Huntington Theatre Company Brings INDECENT To Boston Featuring Original Broadway Cast Members

By: Mar. 18, 2019
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Huntington Theatre Company Brings INDECENT To Boston Featuring Original Broadway Cast Members

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel's Indecent, will make its Boston premiere featuring the Tony Award-winning direction by Rebecca Taichman, a seasoned Broadway design team and many members of the original Broadway cast. Presented by Huntington Theatre Company in a co-production with Center Theatre Group, Boston audiences will have the rare opportunity to experience this fully remounted Broadway production at the Avenue of the Arts / Huntington Avenue Theatre (264 Huntington Avenue, Boston). Performances begin April 26 and will run through May 25. Tickets are on sale now to the general public.

This remounting of the Broadway production of Indecent welcomes back many of the original Broadway company including Mimi Lieber (Act One, Brooklyn Boy, I'm Not Rappaport); Steven Rattazzi (Henry V at The Public Theater, The Tempest at Classic Stage Company); Richard Topol (The Normal Heart, Awake and Sing!, The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino); Adina Verson (The Lucky Ones at Ars Nova, Amazon's "Mozart in the Jungle"); and musicians Grammy Award winner Matt Darriau (The Band's Visit, Riverdance) and Grammy Award winner Lisa Gutkin (The Klezmatics, The Last Ship), who is also the co-composer and music supervisor of Indecent. Joining the original cast members are Tony Award nominee Harry Groener (Oklahoma!, Crazy for You, Cats, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Tony Award nominee Elizabeth A. Davis (Once), Joby Earle (War Horse) and musician Patrick Farrell (RIOULT Dance of NY, National Yiddish Theater) .

Indecent is a deeply moving play inspired by the true events surround the controversial 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance - a play seen by some as a seminal work of Jewish culture, and by others as an act of traitorous libel. Indecent charts the history of an incendiary drama and the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it. Indecent is a riveting and richly theatrical backstage drama, a fierce indictment of censorship, and a celebration of art and love. "Directed with poetry and polish by Rebecca Taichman, Paula Vogel's Indecent thrum with music and desire, and its shrews about how art does and doesn't transcend the perilous winds of history" (The New Yorker).

Indecent opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on April 18, 2017 marking the Broadway debuts for both Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman. The road to Broadway included critically acclaimed runs at The Vineyard Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. The Broadway production of Indecent garnered three Tony Award nominations including one for Best Play and resulted in two wins for Best Direction of a Play and Best Lighting Design of a Play for Christopher Akerlind. In addition to recognition from the Broadway League, Rebecca Taichman also won an Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Direction of a Play.

"Having Paula Vogel's masterwork on our stage - in the hands of her Broadway collaborator, the brilliant Rebecca Taichman - is a remarkable moment for our theatre" says Artistic Director Peter DuBois. "What Paula has captured in the story moves the heart and sears the soul. She's telling the story of a forgotten play - but she's also telling the astonishing story of a people and of a complex time in our country. I'm proud that, with our colleagues at Center Theatre Group, we have recreated the acclaimed Broadway production of this piece and that Boston audiences will be among the lucky who get to see Paula's remarkable play in its definitive staging."

Indecent will include original Broadway choreography by David Dorfman (Our Town with Deaf West Theatre, BAM, The Joyce Theater); music by Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva (Theatre for a New Audience, ArtsEmerson); set design by Tony nominee Riccardo Hernandez (The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, Caroline or Change, Parade); costume design by Emily Rebholz (Dear Evan Hansen, If/Then, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike); sound design by Matt Hubbs (Time and the Conways); projection design by Tal Yarden (Network, The Crucible Sunday in the Park with George); fight choreography by Rick Sordelet (Kiss Me Kate, Sunset Boulevard, Misery) and Tony Award-winning lighting design by Christopher Akerlind (Rocky, 110 in the Shade, A Light in the Piazza). Also returning to the production is associate director, Ashley Brooke Monroe (Fun Home, The Glass Menagerie). Production stage manager is Emily F. McMullen and stage manager is Kevin Schlagle.

Paula Vogel (Playwright) a long time Massachusetts resident, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize, Lortel Prize, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Obie Award, and New York Drama Critics Award 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. She is currently working on three new projects, including Cressida on Top (recently workshopped at Center Theatre Group and The Goodman Theatre) and a new play commissioned by Center Theatre Group and Second Stage Theater. Lifetime achievement awards include American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have three awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival's Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, the annual Paula Vogel Award by Vineyard Theatre, and the Paula Vogel Mentor's Award by Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and she teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. paulavogelplaywright.com

Rebecca Taichman (Director) won the 2017 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play for Indecent. She also received an Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Indecent written by Paula Vogel (Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Vineyard Theatre, and Broadway at The Cort Theatre). Ms. Taichman has directed on and off Broadway, new plays, classics, musicals, and opera. She has worked with writers Jocelyn Bioh, Sarah Ruhl, Danai Gurira, Enda Walsh, Brian Selznick, Kirsten Greenidge, Nico Muhly, David Adjmi, and Stephen Karam, among others. Ms. Taichman has worked at theaters such as The Roundabout Theatre Company, Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, MCC Theater, The Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Old Globe, American Repertory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. She is a resident director at The Roundabout Theatre in NYC, a Henry Crown Fellow at The Aspen Institute, and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. rebeccataichman.com



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