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anais-mitchell · 4 years ago

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a comprehensive list of every never before seen hadestown lyric revealed in “working on a song”

Note: This list will not include any lyrics from the OBCR, Broadway previews documented in audios, the London run, the Edmonton run, or the NYTW run. Only lyrics that Anaïs has never revealed before. Also, I strongly recommend everyone actually read the book and support Anaïs! It has amazing insights into the show we love.

(Also, any ellipses mean the song just goes into the lyrics we already know)

Wedding Song

In early Vermont productions, Wedding Song did not exist; there was another duet called Everything Written.

Fates: Seven Sisters / Little Dipper / Great Bear, Hunter / Drinking Gourd / Libra, Leo / Pisces, Pluto / Venus, Virgo / Capricorn

Eurydice: Don’t it make, don’t it make you feel so small? / Orpheus, when you look up at it all? / When I look into the skies / I lose my head for scale and size / And still you’re larger in my eyes / Than any star / You pull on me like gravity / I want to be where you are

They say that everything is written / Everything written in those stars / The very lives we’re living / The very love in our hearts

Orpheus: Who could write, who could write this kind if love? / From such a height, all these light-years up above? / And all these light-years down below / I don’t need any star to show me / What my heart already knows / Eurydice / You pull on me like gravity / I want to be where you are

Eurydice: Come here

Orpheus: I’m here

Eurydice: It’s so cold

Orpheus: So clear

Eurydice: It’s so dark

Orpheus: So fair

Eurydice: Come near

Orpheus: I’m here

Eurydice: You’re there

A workshop version of Wedding Song included this exchange:

Eurydice: You have a way with words don’t you? It’s too bad none of them are true

Orpheus: It’s not a lie- It’s poetry

Eurydice: How many mouths does a poem feed?

Epic I

From 2007 Vermont:

Orpheus: King of diamonds, king of spades! / First there was Hades, king of the dirt / Miners of mines, diggers of graves / They bowed down to Hades who gave them work / And they bowed down to Hades who made them sweat / Who paid them their wages and set them about / Digging and dredging and dragging the depths / Of the Earth to turn its insides out / Singing la la la la la la la...

Then came Persephone, Hades’s wife / Our Lady of Shadows and Meadows entwined / Made to spend half of the days of her life / Right alongside of him down in the mine / But the other half she could walk in the sun / And the sun in turn burned half as bright / Which is where the seasons come from / And with them the cycle / Of the seed and the sickle / And the lives of the people / And the birds in their flight / Singing la la la la la la la...

So it was and it might have stayed / And the sun came up and the sun went down / A circle of fourths, a perfect cadence / The serpent’s tail in the serpent’s mouth / But the strong will take what they want to take / And the weak can only tell the tale / And the king began to lay his heavy hand upon the scale / What did he want? He wanted Our Lady / To have and to hold, not half, but wholly / To love him and never to leave him again / And as for the seasons, to hell with them! / And the earth warmed over in the dead of winter / The stillborn spring lay cold beneath / Summer gave a stormy sermon / Autumn walked in the wake with a wreath / And the people moved like weather patterns / Looking for shelter, looking for warmth / Helter-skelter the four winds scattered / The scavengers over the ravaged earth / Singing la la la la la la la...

From a workshop, presumably pre-London:

Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / But he had a gift to give / There was one song he’d been working on / He could never seem to finish / A song about this broken world / That he rewrote again and again / As though if he could find the words / He could fix the world with them

Livin’ It Up On Top

From pre-NYTW workshops:

Persephone: A hundred sunny summer days / Till my lover comes to find me / A hundred blooming olive trees / And a hundred grapevines climbing / Singing songs when the sun goes down / Light the fire in the darkness / Brother, pass that bottle around / And we’ll raise a glass to the harvest, it’s / Just enough fruit for the pressing / Just enough wine to fill our cups / But what we have is a blessing / It isn’t much but it’s enough

Eurydice: A hundred starry summer nights / Since my lover came and found me / Picking fruit and hopping freights / With his music all around me / Stay up late making love / All the stars are naked / Talking sweet and sleeping rough / Our bed is where we make it, there’s / Just enough fruit for the pressing...

Way Down Hadestown

From when Anaïs was 21, long before the show was even a concept:

Follow that dollar for a long way down / Far away from the poorhouse door / You either get to hell or a border town / Ain’t no difference anymore...

Suckin’ on the gristle and chewin’ on the bone / Thinkin’ ‘bout missiles and the old Dow Jones / All alone on your chromium throne /And lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely...

From 2006:

Persephone: Though I’m happy at his side / He’s not an easy man to love / I used to keep him satisfied / But lately he can’t get enough / Never enough of the mine and the mill / Never enough of his working girls / Never enough of the wall he’s building / All around the underworld / Way down Hadestown...

Orpheus: Mr. Hades is slick as an eel / Fountain pen, crocodile shoes / Quick as a snake, and he’s hot on your heels / He’ll make you an offer that you can’t refuse! / Way down Hadestown...

Hermes: Speak of the devil and the devil comes / Here comes Mister Hades now / To gather up his chosen ones / And bring ‘em down to Hadestown / Way down Hadestown...

From 2007:

Hermes: Make room, make room for Hermes, sir! / Make a little room for Hermes, ma’am / They call me a messenger / But that ain’t half of who I am

I’m a man of influence / I’m connected up and down / And I got all the documents / You need to get to Hadestown / Way down Hadestown...

Tired of walking in your worn-out shoes? / Tired of running on nothing at all? / Tired of standing your bets to lose? / Tired of losing? Give me a call, we’ll go... / Way down Hadestown...

Orpheus: Mister Hades got an iron fist / Step outta line and he’ll have your head / In the blink of an eye, with a flick of the wrist

Hermes: Hang around here and starve instead!

Orpheus: It’s a cattle pen!

Hermes: It’s a feeding trough!

Orpheus: He’ll fatten you up just to cut you down! / I’d rather starve

Hermes: I’d rather stuff my pockets down in Hadestown! / Way down Hadestown...

Hey, Little Songbird

Anaïs says she tried out this line in 2017 to include a more explicit “job offer” in the wake of the MeToo movement:

Hades: Hey, little songbird, gimme a song / I’m a busy man, and I can’t stay long / I’ve got clients to call, I’ve got orders to fill / I’ve got millions of souls on my payroll, but hell / I could fit you as well if you wanted

When the Chips are Down

From Vermont, 2006:

Fates: Cross my palm! Grease my chin / Can’t you see the kind of shape you’re in? / What you gonna do... ?

Wait For Me

From Vermont, 2007:

(These exchanges intercut the chorus)

Hades: Hermes! / Hermes: Hades! / Hades: Back in town! / Please, sit down / Please, relax / You’ve been around the world and back / Haven’t you, Hermes? / Hermes: I have / Hades: How’s the weather? / Hermes: Worse than ever / How’s your wife? / Hades: My wife is fine / Hermes: You’ve been spending a lot of time together / Haven’t you, Hades?

Hades: What have you brought? / Hermes: The latest crop / Hades: The freshest cut? / Hermes: A cut above / Hades: How many of them, a lot? / Hermes: A lot / Hades: A few too many perhaps / What’s this? / Why have you brought me Orpheus? / I know I never ordered that / It seems you’ve gone behind my back / Haven’t you, Hermes?

Hades: What was that? / Hermes: What was what? / Hades: I heard a voice / Hermes: I heard it not / Hades: Someone singing / Hermes: I heard nothing / Hades: Some kind of song / Hermes: You could be wrong / It could have been the wind / Hades: The wind? / Hermes: It could have been the rain / Hades: The rain? / Hermes: It could have been the train... (the train / the train / the train / the train...)

From “an early cutting room floor version”:

Fates: One (one, one) / You forget the sun

Eurydice: I forget the sun

Fates: You forget where you come from / You forget the sun

Eurydice: I forget the sun

Fates: Two (two, two)

Why We Build the Wall

Pre-NYTW:

Hermes: A lot can happen behind closed doors / With the big boss and his fountain pen / A lot of dirty deals go down / When there ain’t nobody watching...

Our Lady of the Underground

The 2006 version of the song was called “A Crack in the Wall” and these were the lyrics:

Persephone: Come and see the stars! / They’re fixin to fall / Slidin’ and a-slipping’ / In their gravity shoes / Old Man Mars / Taking Venus to the ball / Big dipper dippin’ / To the blue-sky blues

Have you forgot? / Which was is up? / I think you’ll find / I have just the thing for you / Put a quarter in the slot / You can fill your loving cup / With a little bit of moonshine / From the pay-per-view

How selfless! / The silent moon / Holding a mirror / For an ungrateful sun / Hey, Orpheus! / Are you leaving so soon? / Every night around here / Is a fateful one

Maybe you got blindsided / Lost your papers! / Lost your mind! / Maybe you once lost an angel / Just to watch her fall / Look a little closer and / The water turns to wine / Look a little closer: there’s a crack in the wall!

So I raise my cup / To the stars in the sky / If you want a show / Go on, get in line / Step right up brothers / Don’t be shy / What the boss don’t know / The boss won’t mind

Way Down Hadestown (Reprise)

A 2013 version of this song was called “No One Now,” delivered to Orpheus, and these are the lyrics:

Fates: Used to be a blushing bride / That was on the other side / Better to forget her face / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more number in a crowd / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now

Used to be a loving wife / That was in another life / Carve it on a marble stone / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more body in the ground / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now

Brother don’t you think we all / Used to have a name to call? / A tale to tell as well as her? / Now she’s like the rest of us...

Maybe when she first arrived / So alive, so naive / All the bright lights in her eyes / All her insides fluttering (alt. Heart aflutter on her sleeve) / Maybe she was someone then / Back when Hades drew her in / Like a moth into his flame / Borne aloft on burning wings / Well she ain’t the first and she ain’t the last / Hades’ fire is hot and fast / Just ask all the other girls / Sweeping up the ashes in the underworld / See even when the flame is new / She doesn’t hold a candle to / The woman Hades truly loves / So maybe she was someone once / But now she’s like the rest of us / All used up, all burned out / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now

From the Dartmouth workshop:

Hermes (to Orpheus): If you wanna get around down here in the tank / Down here in the clink / Down here in the hole / You got to think the way they think / Which is to say, your mind is blank / Which is to say, don’t think at all / Come / I’ll show you how it’s done

Welcome to the skeleton crew! / Welcome to the chain gang, kid / Lemme introduce you to / The members of the working dead / Old Jack Hammer! / Mister Miner / Wandering forever in the catacombs / Working on a hole to China / Diggin’ up them dino bones / Way down...

Sweatshop Sally! Missus Miller! / Workin’ in the cellar where the sun don’t shine / Sad eyed little Cinderella / Sweeping up the ashes of the summertime / Used to be one a the boss’s pets / Now she’s just another stiff / One night in the boss’s bed / And a lifetime on the graveyard shift / Way down...

Flowers

Did not exist in Vermont, but there was a brief reprise of “Everything Written”:

Eurydice: If it’s me- if it’s me you’re looking for / Orpheus, I can’t be with you anymore

Fates: She signed in blood / She signed for good

Eurydice: I signed before I understood / And I’d unsign it if I could / But it’s too late / They say that everything is written / Everything is written in those stars / Even these lives we’re living / Even this love

Fates: Seven sisters...

Papers

Pre-NYTW:

Hades: Let me see your papers, son / Let me see your documents / Or could it be that you have none? / You’re on the wrong side of the fence...

If It’s True

Pre-concept album:

Orpheus: If it’s true what they say / If there’s nothing to be done / If there’s no part left to play / If there’s no song to be sung / If it’s true what they say / If there’s no stone left to turn / If there’s no prayer left to pray / If there’s no bridge left to burn / If it’s true what they say / I’ll be on my way / If it’s true what they say / Then I have lived a lie / They can take the sky away / Take the stars out of my eyes / And my face will be a mask / And my heart will be a stone / And I’ll throw away the past / And I’ll go away alone...

How Long?

Pre-concept album:

Persephone (to Hermes): Brother Hermes, god of speed / Put your feathers on his feet / Hasten his delivery / Keep him hale and whole / Brother, I’m a jaded woman / But there’s something in his singing / And it feels like spring a-comin’ / To the winter of my soul

Brother Hermes, god of speed / Put your feathers on his feet / Hasten his delivery / Keep him safe and sound / He reminds me of the lover / That I was when I was younger / Back before my heart went under / Undercover / Underground

Chant (Reprise)

Dartmouth Workshop, 2014:

Hades: And in this symphony of mine / Are power chords and power lines / Which I arrange and orchestrate / And every day I dedicate / The magnum opus of my life / To my unkind, ungrateful wife / Persephone, and she shall see / Her name in lights on my marquee / And every night, another show / My symphony will never close! / And she shall have a front row seat / Which she shall never, ever leave! / Young man, you can strum your lyre...

Epic III

Vermont:

Orpheus: The strong will take what they want to take / And the weak can only tell the tale / And the heart of the king loves everything / Like the hammer loves the nail

The heart of the king is iron and steel / The heart of the king is the color of rust / The heart of the king is soldered and sealed / The heart of the king is a tinderbox / That he has to keep under lock and key / That it not catch fire inside his chest / Cos a lover’s desire is a mutiny / A lover’s desire is a wilderness

But even that hardest of hearts unhardened...

(I just have to say I fucking love this imagery of a fire oh my god)

Lover’s Desire

Anaïs once set the original Lover’s Desire melody to lyrics around the area of Wedding Song:

Orpheus: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for your hand / Your hand for better or for worse / Forever / Whether you’re sick or well / For rich or poorer, to have and to hold for as / Long as we both shall live

Eurydice: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for a hand / A hand that’s steady and strong / To lean on / To catch me if I fall / That’s the hand that I’ll have and I’ll hold for as / Long as we both shall live

Word to the Wise

Early workshops:

Fates: Hey / Hey / Hey / It’s judgement day! / Are you gonna let ‘em just walk away? / What you gonna do... ?

Wait For Me (Reprise)

Vermont:

Hades: Hermes!

Hermes: Hades!

Hades: Time to go / Time to bring this to a close / Time to lay this thing to rest

Hermes: Orpheus?

Hades: Orpheus / It’s all agreed / We’ve struck a deal / He’s free

Hermes: He’s free?

Hades: He’s free to walk

Hermes: And she?

Hades: To follow at his heel / And she, to follow at his back

Eurydice: Wait for me, I’m coming...

Hades: And she shall follow at his back / And she shall follow in his wake

Hermes: And what’s the catch?

Hades: The catch is this: / He shall not turn to see her face / And if he turns, the game is up / The deal is off, his race is run / And that’s the end of Orpheus / You’ll see it done?

Eurydice: Wait for me, I’m coming...

Written at an unspecified time but never used:

Hermes: A poor boy and a hungry young girl / Walking single file / While the music played / Brother, they looked for all the world / Like they was walking down the aisle / On their wedding day

We Raise Our Cups

The show once ended with an alternate song called “Cloud Machine” in Vermont, the lyrics of which Anaïs says she is embarrassed by:

Orpheus: What have I done? Mother, what have I done? / Squandered the gift that you gave me / Gambled with Hades and Hades won / And there’s no song now that can save me

Mother, I failed! Oh Mother, I tried / And I fell like a fool would fall / And I left my love / On the other side / On the other side of the wall

(Alt. There’s a crack in the wall / It’s a little bit wider / It’s a little bit wider, that’s all)

Persephone: Come, my son, don’t take it so hard / Everything is forgiven / You have done naught / But to play out the part / That the Fates in their wisdom have written

Orpheus: Raise up the curtain! The crowd goes wild! / The Fates are drunken clowns / All of us dreamers are walking the wire / While they juggle our dream around

Apollo, come down in your cloud machine / Apollo, come swallowing fire / With your thunder and lightning and kerosene / For the Fates and their funeral pyre

Persephone: Come, my son, we try and we fail / Every tail has an end

But the pale dawn breaks / And the snake eats it’s tail / And the tale begins again...

#hadestown #working on a song #anais mitchell #orpheus #eurydice #hades #persephone #hermes #eva noblezada #amber gray #reeve carney #patrick page #andre de shields #my posts #this took so long omg pls don’t sleep on it #so many of these lyrics are so beautiful #if anyone wants to discuss them PLS hop in the inbox or dms

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newyorktheater · 7 years ago

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The Spring 2018 season Off-Broadway promises some thrilling shows, as the preview guide below should make clear. There are new plays by superstar playwrights — Caryl Churchill (about revolution) Terrence McNally (about Nijinsky) Bruce Norris (about slavery), Adrienne Kennedy (about Jim Crow and Nazism), Lynn Nottage (about an elephant)…as well as New York premieres of plays by Tracy Letts, Martin McDonagh, Dominique Morisseau, and Aristophanes (in Greek!).

Idina Menzel, Will Swenson, Jeremy Irons, Jayne Houdyshell and some of the hottest Broadway directors, many of them women, are working Off-Broadway in Spring 2018. Off-Broadway offers off-kilter, foreign, fresh, and also familiar. The playwright of “The Vagina Monologues” brings her recent memoir to the stage. The”Hedwig” composer brings back the 70s in a new musical (the second of two shows to have “Disco” in the title this season.) The “In The Heights” playwright creates a new musical for Daphne Rubin Vega as an undocumented immigrant. For its 25th anniversary, the Encores cobbles together a new musical that’s a collage of old ones.

Unlike Broadway, Off-Broadway is more than a collection of individual potential hits or misses. (See my Broadway Spring 2018 Preview Guide.) It’s marked by theaters/theater companies that present whole seasons of original or originally interpreted work.

That’s why the Off-Broadway preview below largely groups shows according to the theaters that are producing or presenting them. I list those theaters in order of my preference for them (determined by such factors as their recent track record, the promise of the new season, and by the overall experience I’ve had with the theater.)

Clink on the theater’s name for more information about the theater, and on the show title for more about the individual production.

(The asterisk *, explained more fully at the bottom, indicates those theatrical empires that are both on and Off Broadway. Listed here are only their Off-Broadway offerings.)

I’ve put a red check mark — √ — besides a few shows about which I’m especially excited, or intrigued, or at least notably hopeful. It was hard to narrow it down this year.

THE PUBLIC THEATER

425 Lafayette Street. Twitter: @PublicTheaterNY

Having originated Hamilton, Fun Home,and, most recently, Latin History for Morons, the Public is on a roll, the latest of many in the successful downtown empire that Joe Papp created half a century ago. The Public is so popular these days that members have been complaining that their membership doesn’t guarantee tickets to the Public shows they want to see. But it’s sounds hard to miss with any of these shows:

Thomas Kail and Sarah Burgess

Bruce Norris

Daniel Alexander Jones

Lynn Nottage

Rinne Groff

Under the Radar Festival

January 4-15

Kings

January 30 – March 25, 2018

Written by Sarah Burgess (Dry Powder), directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton,) A comedy about a lobbyist named Kate who worries that her Congresswoman client is so high-minded it will ruin her career. But then for the first time Kate is faced with a choice that might change everything for her: back the system, or back what she believes in?

The Low Road

February 13 – April 1

Written by Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park), directed by Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen.) Set in the 18th century, this wild new work imagines America’s first laissez-faire capitalist, a young man inspired by a chance encounter with Adam Smith to put his faith in the free market. But his path to riches becomes inextricably entangled with that of an educated slave, a man who knows from experience that one person’s profit is another’s loss, in this parable about the true cost of inequality.

Black Light

February 12 – March 25, 2018

Daniel Alexander Jones returns to Joe’s Pub as Jomama Jones, going on a painful personal journey set to pop, rock, soul and disco.

√ Miss You Like Hell

March 20 – May 6

Book and lyrics by Quiara Alegria Hudes (In The Heights, Water by the Spoonful), music & lyrics by Erin McKeown. Directed by Trip Cullman. Daphne Rubin-Vega is Beatriz, flawed mom to 16 year-old Olivia, and an undocumented immigrant on the verge of deportation. They take a road trip together.

√ Mlima’s Tale

March 27 – May 20, 2018

The play written by Lynn Nottage (Ruined, Sweat) tells the story of a magnificent elephant trapped in the clandestine international ivory market.

Henry V

April 23 – May 13

Fire in Dreamland

June 19 – August 5

Written by Rinne Groff. Directed by Marisa Wolf. On Coney Island, in the aftermath of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, a disillusioned do-gooder named Kate meets Jaap Hooft, a charismatic European film-maker who sees in the devastation wrought by the storm an opportunity to make a work of art about another disaster that struck Coney Island some hundred years before: the 1911 fire that started in the amusement park known as Dreamland.

SIGNATURE

480 West 42nd Street. Twitter: @signaturetheatr

As the first New York theater to win the Regional Tony Award, the Signature now has some solid proof of what has been clear to its patrons for years. What has distinguished this theater is not only its track record, but its commitment to keep the price of all tickets for initial runs relatively low — $30 now (up from $25.)

With the recent expansion of both their facilities and their mission, some longtime subscribers have had to adjust to the introduction of work by more untested playwrights. But it feels hard to go wrong given the three playwrights on offer:

Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo

January 30 – March 11

Directed by Lila Neugebauer. A new production of Albee’s two-act play that incorporated his older, and seminal, The Zoo Story. In act one, Homelife, we meet Peter and his wife, who live a comfortable but vaguely unhappy bourgeois existence; in the second act, The Zoo Story, Peter is forever altered by an oddly persistent stranger in Central Park.

√ Paradise Blue

April 24 – June 3, 2018

By Dominique Morisseau (Skeleton Crew, Pipeline). Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Jitney.) In 1949, Detroit’s Blackbottom neighborhood is gentrifying. Blue, a troubled trumpeter and the owner of Paradise Club, is torn between remaining in Blackbottom with his loyal lover Pumpkin and leaving behind a traumatic past. But when the arrival of a mysterious woman stirs up tensions, the fate of Paradise Club hangs in the balance

Our Lady of 121st Street

May 1 – June 10, 2018

By Stephen Adly Giurgis (Between Riverside to Crazy, Jesus Hopped the A Train, The M-F With the Hat.) After the death of the beloved Sister Rose, a group of her former students return to their Harlem neighborhood to pay respects. But at the Funeral Home, there’s a problem—her dead body has been stolen

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS

416 W. 42nd St. Twitter: @PHNYC

Annie Baker’s “The Flick” is one of six plays that originated at Playwrights Horizons that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The theater offers new plays and musicals that are consistently worthwhile, in an environment that feels dedicated both to the theater artists and the theatergoers.

Mankind

December 15, 2017 – January 28, 2018

Playwright and director Robert O’Hara imagines a future world in which women are extinct and men can get pregnant.

Miles for Mary

January 11, 2018 – February 04, 2018

Created by the Mad Ones and directed by Lila Neugebauer, a comedy about the planning committee for Garrison High School’s ninth annual Miles For Mary Telethon in 1988.

This Flat Earth

March 16, 2018 – April 29, 2018

Written by Lindsey Ferrentino (“Ugly Lies The Bone“) and directed by Rebecca Taichman (“Indecent“) At a middle school in this seaside town, the unthinkable has happened, placing a bewildered community in the national spotlight. Stuck at home in a state of shocked limbo, Julie and Zander, two thirteen-year-olds, try to make sense of the chaos they witnessed, their awkward crushes, and an infinitely more complicated future. There’s a second Ferrentino play at the Roundabout.

Clare Barron

√ Dance Nation

April 13, 2018 – May 27, 2018

Written by Clare Barron,co-winner of the first Relentless Award. Directed and choreographed by Lee Sunday Evans. Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay.

Log Cabin

June 01, 2018 – July 15, 2018

Written by Jordan Harrison, directed by Pam McKinnon. When a tight-knit circle of comfortable married gays and lesbians see themselves through the eyes of their rakish transgender pal, it’s clear that the march toward progress is anything but unified

NEW YORK THEATER WORKSHOP

79 East 4th Street. Twitter: @NYTW79

NYTW got much attention for presenting David Bowie’s musical “Lazarus.” and r its “Othello” with David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig. Its fare has ranged from the innovative and tuneful — “Hadestown” — to the cutting edge and incomprehensible — “Fondly, Collette Richland”

An Ordinary Muslim

February 7 – March 11

Written by Hammaad Chaudry his professional playwriting debut, and directed by Jo Bonney. A Pakistani-British couple struggle to straddle the gap between the doctrines of their Muslim community and the demands of secular Western culture.

√Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

Dates to be determined

Written by Caryl Churchill (Love and Information, Cloud Nine), and directed by Rachel Chavkin (Great Comet, Hadestown) In 1647 England, power is shifting and, amid the chaos and confusion, revolutionaries across the country are dreaming of a new future. Anything by Caryl Churchill is worth seeing.

The House That Will Not Stand

Dates to be determined

By Marcus Gardley (X), directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (Pipeline). In the heat of summer in 1813, Louisiana passed from France to the United States. On the eve of the transfer, in a house in mourning, freedom hangs in the balance for a steely widow and her three eligible daughters, all free women of color. Inspired by Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba.

ST. ANN’S WAREHOUSE

Although it primarily presents avant-garde European exports, this Brooklyn theater climbs up in my preference thanks to Taylor Mac’s homegrown 24-Decade History of Popular Music late last year. This season’s offerings give us a sense of what’s happening politically overseas.

Ballyturk

January 9-28

Written and directed by Enda Walsh. The lives of two men unravel quickly over the course of 90 minutes.Where are they? Who are they? What room is this, and what might be beyond the walls?

Also in January: The Irish Rep Theater is also mounting a 20th anniversary production of Walsh’s Disco Pigs.

Returning to Reims

Feb 4-25

Based on the memoir by Didier Eribon. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Philospher Didier Eribon, returning to his childhood home, discovers that the left-wing and liberal middle-class have abandoned the working-class, and workers are running into the arms of the right-wing National Front. How is this possible?

The Fall

March 8-25

Devised collaboratively by a cast of seven actors, the play recounts their experiences as student leaders of the #RhodesMustFall protest movement, which called for the teardown of a colonialist monument on their University of Cape Town campus.

The Birds

May 2-13

By Aristophanes, adapted and directed by Nikos Karathanos in Greek with English subtitles. Two Athenians, fed up with their city and the gods who rule over it, travel to the countryside to ask the birds to build them a new utopia.

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

I always love attending BAM. Theater is only one of their many offerings, and (similar to St Ann’s Warehouse), they are primarily European exports, either classical or avant-garde. But the three plays this Spring strike me as must-see, at least for me.

King Lear

April 7-29

Directed by Gregory Doran for Royal Shakespeare Company, starring Antony She.

Long Day’s Journey into Night

May 8 -27

by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Sir Richard Eye for Bristol Old Vic, starring Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville

Love and Intrigue

June 6 – 16

.Friedrich Schiller,Directed and adapted by Lev Dodin, for Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia. Two young lovers meet their fate in German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller’s tragedy of class warfare and courtly intrigue, first produced in 1787.

ATLANTIC THEATER

The Homecoming Queen

Written by Ngozi Anyanwu in her Off-Broadway debut, directed by Awoye Timpo. A bestselling novelist returns to Nigeria to care for her ailing father, but before she can bury him, she must relearn the traditions she’s long forgotten.

January 10 – Feb 11

Hangmen

January 18 – March 4

Written by Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Lenane), directed by Matthew Dunster. A play about the second-best hangman in England hanging out in a pub on the day they’ve abolished hanging.

This Ain’t No Disco

May 11- July 1

Music and lyrics by Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)and Peter Yanowitz. Directed by Trip Cullman. The story of drifters and dreamers in the night world in 1979 New York of Studio 54 and Mudd Club

May 11 – July 1

The Great Leap

May 23-June 17

Written by Lauren Yee. Directed by Taibi Mgar. San Franciscan sidewalk basketball star Manford Lum, talks his way onto a college team as they travel to Beijing in the era after th Cultural Revolution, forcing him to juggle international politics and his own personal history.

PARK AVENUE ARMORY

Although the Armory has been presenting theater for ten years, it’s not been a regular stop for me. A Room in India convinced me it should be. As with St Anne’s Warehouse and BAM, the theater they present is largely European, cutting-edge, often hybrids, and they require patience and an open mind. But, offered in the vast expanse of the Armory’s Drill Hall, these aren’t just shows; they’re events.

Yerma

Federico García Lorca’s 1934 drama is reimagined by Australian director and dramatist Simon Stone, who transforms the tale of a provincial Spanish woman’s desperate desire to have a child into a parable of modern life

March 23–April 21, 2018

Myriad

May 22–24, 2018

I can only quote the description: “a hyperstitial ‘concertscape’ imagined from the perspective of an alien intelligence that explores disorienting relationships between space and sound and mutates forms of live musical performance.”

The Let Go

June 7–July 1. 2018

Nick Cave’s hybrid installation, performance, gathering and dancing environment acts as an alternative platform for viewers to speak their minds through movement, work out frustrations, and celebrate independence as well as community.

√ The Damned

July 17–28, 2018

Ivo van Hove in collaboration with Comédie-Française adapts Luchino Visconti’s film about the disintegration of the wealthy Essenbeck family and their steel dynasty during the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 in Germany. In French with English supertitles.

LINCOLN CENTER THEATER*

@LCTheater

The shows at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway venues are inexpensive (especially at the Claire Tow theater, where initial-run tickets cost $20) and often rewarding.

Queens

Feb 10 – March 25

Written by Martyna Majok (Ironbound, Cost of Living.) The lives of two generations of immigrant women collide in a basement apartment. When the choices they’ve made about their security, dignity, and desires come back to haunt them, they must ask: what cannot – and should not – be left behind?

Admissions

Feb 15 – April 29

By Joshua Harmon (Significant Other). Directed by Daniel Aukin. The admissions officer and her husband the headmaster of The Hillcrest School are proud of their efforts to diversify the student body. But when their only son sets his sights on an Ivy League university, personal ambition collides with progressive values. Harmon has a second play, Skintight, at Roundabout.

ROUNDABOUT* LAURA PELS

The empire that is now Roundabout includes three Broadway theaters, and that’s where most of the attention is focused, mostly on star-studded revivals, especially musicals. But its fourth building houses two Off-Broadway theaters (one of them a tiny “Black Box” theater.) It is in its Off-Broadway facility that Stephen Karam’s The Humans originated.

Amy and the Orphans

Feb 1 – Ap 22

Written by Lindsey Ferrentino (Ugly Lies The Bone). Directed by Scott Ellis (She Loves Me.) After their father’s death, two unhinged siblings reunite with Amy, their movie-loving sister who has Down syndrome. An unexpected turn reveals the moment that changed their lives…and the fact that Amy may be the only one who knows her own mind.

Bobbie Clearly

March 8 – May 6

Bobbie killed Casey in the middle of a cornfield in Milton, Nebraska. Two years later, Milton’s residents are ready to tell you their side(s) of the story.

Skintight

May 31 – August 26

Written by Joshua Harmon. Idina Menzel stars in a play by Joshua Harmon as a woman who discovers her fashion-designer father is wrapped up in his West Village townhouse with a 20-year-old who may or not be gay, but is the same age as his gay grandson.

MCC THEATER

Address: The Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street. Twitter: @mcctheaterl

Relevance

Feb 1-Mar 11, 2018

Written by JC Lee. Directed by LIesl Tommy (Eclipsed.) Jayne Houdyshell (The Humans) portray a celebrated author and veteran feminist warrior who may have met her match in a promising young writer (Pascale Armand from Eclipsed) who is quickly becoming the leading cultural critic on race, class, and gender for a new generation — and far more conversant in social media.

Transfers

Ap 5 – May 13

Written by Lucy Thurber (Insurgents), directed by Jackson Gay

Two gifted students from the South Bronx are competing for a life-changing scholarship at an elite northeast university when they are unexpectedly confronted with their shared past during a campus visit.

Reasons To Be Pretty Happy

Aug 16 – Sep 23

Written by Neil LaBute. Directed by Leigh Silverman.fter five years in New York, Greg and Steph return to their blue-collar hometown for their 20th high school reunion and to a dramatic encounter with Kent and Carly, the friends they left behind. The third play that uses these characters — preceded by Reasons to be Pretty, and Reasons to Be Happy

SECOND STAGE*

This is the first year the theater is programming the Helen Hayes on Broadway. Here are the two that are being presented in their Off-Broadway house a few blocks away:

Cardinal

January 9 – February 25

Greg Pierce’s new play about a rivalry in a Rust Belt town, directed by Kate Whoriskey , who directed Sweat.

Mary Page Marlowe

Written by Tracy Letts (August: Osage County). Directed by Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves, Signature Plays). A seemingly ordinary accountant from Ohio has experienced pain and joy, success and failure — forgotten moments adding up to a memorable life.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Fire and Air (Classic Stage Company)

January 17-February 25, 2018

Terrence McNally explores the rich history of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev’s itinerant Russian ballet company. Surrounded by great talents of art, design, and music, the tempestuous relationship between Diaghilev and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky revolutionizes dance forever.

Hey Look Me Over (Encores at City Center)

Feb 7 – 11

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the concert series, this new musical features Bob Martin, as his beloved Man in Chair character from The Drowsy Chaperone, plays an opinionated Encores! subscriber who leads the audience on a guided (and sometimes mis-guided) tour of his favorite scenes and songs from musicals he’s always wanted to see at City Center: All American, George M!, Greenwillow, Jamaica,Mack & Mabel, Milk and Honey, Sail Away, and Wildcat.

In The Body of the World (MTC)

January 16 – March 25

Directed by Diane Paulus and starring Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) in a play based on her memoir: While working with women suffering from the ravages of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ensler was stunned by a life-threatening diagnosis.

He Brought Her Heart Back In A Box (TFANA at Polonsky)

January 18 – February 11

Adrienne Kennedy’s first new play in a decade is set in Georgia and New York City in 1941, and “braids together the indignities of Jim Crow, rising Nazism, sexual hypocrisy, Christopher Marlowe, and the lingering shadow of a terrible crime.”

Jerry Springer The Opera (The New Group)

January 23 – March 11, 2018

Starring Terrence Mann and Will Swenson.

—

Other companies and theaters worth checking out:

Ars Nova

Rattlesticks Playwright Theater

Mint Theater

Mayi Theater Company

Primary Stages

There are also commercial shows put together by independent producers that appear in theaters for rent, such as:

Cherry Lane Theatre Daryl Roth Theatre Gym at Judson Lucille Lortel Theatre New World Stages Orpheum Theater The Players Theatre Snapple Theater Center Theatre Row – The Acorn Union Square Theater Westside Theatre

*THE ASTERISK: Off-Broadway AND Broadway

*Just to complicate matters, several of the resident theaters also present shows on Broadway – Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theater Company (MTC), the Roundabout Theater Company., and starting this season, Second Stage Theatre, which has bought the Helen Hayes. Their Broadway offerings are listed in my Broadway 2016-2017 Preview Guide.

What Is Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway?

Off-Broadway theaters, by definition, have anywhere from 100 to 499 seats. If a theater has more seats than that, it’s a Broadway house. If it has fewer, it’s Off-Off Broadway.

There are some terrific Off-Off Broadway theaters, sometimes confused for Off-Broadway. These include (but are not limited to) The Flea, Labyrinth Theater, and LaMaMa ETC.

Monthly Calendar of Openings

Because there are so many shows Off-Off Broadway, and their runs are so limited, I include them in my monthly theater preview calendar (along with Broadway and Off Broadway openings) posted near the beginning of each month.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more information about Off-Broadway, go to The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers (aka The Off-Broadway League). This should not be confused with the Off-Broadway Alliance, which is a separate organization (though they should probably merge, no?)

What’s Off-Broadway Dough? Does that mean there’s not much of it? pic.twitter.com/KHH1kApUzb

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) September 4, 2016—-

Off Broadway Spring 2018 Guide The Spring 2018 season Off-Broadway promises some thrilling shows, as the preview guide below should make clear.

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