Nicole Ari Parker Will Be Broadway's Next Blanche Du Bois in 2012 Streetcar

By Adam Hetrick
05 Aug 2011

Nicole Ari Parker
Nicole Ari Parker

Nicole Ari Parker will make her Broadway debut as Blanche Du Bois, opposite Golden Globe Award nominee Blair Underwood as Stanley Kowalski, in A Streetcar Named Desire this spring.

Parker, best known for the Emmy-winning series "Soul Food" and for appearances in the films "Boogie Nights" and "Remember the Titans," will be the latest actress to tackle the role of Blanche in the Tennessee Williams drama. Black Star News first reported Parker's casting.

Emily Mann will direct the multi-racial revival, which is aiming for a 2012 Broadway return at a theatre to be announced. Stephen C. Byrd of Front Row Productions holds the rights to Streetcar and is producing the revival, which will have a score by Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard.

Front Row Productions also presented the all-African-American revival of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway in 2008. The production later transferred to London.

Streetcar's most recent New York engagement was the Sydney Theatre Company production in 2008, starring Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett as Blanche at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A 2005 Broadway revival starred the late Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly. Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter famously starred in the 1947 original.

Underwood is a Golden Globe Award nominee for "In Treatment" and "L.A. Law." He was most recently seen in the NBC series "The Event." He appeared in the City Center Encores! production of Purlie, as well as Measure for Measure for the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park.