Sergio Trujillo, Anna Deavere Smith & More Sign Up for American Repertory Theater's 2016-17 Season

The American Repertory Theater has announced its 2016-17 season. The roster for the Cambridge, Massachusetts company includes Tony-nominated Anna Deavere Smith and Sergio Trujillo, plus a Tennessee Williams revival.

The season kicks off in August with Smith’s Notes from The Field: Doing Time in Education. Smith, who was nominated for Tonys in 1994 for writing and starring in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, will again write and perform in her own work. The new show explores America’s school-to-prison pipeline and incorporates a call and response discussion to challenge audiences to evaluate their own position on the issue.

Next, the ART will present the Abbey Theatre’s production of Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars. The show tracks the year leading up to Ireland’s Easter Rising of 1916. Olivier winner Sean Holmes directs the production, which begins performances in September.

Bill Rauch will direct Alexa Junge’s Fingersmith, based on the novel by Sarah Walters. The Victorian England-set mystery follows pickpocket Sue Trinder and her relationship with a con man and a young heiress. The production, which starts performances in December, first played the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year.

Jo Bonney, who directed the ART’s Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) returns to helm Paul Lucas’ Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women in January 2017. The script draws from real interviews and conversations conducted with transgender women to shed light on their experiences.

In February 2017, Michael Wilson will direct a new production of Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. The play, based on his 1948 short story and following a group of travelers in a Mexican Jungle, first premiered on Broadway in 1961.

The season concludes with Arrabal, a dance theater piece set to kick off in May 2016. Featuring music by Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla and a book by Tony nominee John Weidman, the tango-infused piece follows a woman in Buenos Aires as she tries to understand and cope with the violent death of her father. Trujillo, an Olivier winner and Tony nominee who choreographed Invisble Thread last year, will direct and co-choreograph.

Several of the ART’s recent productions have made their way to New York, including the currently-running Broadway musicals Waitress and Finding Neverland, the upcoming Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and the recent off-Broadway run of Nice Fish, starring Tony and Oscar winner Mark Rylance.