Oscar winner Holly Hunter and stage and screen favorite Bill Pullman will kick off the New Group's 20th anniversary season in David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones. The group’s artistic director Scott Elliott will helm the production. Also joining the lineup is Tony winner and Holler If Ya Hear Me star Tonya Pinkins and Oscar winner Dianne Wiest in a play directed by Cynthia Nixon, along with a play penned by and featuring film star and off-Broadway vet Jesse Eisenberg. All three plays in the 2014-15 season will be presented at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
Sticks and Bones tells the story of a family pulled about by the return of a son from the Vietnam War. Pullman and Hunter star as husband and wife Ozzie and Harriet. The first major New York revival of David Rabe’s play will kick off the season in October in the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre.
In January 2015, the New Group will welcome back Nixon (who starred in their production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) as a director. The Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner will lead Pinkins and Wiest in Rasheeda Speaking. The play, written by Joel Drake Johnson, explores unspoken tensions as two front desk workers find themselves in a power struggle with the doctor for whom they work. Nixon, who will appear on Broadway this October opposite Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Real Thing, directed a benefit reading of Little Murders at the New Group last May. Rasheeda Speaking will perform in the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre.
The New Group’s season will conclude with The Spoils, written by and featuring Eisenberg. Helmed by Elliott, the play tells the story of the unlikable Ben, who, after getting kicked out of grad school, sets out to destroy the relationship up his grade school crush and her fiancée. The show will begin performances in May 2015 in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.
Additional casting for all three productions will be announced at a later date.