Drama Faculty Member’s Play Moves To Broadway
Playwriting faculty member Jon Robin Baitz‘s Other Desert Cities had its premiere at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater last season where it played to sold-out houses during its limited engagement run with an all star cast that included Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach and Thomas Sadoski. The New York Times called it “the most richly enjoyable new play in many a season” and Newsday called it “a smart, juicy, gorgeously written play that knows individual psychology as keenly as it understands the world around it.”
So, it’s no wonder it’s transferring to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, with an opening night slated for November 3.
Channing, Keach, and Sadoski will reprise their roles. Judith Light, Tony nominee for Lombardi, and Rachel Griffiths, Golden Globe winner for Six Feet Under, joins them for the Broadway run. Joe Mantello, Drama’s 2010-11 Artist-in-Residence, directs the play once again, having helmed the Lincoln Center production.
Other Desert Cities was named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle, and Sadoski was named Outstanding Featured Actor by the Lucille Lortel Awards and received an Obie Award for his performance.
Baitz is a Pulitzer finalist, a Guggenheim, and NEA fellow, and American Academy of Arts & Letters Award winner. A founding member and a former artistic director of New York’s Naked Angels theatre company, he has written a number of acclaimed plays, including The Film Society, The Substance of Fire, Three Hotels, A Fair Country, Ten Unknowns, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, and The Paris Letter. His experience in television includes creating the hit ABC show “Brothers & Sisters, and serving as executive producer for the first two seasons. He has also written episodes of “West Wing” and “Alias”. His PBS film version of Three Hotels won a Humanitas Award. His other screenplays include The Substance of Fire based on his play, and People I Know, which starred Al Pacino.