Second Stage Theatre's 2016-2017 Season Will Include Plays by Tracy Letts, Anna Deavere Smith & More

Second Stage Theatre has announced three New York premieres for its 2016-2017 off-Broadway season. Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts' 2003 play Man From Nebraska will be helmed by David Cromer and begin performances in winter 2017. In addition, Tony nominee Anna Deavre Smith and Leonard Foglia kick things off with Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, marking their Second Stage return; Dear Evan Hansen director Michael Grief also comes back to the company to helm Tony and Pulitzer winner Bruce Norris' A Parallelogram.

The season will start with Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education. Created, written and performed by Smith, the documentary solo show depicts the personal accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in America’s school-to-prison pipeline. The play will be directed by Foglia; the pair's previous one-woman performance collaboration, Let Me Down Easy, had its 2008 premiere at Second Stage. Performances are scheduled to begin on October 11. As previously reported, Notes from the Field will also kick off American Repertory Theater's season in August.

Letts' Man from Nebraska was a Pulitzer Prize finalist (Letts' first) in 2004. The play follows Ken, a middle aged man who goes on a wild adventure to find his lost sense of purpose. Along the way he encounters a world vastly different from his own, filled with chance meetings and romantic encounters that shake him to the core.

Norris and Greif's collaboration, A Parallelogram, will hit the stage in summer 2017. The play centers on Bee, who can click through different moments in her life with the touch of a remote control. Past, present and future collide in this existential farce that questions whether we can make peace with those things we don’t have the power to change.

All three productions will take place at off-Broadway's Tony Kiser Theatre. Additional productions as well as cast and creative teams for the 2016-2017 roster will be announced at a later date.