David Hyde Pierce & Ari'el Stachel in New Musical The Visitor & More Set for Public Theater's 2019-2020 Season

Off-Broadway's Public Theater has announced a lineup of talent-packed productions set to appear as part of its 2019-2020 season. Highlights include Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's new musical adaptation of The Visitor starring David Hyde Pierce and Ari'el Stachel, as well as Jeanine Tesori and David Henry Hwang's new musical Soft Power and the first major New York revival of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

The Public season will kick off with the New York premiere of Soft Power (September 24-November 3, 2019), featuring a book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang and music/additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori. Leigh Silverman will direct the musical, which is set following the 2016 election. It centers on a Chinese executive who is visiting America and falls in love with a good-hearted U.S. leader as the power balance between their two countries shifts. Initial casting includes Alyse Alan Louis, Billy Bustamante, Kendyl Ito, Francis Jue, Austin Ku, Raymond J. Lee, Jaygee Macapugay, Daniel May, Paul HeeSang Miller, Geena Quintos, Conrad Ricamora, Trevor Salter, Kyra Smith, Emily Stillings, Emily Trumble and John Yi.

Next up at the Public will be Ntozake Shange's groundbreaking work For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf (October 8-November 17, 2019), to be directed by Leah C. Gardiner and choreographed by 2019 Tony nominee Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy). The play returns to the Public for the first time since it premiered in 1976, before its breakthrough run on Broadway. Shange's form-changing work tells the stories of seven women of color using poetry, song and movement. Each woman voices her survival story of having to exist in a world shaped by sexism and racism.

The Public will next debut The Michaels (October 19-November 17, 2019), a world premiere play written and directed by Richard Nelson. The drama places the audience directly into the kitchen of Rose Michael, a celebrated choreographer. Dinner is cooked, modern dances are rehearsed and the meal is eaten—all amid conversations about art, death, family, dance, politics, the state of America and how the world sees our country. Initial casting for the production includes Charlotte Bydwell, Haviland Morris, Maryann Plunkett, Matilda Sakamoto, Jay O. Sanders, Brenda Wehle and Rita Wolf.

Next at the Public will be the first major New York revival of A Bright Room Called Day (October 29-December 8, 2019) written by Tony Kushner and directed by Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. A Bright Room Called Day suggests the possibility of the Reagan counter-revolution eventually giving rise to American fascism. Agnes, an actress in Weimar Germany, and her cadre of passionate, progressive friends, are torn between protest, escape and survival as the world they knew crumbles around them. Her story is interrupted by an American woman enraged by the cruelty of the Reagan administration, and a new character, grappling with the anxiety, distraction, hope and hopelessness of an artist facing the once unthinkable rise of authoritarianism in modern America. The cast will include Jonathan Hadary, Linda Emond and Estelle Parsons.

Next on schedule at the Public is Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's world premiere play Coal Country (February 18-March 29, 2020), featuring original music by Steve Earle. Blank will direct the play, which is set in 2010 and recounts the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 men and tore a hole in the lives of countless others. Based on first-person accounts by survivors and family members, Blank and Jensen, award-winning writers of The Exonerated, dig deep into the lives and loss of the most deadly mining disaster in recent U.S. history.

Mona Mansour's world premiere The Vagrant Trilogy (March 17-April 26) is next up at the Public. Mark Wing-Davey will direct the play, which delves into the Palestinian struggle for home and identity. Set in 1967, the story follows Adham, a Palestinian Wordsworth scholar, who goes to London with his new wife to deliver a lecture. When war breaks out at home, he must decide in an instant what to do—a choice that will affect the rest of his life.

The Public will next present the world premiere musical The Visitor (March 24-May 10, 2020), based on Thomas McCarthy's 2007 film and featuring an original score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. David Hyde Pierce, Ari'el Stachel and Joaquina Kalukango will star in the musical, featuring a book by Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah, direction by Daniel Sullivan and choreography by Lorin Latarro. The Visitor centers on a college professor (Pierce) who travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young husband (Stachel) and wife (Kalukango) living in his apartment. The cast will also include Jacqueline Antaramian.

Closing out the Public's season will be Erika Dickerson-Despenza's world premiere play Cullud Wattah (July 7-August 16, 2020), directed by Candis C. Jones. The new play follows three generations of black women living through the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Marion, a third-generation General Motors employee, is consumed by layoffs at the engine plant. When her sister, Ainee, seeks justice and restitution for lead poisoning, her plan reveals the toxic entanglements between the city and its most powerful industry, forcing their family to confront the past-present-future cost of survival. As lead seeps into their home and their bodies, corrosive memories and secrets rise among them.

Additional casting for the Public's 2019-2020 season will be announced at a later date.