New Normal Rep (NNR), a new streaming theater company dedicated to producing reflective and inclusive plays, launches this week with its inaugural production: Jericho by Jack Canfora. Directed by four-time Academy Award nominee Marsha Mason (The Goodbye Girl) and featuring Jill Eikenberry (LA Law), Jericho will be streamed on demand, March 4 – April 4, 2021. Tickets are $25, $10 for students and theater professionals, and can be purchased at New Normal Rep. Jericho also features C.K. Allen, Eleanor Handley, Jason O’Connell, Michael Satow and Carol Todd.
Several years after tragedy impacted their lives, a family comes together once again for Thanksgiving dinner. While family members struggle to come to terms with residual anger, grief and guilt, Jack Canfora’s thought-provoking play explores how people cope with personal and collective catastrophe. Displaying surprising humor and biting wit, this Jericho, Long Island clan exposes their desperate strategies for resolution and redemption. Jericho is a play about September 11. It is also a traumatic-Thanksgiving-dinner-with-the-family play and a play about being Jewish.
Jill Eikenberry, Carol Todd & Jason O'Connell in JERICHO
Canfora wrote it in the first decade of the 2000s as an inquiry into America’s burgeoning tribalism. More than a decade later, its themes of division remain timely in this humorous work that resolves into a meditation on the pains and satisfactions of living after a tragedy. When Jericho premiered in 2013 at 59E59 Theatres, The New York Times called it “a smart, hard-hitting drama filled with biting wit. A lovely, humorous work with laughs that resolve into a meditation on the pains and satisfactions of living after tragedy.”
NNR exists not in spite of the pandemic, but because of it. Dedicated to presenting new and lesser known plays, via the internet, NNR will present works with divergent perspectives that explore the historical, cultural, and psychological forces that have helped to shape our 21st-century lives. Above all, NNR is dedicated to producing deeply entertaining, engaging and illuminating work.
Jason O'Connell & Michael Satow in JERICHO
Following Jericho, NNR will present Two Sisters and a Piano, written and directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated playwright Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics), and starring Jimmy Smits (The West Wing). Streaming April 21 – May 23. Additional details to come.
The inaugural season will also feature works by playwrights Julia Blauvelt and Nikkole Salter.
Eleanor Handley & CK Allen in JERICHO