Playwrights Horizons Announces 2014-15 Season, Including a New Play by Tony Winner Bruce Norris

Playwrights Horizons has announced its 2014-15 season. Among the productions will be a new play by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Bruce Norris, details of which are to be announced in due course.

First up will be the New York premiere of Bootycandy, a new play written and directed by Robert O’Hara (In the Continuum, Antebellum), which will run at the Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater from August 22. The satire follows Sutter, who is on an outrageous odyssey through his childhood home, his church, dive bars, motel rooms and even nursing homes.

This will be followed by the world premiere of Grand Concourse, a new play by Heidi Schreck (There Are No More Big Secrets, Creature). Directed by Kip Fagan, the show will play at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater October through December 2014. Called to a life of religious service, Shelly is the devoted manager of a Bronx soup kitchen, but lately her heart’s not quite in it. Enter Emma: an idealistic teenaged volunteer with mixed intentions, whose recklessness pushes Shelley to the breaking point.

The world premiere of Pocatello is set to run at the Mainstage Theater November through January 2015. Penned by Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) and directed by Davis McCallum, the bittersweet comedy follows Eddie, who manages an Italian chain restaurant in Pocatello, a small, unexceptional American city that is slowly being paved over with strip malls and franchises. But he can’t serve enough soup, salad and breadstick specials to make his hometown feel like home.

The Mainstage Theater will next see the world premiere of Placebo, by Melissa James Gibson (This, What Rhymes with America, Suitcase, the FX series The Americans). Directed by Daniel Aukin, the comedy will run February 2015 through April. A minty green pill—medication or sugar? Louise is working on a placebo-controlled study of a new female arousal drug. As her work in the lab navigates the blurry lines between perception and deception, more and more these same questions pertain to her life at home.

Iowa, the world premiere of a new musical play by Jenny Schwartz (God’s Ear, Somewhere Fun) with music and lyrics by Todd Almond (The Tempest, On the Levee) and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, will be presented at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater March 2015 through May. Mom found her soul-mate on Facebook, and he lives in Iowa. So Becca says goodbye to her beloved math teacher, bulimic best friend, neighborhood pony and her mildly deficient teenage life, and she follows her wayward mother to a new, uncharted beginning.

The season will conclude with a new play by Norris (Clybourne Park and The Pain and the Itch, Domesticated), presented at the Mainstage Theatre, beginning May 2015.