prior to a December 18 opening at the Hayes Theatre.

To guarantee tickets to MOTHER PLAY and Season 45 at Second Stage, season subscriptions are on sale now beginning at $375 for 3 plays. For those 30 years of age and younger, a limited number of Flip the Script 5 Show packages are $150. To purchase a subscription, please visit 2ST.com or call 212-246-4422. Subscribers receive early access to a winter festival of plays and readings by new American writers.

Single tickets for MOTHER PLAY go on sale October 17, 2023 for phone and internet orders. Single tickets will be available for purchase in-person at the Hayes Theater box office beginning November 14, 2023.

ABOUT Second Stage Theater

Under the artistic direction of Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theater operates three New York City venues, exclusively dedicated to producing living American Playwrights.

Among Second Stage’s 180 productions are the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis; the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes; Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts; The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown; Dogfight by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Peter Duchan; Dear Evan Hansen by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson; Clyde’s and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; Trust and Lonely, I’m Not by Paul Weitz; Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl; The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz; Everyday Rapture and Whorl Inside a Loop by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy and Notes From the Field by Anna Deavere Smith; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein; Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; Jitney by August Wilson; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan; Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; and Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee.

The company’s more than 170 citations include the 2022 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Take Me Out, as well as Best Featured Actor in a Play for Jesse Tyler Ferguson; six 2017 Tony Awards for Dear Evan Hansen (Best Musical; Best Lead Actor in a Musical, Ben Platt; Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Rachel Bay Jones; Best Book of a Musical; Best Original Score; Best Orchestrations); the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley, Next to Normal), Best Score (Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, Next to Normal), and Best Orchestrations (Tom Kitt and Michael Starobin, Next to Normal); the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed); the 2005 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee); the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses); the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 29 Obie Awards, 11 Outer Critics Circle Awards, four Clarence Derwent Awards, 20 Drama Desk Awards, 11 Theatre World Awards, one Dorothy Louden Award, 20 Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Critics Circle Award and 23 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theater opened The Tony Kiser Theater, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theater, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theater Uptown” to showcase the work of up-and-coming artists at the 99-seat McGinn/Cazale Theater.

In 2018, Second Stage began producing at its 581 seat Broadway home, The Hayes Theater. Originally named “The Little Theater” and built in 1912, the city landmark has been remodeled by David Rockwell of Rockwell Group.

The Theater supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.