David Mamet to Make Broadway Directing Debut With Race

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet will direct the world premiere of his new play Race. As previously reported, the show will begin previews on November 21, 2009, and open December 10 at a Shubert theater to be announced. Casting will be announced at another time.

The playwright’s directing credits include the world premieres of his plays Oleanna, The Cryptogram, Boston Marriage and Faustus, as well as Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and Ricky Jay: On the Stem and various productions for the Atlantic Theater Company, which he co-founded with fellow Broadway veteran William H. Macy in 1985. The scribe has also written and directed on the big and small screen, serving double duty on episodes of his CBS television series The Unit and the films Redbelt, Spartan, Heist, State and Main, Catastrophe, The Winslow Boy, The Spanish Prisoner, Oleanna, Homicide, Things Change and House of Games. The new play will be his first directing credit on Broadway.

Mamet’s plays have rarely been off the Broadway boards in the last year. The playwright’s most recent new work, the political satire November, played the Ethel Barrymore Theatre last season from December 2007 to July 2008, and was followed this season with two revivals: American Buffalo, which closed on November 24, and the Speed-the-Plow, which played its final performance on February 22.

Race will mark the reteaming of Mamet with producer Jeffrey Richards and producing partners Jerry Frankel, who collaborated on the Tony-winning revival of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and the recent Speed-the Plow revival, and Steve Traxler.