Tony Winner Jefferson Mays & More to Star in LCT's Spy Drama Blood and Gifts

Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife, Journey’s End, Pygmalion) will be part of the ensemble cast of Blood and Gifts, the first off-Broadway production of the fall season at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. Tony winner Bartlett Sher will direct J.T. Rogers’ play, which is set to begin previews on October 27 and open on November 21.

In addition to Mays, the cast will include Michael Aronov, Jeremy Davidson, Robert Hogan, Andrés Munar, Paul Niebanck, John Procaccino, Liv Rooth, Gabriel Ruiz, Pej Vahdat, Andrew Weems and Bernard White.

Commissioned by LCT and presented last year at the National Theatre, Blood and Gifts tells the story of the secret spy war behind the official Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s. Spanning a decade and set in Washington DC, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the play follows CIA operative Jim Warnock (Davidson) as he struggles to stop the Soviet Army's destruction of Afghanistan. The ground constantly shifts for Jim and his counterparts in the KGB and British and Pakistani secret service as the political and personal alliances between the men keeps changing. And as the outcome of the entire Cold War comes into play, Jim and a larger-than-life Afghan warlord find the only person they can trust is each other.

J.T. Rogers is the author of The Overwhelming (produced in New York by Roundabout Theater Company), Madagascar, White People, Murmuring in a Dead Tongue and Seeing the Elephant, which was nominated for the Kesselring Prize for Best New American Play.