Killer Joe: Tracy Letts' play coming to Broadway

Producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel are to present the Broadway premiere of Tracy Letts' dark comedy, Killer Joe, directed by Pam MacKinnon, on the Great White Way in 2014.

Further details about this production will be announced at a later date.

Killer Joe begins when Chris Smith - a 22-year old drug dealer - finds himself in serious debt to the wrong people. He devises a lethal plan that will solve all of his problems, enlisting the help of his father and step-mother. They hire Killer Joe - a police detective turned contract killer - to get the job done right, igniting a series of events that lead to a memorably shocking climax.

The Broadway premiere of Killer Joe will reunite Pam MacKinnon, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play ('Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?') and Tracy Letts, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor ('Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)'.

Producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel were part of the producing team behind Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' as well as Tracy Letts' plays 'Superior Donuts' and the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, 'August: Osage County.'

Killer Joe made its world premiere at the tiny Lab space of Evanston, Illinois' NEXT Theatre in 1993. After drawing sellout crowds for eight months, the play opened off-off-Broadway at New York's 29th Street Repertory Theatre in October, 1994. During that same year, the original cast brought the play to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it won the Fringe First Award, given each year to the best new works of the festival.

The production then played at London's fringe Bush Theatre , before transferring to the West End's Vaudeville Theatre in 1995. The show then play at off-Broadway's Soho Playhouse in 1998, where it received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival of a Play.

Bios:

Tracy Letts (Playwright) is the author of 'Bug' (also screenplay), 'Man from Nebraska' (Pulitzer finalist), 'August: Osage County' (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award for Best Play), 'Superior Donuts' and an adaptation of Chekhov's 'Three Sisters.' He won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor for his debut Broadway performance as 'George' in the Tony Award-winning revival of Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' which premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. He joined the Steppenwolf ensemble in 2002, where he starred in 'American Buffalo,' 'Betrayal,' 'The Pillowman,' 'Last of the Boys,' 'The Pain and the Itch,' 'The Dresser,' 'Homebody/Kabul,' 'The Dazzle,' 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (also Dublin and Toronto), 'Three Days of Rain' and many others.

Pam MacKinnon (Director) won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Director for her work on the Tony Award winning revival of Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' This season, she will mount the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of Donald Margulie's Pulitzer Prize winning play 'Dinner With Friends' and the Manhattan Theatre Club's 'When We Were Young and Unafraid,' starring Cherry Jones. Her other recent productions include premieres of Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize winning 'Clybourne Park '(Tony Award nomination), Rachel Axler's 'Smudge' (Women's Project) and Cusi Cram's 'A Lifetime Burning' (Primary Stages), as well as Shakespeare's 'Othello' (Shakespeare Santa Cruz) and Gina Gionfriddo's 'Becky Shaw' (South Coast Rep).