Jerry Springer — The Opera Will Make Off-Broadway Debut as Part of New Group's 2017-2018 Season

Jerry Springer — The Opera, with a book and lyrics by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas and music by Thomas, will make its long-awaited off-Broadway debut in 2018 with The New Group. The company's season will also include Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's world premiere Downtown Race Riot featuring Chloë Sevigny, David Rabe's New York premiere Good for Otto starring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan and Lily Thorne's world premiere Peace for Mary Frances with Lois Smith.

Beginning the season will be Rosenfeld's Downtown Race Riot, directed by Scott Elliott. On a hot late summer day in 1976, a mob of young men—all white except one—descended on Washington Square Park with pipes and bats, and attacked any people of color they could find. Rosenfeld takes audiences back to that day, to the cramped Village apartment of strung-out, free-wheeling single mom Mary Shannon (Sevigny), as her son Pnut and his Haitian best friend Massive wrestle with their obligation to join the riot. Performances of Downtown Race Riot will begin in November 2017 at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre.

The gleefully profane Jerry Springer — The Opera, the New Group's next entry, features The Jerry Springer Show as you’ve never seen it before, with passionate arias, soaring ballads and giant production numbers. While the studio audience cheers, a parade of bickering guests fight and curse, until violence breaks out and Jerry must face his trickiest guest ever. Deeply in tune with the chaos and unrestrained id of our times, Jerry Springer — The Opera is an outrageous celebration of our national ritual of public humiliation and redemption. Featuring choreography by Joshua Bergasse and direction by John Rando, the work will begin performances at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre in January 2018. Jerry Springer — The Opera premiered at the National Theatre in London in 2003 and played in the West End at the Cambridge Theatre from 2003-2005. The show played a pair of concert performances in 2008 at Carnegie Hall. It debuted in 2009 at Australia's Sydney Opera House.

In Good for Otto, next up on The New Group's docket, Rabe conjures a whole American community on the edge. Like their patients and their families, Dr. Michaels (Harris), his colleague Evangeline (Madigan) and the clinic itself teeter between breakdown and survival, wielding dedication and humanity against the cunning, inventive adversary of mental illness, to hold onto the need to fight—and to live. Directed by Scott Elliott, Good for Otto will begin previews February 2018 in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.

Thorne's Peace for Mary Frances features Smith in the title role as a 90-year-old woman who has lived a good life and is ready to die. Born to refugees fleeing the Armenian genocide, her last wish is to die peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Her dream collides with reality as three generations of explosive women flood her small New England home to battle for their family’s legacy. Mary Frances must navigate the volatile relationships of the children she raised—or die trying. Lila Neugebauer directs the production set to begin previews May 2018 in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.

Additional casting for all New Group productions will be announced at a later date.