WASHINGTON, D.C.: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has announced its 2019-20 season, featuring seven productions. This is the first seasons selected by new artistic director María Manuela Goyanes.
“Fairview is a game-changing original work about race, challenging us as much as it entertains, and ultimately shattering the lenses with which we see each other,” said Goyanes in a statement. “There is no better way to announce my ambitions than to produce a play as exciting and thorny as Fairview. Plus Stevie Walker-Webb…is an astounding director who I am excited to not only dig into this material with, but also to introduce to D.C. audiences.”
Fairview (Sept. 9-Oct.6), by Jackie Sibblies Drury, will open the season. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play tackles perceptions of racism and follows a family’s attempts at celebrating a birthday while voyeurs watch on. The cast will feature Shannon Dorsey, Kimberly Gilbert, and Laura Harris. Walker-Webb will direct.
Next up will be the Movement Theatre Company’s production of What to Send Up When It Goes Down, by Aleshea Harris. The play is meant to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and is a response to the physical and spiritual deaths of Black people as a result of racialized violence. Whitney White will direct.
Following will be the Second City’s She the People: The Resistance Continues! (Dec. 2-Jan. 5, 2020), a comedy about the reality of being a woman in 2019.
The season will continue with Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 (Feb. 10-March 8, 2020), in association with the Public Theater. The play offers a deep dive into the lives of Americans in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The cast will include Jon Hudson Odom, Tom Story, Alyssa Wilmoth Keegan, and James Whalen. Saheem Ali will direct.
Next will be the world premiere of There’s Always the Hudson (April 6-May 3, 2020), written by and starring Paola Lázaro, about two fractured souls who decide to exact revenge on anyone who has ever messed with them.
The season will close with Teenage Dick (June 1-28, 2020), by Mike Lew, a dark retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III that follows a high school student bullied because of his cerebral palsy. The show premiered at Ma-Yi Theatre Company in association with the Public Theater in 2018. Original cast members Gregg Mozgala and Shannon Devido will reprise their roles, and Moritz von Stuelpnagel will direct.
Founded in 1978, Woolly Mammoth develops and produces innovative new plays.
