An Eye Opening New York Premiere
With five Pulitzer, 54 Tony, 152 Obie and 42 Drama Desk Awards under its belt, the Public Theater has long been a champion of groundbreaking and thought provoking theatre, as well as a place of nurturing, inclusion and creation since its founding by Joseph Papp in 1954. Its latest 2019/20 season brings together a host of diverse, new and old voices in the theatre world as well productions that reflect today's contemporary issues, eight new works, three world premieres, an NYC premiere and two major revivals amongst them!
The aforementioned NYC premiere takes the form of Lebanese American playwright Mana Mansour's sweeping portrait of the Palestine's tumultuous political history and its effect on the life of a displaced Palestinian literary scholar. The eye-opening drama is split into three parts - the first introduces the audience to Adham, a scholar of English literature, and his wife Abir just as they've moved to London in 1967 so that Adham can present a paper on Wordsworth. When war breaks out in their home country of Palestine, the play splits into its second and third parts, with each exploring alternate realities in which Adham returns and stays in London.