NEW YORK CITY: Vineyard Theatre has announced the first and last shows of its 2019-20 season, Tina Satter‘s Is This a Room and Antoinette Nwandu‘s Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song, respectively. In a statement, Vineyard co-artistic director Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern called these “extraordinary new plays” that “intertwine the deeply personal and political in revealing ways, reminding us how historical events shape, and are shaped by, individual lives. Tina and Antoinette are gifted artists who have created works inspired by recent events in our country, and fueled by theatrical imagination, which speak powerfully and exhilaratingly to our current moment.”

Is This a Room, which will begin performances in the fall, is conceived and directed by Tina Satter. Telling the true, still unfolding story of Air Force linguist Reality Winner, who was arrested and charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S elections, it uses the FBI transcript of her interrogation as its central text. The show had a limited run at NYC’s the Kitchen in January.

Closing out the season in spring 2020 is Antoinette Nwandu’s Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song, directed by Danya Taymor. It follows a 12-year-old girl navigating race and class in ’90s-era Brentwood around the time of the O.J. Simpson murder case and trial.

The theatre’s winter 2020 production and a developmental lab offering will be announced at a later date.