Tony and Emmy Award winner Cherry Jones will return to Manhattan Theatre Club next summer in the world premiere of Sarah Treem's When We Were Young and Unafraid. The play will have a limited engagement at the off-Broadway New York City Center — Stage I, with previews set to begin on May 22, 2014 in advance of opening night on June 17. Tony nominee Pam MacKinnon will direct the production. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced in the coming weeks.
When We Were Young and Unafraid is set inside an underground women’s shelter in the early 1970s—before Roe v. Wade, before the Violence Against Women Act, before women had places to turn in times of distress. Agnes (Jones) has turned her quiet bed and breakfast into one of the few spots where a woman on the run can seek refuge. But to Agnes’ dismay, her latest young runaway Mary Anne is having a profound influence on her teenage daughter Penny, forcing each girl to question her destiny. And as the drums of the feminist revolution grow louder, Agnes is forced to confront her own presumptions about the people she's been trying to help.
Jones will star in the Broadway transfer A.R.T.'s acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie this September. She won two Tony awards for Doubt and The Heiress. Jones' other Broadway credits include Angels in America, Imaginary Friends, Moon for the Misbegotten, The Night of the Iguana, Our Country’s Good and Faith Healer. Her film and TV credits include Ocean’s Twelve, Cradle Will Rock, The Horse Whisperer, The Perfect Storm, Erin Brockovich, The Lady in Question, Murder in a Small Town, and most recently as Dr. Judith Evans in the NBC series Awake.