World Premiere Plays Patience & 53% Of Announced for Second Stage Theater Uptown Series

Second Stage Theater will present two world premiere plays as part of the 20th anniversary season of its Second Stage Theater Uptown Series: Johnny G. Lloyd’s Patience, directed by Zhailon Levingston, and Steph Del Rosso’s 53% Of, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene. Both plays will be performed this summer at Second Stage Theater’s Uptown home, the McGinn/Cazale Theater on Broadway at 76th Street.

53% Of is scheduled to run from June 14 through July 10 with opening night on June 28. “In 2016, 53 percent of white women voted for our 45th president, a statistic that became an obsession for me," playwright Del Rosso said in a statement. "This play is my attempt to find a frank, dark and funny way to talk about white women—the ones who voted for him and the ones who didn't.”

Patience, which spotlights a professional solitaire player, will follow from August 2 through August 28. Opening night is set for August 16. "Patience is special to me because it's my take on the coming of age story—one where becoming is equally about questioning as it is about growing," playwright Lloyd said in a statement. "When writing Patience, I was inspired by the space between life’s chapters, by Venus Williams, by the oppression of competition—and by the magic of playing a card game against yourself.”

“The artists who have been part of Uptown over the years have gone on to work on Broadway, regionally, and internationally—it’s an exciting launching pad for emerging playwrights and an ongoing source of new plays by American playwrights," Second Stage President and Artistic Director Carole Rothman said in a statement. "We look forward to welcoming our audiences uptown this summer to discover these exciting new writers.”

Casting for both productions will be announced in the coming weeks.