Vineyard Theatre Announces New Works by Tina Satter & Antoinette Nwandu

Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre has announced the first two of three productions set to appear during its upcoming 2019-2020 season. Both works will play the company's downtown venue in Union Square.

First up is the new play Is This a Room (fall 2019), conceived and directed by Obie winner Tina Satter (Small Breath). Set on June 3, 2017, the play follows a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist named Reality Winner, who is surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated and then charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S elections. She remains in jail with a record-breaking sentence. Is This a Room was first seen in January 2019 at the downtown theater The Kitchen.

Closing out the Vineyard's season will be Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song (spring 2020), written by Antoinette Nwandu—author of the 2019 Lortel-winning play Pass Over—and helmed by that play's director, Danya Taymor. Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song is set in Los Angeles in the mid-'90s as twelve-year-old Jackie is at a crossroads. She's just been accepted to a private school in Brentwood, the affluent, white neighborhood that also happens to be ground zero for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. At home, the rent is past due, and her mother's boyfriend has just come back to town. Sexuality and spirituality, race and class, love and violence collide as Jackie attempts to make sense of her life in relation to the women in her real and imaginary landscapes.

Production dates and casting, as well as a third mid-season production, will be announced at a later date.