Mark Rylance, Natasha, Pierre & More Join Waitress in American Repertory Theater’s 2015-16 Season
The 2015-16 season is now set for the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The lineup, in addition to the previously announced world premiere of Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’ Waitress musical directed by Diane Paulus, will include Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and a new play co-written by and starring Tony winner Mark Rylance.
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 will begin performances in December. The show, which premiered off-Broadway in 2013, features a score and book by Dave Malloy and is based on a particularly salacious slice of War and Peace. Rachel Chavkin, who helmed the show off-Broadway, will return to direct.
Nice Fish, written by three-time Tony winner Mark Rylance and poet Louis Jenkins, will start performances in January 2016. The show takes place at the end of fishing season in Minnesota as two men ponder life’s big questions. The production is a collaboration between the ART and St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Claire van Kampen will direct.
Beginning in February 2016 is a new adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. The production crosses the pond following a successful run in the West End.
Waitress, Comet, Nice Fish and 1984 will perform at the ART’s Loeb Drama Center. The season will also include the world premiere of Eve Ensler’s autobiographical In the Body of the World at Harvard’s Farkas Hall, directed by Paulus, as well as a new work by the theater group known as The Team titled RoosevElvis. The show explores a hallucinatory road trip with Elvis Presley and Theodore Roosevelt. RoosevElvis, directed by Chavkin, will begin in May 2016 at Oberon.
Additionally, the ART will produce a holiday presentation of The Pirate Princess, featuring music by Mike Pettry and a book by Lila Rose Kaplan. The world premiere production adapts Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night into a swashbuckling family adventure. Allegra Libonati will direct.