The New Group kicks off its 2017-2018 Off-Broadway season with Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's Downtown Race Riot, starring Chloë Sevigny.
Performances take place in the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
(Photos by Monique Carboni)
This show has now closed. See our list of theatre tickets for shows currently on sale.
7 images On a hot late summer day in 1976, a mob of young men – all white except one – descended on Washington Square Park with pipes and bats, and attacked any people of color they could find. Downtown Race Riot takes us back to that day, to the cramped Village apartment of Mary Shannon, a strung-out, free-wheeling single mom, as her son Pnut and his Haitian best friend Massive wrestle with their obligation to join the riot. The boys, torn between loyalty to each other and to the neighborhood, grasp for ways to keep the violence from destroying their friendship forever. A snapshot of a time not so different than today, when a new social freedom ran smack into the forces of reaction, and when the stakes were truly life and death.
Downtown Race Riot is not only set in 1976, much of this new play by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld feels like it was written in that era as well. It flows along with a distinct Lanford Wilson vibe: a messed up family and their friends moving through a large living space filled with odd sexual tensions, drugs and the threat of violence. A rinky-dink wall clock counts out the minutes in real time as the... Read more
