A Celebration of Tony Kushner will include productions of both parts of the Tony-winning Angels in America and the celebrated musical Caroline, Or Change. The Maryland venue is billing the celebration as such: “On both sides of the presidential election, we present the most celebrated work by America’s best living political playwright.”
Co-produced with the Olney Theatre Center, Angels in America (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika), which concerns the collision of politics, religion and sexuality at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, will be presented September 7-October 30. Jason Loewith and Ryan Rilette will direct the 25th anniversary production. The two parts will be presented in rotating repertory with a cast that includes Kimberly Gilbert, Mitchell Hébert, Sarah Marshall, Jon Hudon Odom, Tom Story and Dawn Ursula.
Caroline, Or Change, which features music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Kushner, will run January 25-February 26, 2017. “Set in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement,” the musical, according to the Round House, “follows a black maid working for a middle-class Jewish family in Louisiana. When a small amount of money goes missing, buried tensions threaten to rip two families—and the struggling Caroline—apart.”
Nova Y. Payton will head the cast as Caroline with Felicia Curry, Will Gartshore, Naomi Jacobson, Lawrence Redmond, Olivia Russell, Awa Sal Secka, Dorea Schmidt, Scott Sedar, Korinn Walfall and Kara-Tameika Watkins.
