Parks & Rec Star Nick Offerman to Headline World Premiere of A Confederacy of Dunces

Nick Offerman is set to lead the world premiere A Confederacy of Dunces. The Parks & Recreation star will begin performances in Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation on November 11 at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. The production, directed by David Esbjornson, is the first offering of the Huntington’s 2015-2016 season.

Based on John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the play centers on the larger-than-life character Ignatius J. Reilly: overweight, arrogant, eccentric, and still living in his mother’s New Orleans home in the 1960s. Called the Don Quixote of the French Quarter, Ignatius has a singular outlook on life. His farcical odyssey includes visits to a department store and a strip club, and stints working at a pants factory and as a hot dog vendor.

Offerman is best known for the role of Ron Swanson on NBC’s Parks & Recreation, which just completed its seventh and final season. His long list of film credits includes 22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, We’re the Millers, Smashed, Sin City, Casa de mi Padre, The Men Who Stare at Goats, 21 Jump Street and many more. In 2013, Offerman released his bestselling book, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living. He got his start in the Chicago theatre community, where he received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his performance in The Kentucky Cycle and a second Jefferson Award for the puppets and masks he and his team crafted for The Skriker. He has also worked extensively at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, and Wisdom Bridge, among others, he appeared in Adding Machine off-Broadway, and is currently a company member of the Evidence Room Theater Company in Los Angeles.

A Confederacy of Dunces will run at the Huntington through December 13.