New Musical NOISE, FAT HAM & More Set for Wilbury Theatre Group 24/25 Main Series Season

Wilbury Theatre Group has revealed the first four Main Series productions of the upcoming 2024/25 Season, including; The Rhode Island premiere of Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me, the Rhode Island premiere of Noise, a new musical by Cesár Alvarez, the New England premiere of The Father: A Tragic Farce by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton and featuring Richard Donelly, and the Rhode Island premiere of Fat Ham by James Ijames. A fifth production from the Main Series season will be announced at a later date.

More info about the productions and season memberships are available online at thewilburygroup.org/2024-25.

"For our 2024/25 Main Series Season, we're thrilled to present a selection of work that continues and grows our commitment to presenting our audiences with the most engaging and thought-provoking work in the theatre today," says Wilbury Artistic Director Josh Short. "From the most heartbreaking and personal of stories that is The Father, to the political examinations of What the Constitution Means to Me, from the challenges facing us in this moment to the exuberant idealism that is imagining a better world for our future in Noise, and the brilliance of Fat Ham, this is a season that truly embraces the Wilbury Group's stubborn commitment to work that with bold theatricality celebrates our individual experiences and the experiences that connect us."

Rhode Island Premiere

What the Constitution Means to Me

By Heidi Schreck

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER

Pulitzer Prize Finalist and winner of the Obie Award for Best New American Play, Heidi Schreck's boundary-breaking play breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. Fifteen-year-old Heidi earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.

A new musical

Noise

by Cesár Alvarez

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER

NOISE follows a group of musicians who agree that society isn't working. Since civilization is found in its earliest form in musical structure, they figure they should be able to make some music that reflects a society they'd actually like to live in. Like, right now. In this musical...

César Alvarez is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and performance maker. They create big experimental gatherings disguised as musicals, in the key of inter-dimensionality, socio-political transformation, kinship and coexistence. With a background as a jazz saxophonist, bandleader and sound artist, César's work inhabits a space between the worlds of theater, music, performance art and social practice. César was a 2018-20 Princeton Arts Fellow, a recipient of The Jonathan Larson Award in 2016, The Kleban Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. Originally commissioned by The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons Theater School/NYU, this production of Noise is presented by Wilbury Theatre Group in collaboration with Spirits Go Blah of NYC.

New England Premiere

The Father: A Tragic Farce

by Florian Zeller

Translated by Christopher Hampton

JANUARY / FEBRUARY

Now 80 years old, André was once a tap dancer. He lives with his daughter, Anne, and her husband, Antoine. Or was André an engineer, whose daughter Anne lives in London with her new lover, Pierre? The thing is, he is still wearing his pajamas, and he can't find his watch. He is starting to wonder if he's losing control.

Featuring Richard Donelly in the titular role and directed by Josh Short in its New England premiere, The Father is a harrowing insight into the aging process.

Rhode Island Premiere

Fat Ham

by James Ijames

MARCH / APRIL

Structured like an improvisational jazz riff on Shakespeare...Fat Ham practices what it preaches by lavishing laughter and delight as it encourages us to take our destinies caressingly in hand. - The New York Times

Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, James Ijames' Fat Ham reinvents Shakespeare's masterpiece in startling and hilarious ways amidst the backdrop of a family barbecue in the American South. Juicy-a young, queer, Southern man, who is grappling with questions of identity-is visited by the ghost of his father (Pap) at his mother's wedding/family barbecue. Pap demands that Juicy avenge his recent murder. How will Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man, trying to break a cycle of trauma and toxic masculinity, avenge his father's premature death?

Fifth Production TBA

MAY / JUNE 2025

An additional production of our 2024/25 Main Series Season will be announced at a later date, as well as more special events and performance announcements about Wilbury Theatre Group's 2024/25 season.

The final production remaining in the Wilbury Group's 2023/24 Season is Once with book by Enda Walsh and music/lyrics by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová (May 23 - June 16). For more information, visit www.thewilburygroup.org/once

Wilbury Theatre Group also continues to produce New England's largest Fringe Festival: FringePVD. The 11th annual FringePVD takes place July 14 - 27 in Providence. For more information, visit www.fringepvd.org

Plays and dates are subject to change. Performance schedules will be announced at a later date. For information on the plays or purchasing a Membership for Wilbury Theatre Group's 2024/25 Season, visit: thewilburygroup.org/2024-25

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