THE PUBLIC THEATER ANNOUNCES COMPLETE CASTING FOR THE GABRIELS: ELECTION YEAR IN THE LIFE OF ONE FAMILY
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY RICHARD NELSON
Three Play Cycle To Begin in March with Play One: HUNGRY
Play Two: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? To Open in September
Final Play: WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE
To Premiere on Election Night, November 8, 2016
The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Executive Director, Patrick Willingham) announced complete casting today for the world premiere three-play cycle THE GABRIELS: Election Year in the Life of One Family, written and directed by Richard Nelson. Featuring the same core acting company for all three productions, Play One: HUNGRY, will begin previews on Saturday, February 27, and run through, Sunday, March 20, with an official press opening on Friday, March 4, 2016. The second play, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?, will premiere in September and the final play in the new cycle, WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, will open on election night, November 8, 2016.
“Where The Apple Family plays covered four years, The Gabriels are set on three specific evenings over just eight months and parallel our presidential election, as it weaves its way through the lives of the Gabriel family, much as, I suspect, it now weaves through our own.”
As with the acclaimed The Apple Family Plays, each play in THE GABRIELS cycle will open on the day it is set and unfold in real time over a couple of hours. The complete cast for THE GABRIELS: Election Year in the Life of One Family will feature Meg Gibson (Karin Gabriel), Lynn Hawley (Hannah Gabriel), Roberta Maxwell (Patricia Gabriel), Maryann Plunkett (Mary Gabriel), Jay O. Sanders (George Gabriel), and Amy Warren (Joyce Gabriel).
Member tickets for the first play, HUNGRY, are available now, and single tickets, starting at $45, can be accessed by calling (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. The Library at The Public is open nightly for food and drinks, beginning at 5:00 p.m., and Joe’s Pub at The Public continues to offer some of the best music in the city.
In the spirit of The Apple Family Plays and shining an important spotlight on the upcoming 2016 political election year, Tony Award-winning playwright and director Richard Nelson returns to The Public with his latest three-play cycle, THE GABRIELS. Subtitled Election Year in the Life of One Family, the first play in the cycle, HUNGRY, will premiere in March 2016 and will introduce us to the Gabriels of Rhinebeck, New York. (The Gabriels live just around the corner from the Apple Family). These three new plays, which also include WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? and WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, will track the lives of the Gabriels throughout the coming presidential election year with the final play opening in real time on Election Night, November 8, 2016.
To the rhythm of peeling, chopping, and mixing, the first play in the cycle, HUNGRY, places us in the center of the Gabriels’ kitchen. The family discusses their lives and disappointments, and the world at large and nearby, as they struggle against the fear of being left behind and the challenge to find resilience in the face of loss.
All three plays in THE GABRIELS will feature scenic design by Susan Hilferty and Jason Ardizzone-West; costume design by Susan Hilferty; lighting design by Jennifer Tipton; and sound design by Scott Lehrer and Will Pickens.
RICHARD NELSON (Playwright/Director) returns to The Public with The Gabriels after the acclaimed 2013 run of The Apple Family Plays: Scenes from Life in the Country (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry, Regular Singing). His additional credits for The Public include Conversations in Tusculum. His other plays include Oblivion, Nikolai and the Others, Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award Best Play), Two Shakespearean Actors, Some American Abroad, Madame Melville, New England, Frank’s Home, Rodney’s Wife, Franny’s Way, The General from America, The Vienna Notes, and others. His musicals include James Joyce’s The Dead, for which he won a Tony Award; and My Life with Albertine. His films include Hyde Park on Hudson, Ethan Frome, and Sensibility and Sense. He is a recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which has produced ten of his plays.
MEG GIBSON (Karin Gabriel) has appeared at The Public Theater in Talking About Race; The Mobile Shakespeare Unit’s Measure for Measure; King Lear; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Casanova; Fen; and Temptation. Her other New York credits include Human Error at The Atlantic; Slipping at Rattlestick; Lapis Blue, Blood Red; From Above at Playwrights’ Horizons, Messiah at Manhattan Theatre Club, Roman Fever at EST, and Meredith Monk’s The Games at BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Regionally, her work has been seen at The Old Globe, The Mark Taper Forum, ART (company member), Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, ATL, The Huntington Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Westport Playhouse, The O’Neill Conference, and The Sundance Institute. Her film and television credits include The Phenom; Amira and Sam; Che; Dust; Night Listener; Picture Perfect; Dottie; “Treme”; “The Americans”; “Rubicon”; “Zero Hour”; “Blue Bloods”; “Sex and the City”; “Law and Order”; “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”; and “Law and Order: SVU.”
LYNN HAWLEY (Hannah Gabriel) has appeared at The Public in Richard III, Venus, and Woyzeck. Her additional credits include What Once We Felt at Lincoln Center, Aristocrats at Irish Rep, The Illusion at Classic Stage Company, Owners and Traps at New York Theatre Workshop, and The Pitchfork Disney at HERE. Her regional credits include Yale Rep, Center Stage, Williamstown, New York Stage & Film, Potomac Theatre Project, and The Berkshire Theatre Festival. Her film and television credits include “Law & Order”; “Law & Order: SVU”; and Hamlet. Hawley teaches at Bard College and has directed at the Juilliard School. She received an M.F.A. from NYU.
ROBERTA MAXWELL (Patricia Gabriel) appeared at The Public Theater in Ashes, Slag, Mary Stuart, and Richard III. She was last seen in NYC in 2014 in Hellman V. McCarthy and The Film Society and recently at the American Conservatory Theater in Indian Ink. She made her Broadway debut in There's One in Every Marriage followed by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her other Broadway credits include Equus, The Merchant, and Our Town, Off-Broadway - Whistle in the Dark (Mercury Theater), Ivanov, The Cherry Orchard, and Three Sisters (Classic Stage Company), and numerous regional theater productions over several decades, receiving Obies and other awards. Her films include Dead Man Walking, Popeye, Psycho 3, Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, and Hungry Hearts.
MARYANN PLUNKETT (Mary Gabriel) was last seen at The Public in The Apple Family Plays: Scenes from Life in the Country. Her Broadway credits include A Man For All Seasons, The Crucible, Saint Joan, Me and My Girl (Tony Award), Sunday in the Park..., and Agnes of God. Her additional Off-Broadway credits include Rodney’s Wife, Jayson With A Y, and Aristocrats. She is a founding member of Portland Stage and has numerous Shakespeare, Chekhov, Theater of War, and Audio Books. Her film and television credits include A True Story, Company Men, Blue Valentine, Fairhaven, “House of Cards,” “The Black List,” and “Law & Order.”
JAY O. SANDERS (George Gabriel) has been a regular presence at The Public’s Shakespeare in the Park, most recently in King Lear, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Midsummer Night’s Dream, and downtown in Richard Nelson’s Apple Family Plays, the title role in Titus Andronicus, and as George W. Bush in Stuff Happens. His play, Unexplored Interior, recently had its world premiere as the inaugural production of the Mosaic Theater Company in Washington D.C. On Broadway, he appeared as “Doolittle” in Pygmalion for the Roundabout; at Boston's Huntington Theater as “Galileo” in Two Men of Florence; and around the country with Bryan Doerries’ Theater of War. Sanders has acted in numerous films and television shows and has narrated a long list of commercials, audiobooks, and PBS documentaries.
AMY WARREN (Joyce Gabriel) has appeared in Act One at Lincoln Center; Shlemiel the First with Theater for a New Audience and the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene; and Melancholy Play, a chamber musical with 13P. Warren made her Broadway debut as “Karen Weston” in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County. Nominations for the Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, and Drama Desk awards for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, for her performance as Daisy in Adding Machine: A Musical. She also appeared in the national tour of August: Osage County.
ABOUT THE PUBLIC THEATER:
The Public Theater, under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, is the only theater in New York that produces Shakespeare, the classics, musicals, and contemporary and experimental pieces in equal measure. Celebrating his 10th anniversary season at The Public, Eustis has created new community-based initiatives designed to engage audiences like Public Lab, Public Studio, Public Forum, Public Works, and a remount of the Mobile Shakespeare Unit. The Public continues the work of its visionary founder, Joe Papp, by acting as an advocate for the theater as an essential cultural force and leading and framing dialogue on some of the most important issues of our day. Creating theater for one of the largest and most diverse audience bases in New York City for nearly 60 years, today the Company engages audiences in a variety of venues—including its landmark downtown home at Astor Place, which houses five theaters and Joe’s Pub; the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, home to free Shakespeare in the Park; and the Mobile Shakespeare Unit, which tours Shakespearean productions for underserved audiences throughout New York City’s five boroughs. The Public’s wide range of programming includes free Shakespeare in the Park, the bedrock of the Company’s dedication to making theater accessible to all; Public Works, an expanding initiative that is designed to cultivate new connections and new models of engagement with artists, audiences and the community each year; and audience and artist development initiatives that range from Emerging Writers Group and to the Public Forum series. The Public is located on property owned by the City of New York and receives annual support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; in October 2012 the landmark building downtown at Astor Place was revitalized to physically manifest the Company’s core mission of sparking new dialogues and increasing accessibility for artists and audiences, by dramatically opening up the building to the street and community, and transforming the lobby into a public piazza for artists, students, and audiences. The Public is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning Fun Home and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acclaimed American musical Hamilton. The Public has received 47 Tony Awards, 167 Obie Awards, 52 Drama Desk Awards, 48 Lortel Awards, 31 Outer Critics Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics Awards, and four Pulitzer Prizes. www.publictheater.org