'Plays for the Plague Year' sets Off-Broadway cast

Suzan-Lori Parks will star in her own show.

Gillian Russo
Gillian Russo

The Public Theater has set the full cast for its production of Plays for the Plague Year by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks. The three-week run is from November 4-27 at Joe's Pub within the Public, with opening night on November 16.

Parks stars in her own play as The Writer, making her stage acting debut. The rest of the cast includes Leland Fowler, Greg Keller, Orville Mendoza, 2022 Tony nominee Kenita Miller, Lauren Molina, Martín Solá, and Pearl Sun.

The creative team has also been set. Plays for the Plague Year features costume design by Montana Levi Blanco, lighting design by Ania Washington, sound design by Dan Moses Schrier, and projection design by Peter Nigrini. Music direction is by Ric Molina, who also contributes additional vocal and instrumental arrangements.

Plays for the Plague Year is a theatrical concert born of Parks's experience writing a play every day in 2020, beginning on March 13, the day after New York theatres shut down. The resulting show is a collection of short plays and songs that chronicle the collective experience of living through the pandemic as a city, country, and world, through the lens of one family's everyday life. 

This show is one of three works by Parks in New York this season. She adapted the 1972 movie The Harder They Come into a new musical, premiering after Plague Year in the Public's Off-Broadway season. Her Pulitzer-winning play Topdog/Underdog is having its first Broadway revival this fall, starring Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

Get Plays for the Plague Year tickets now.

Originally published on

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