Helmed by members of The Actors Studio, David Harrower’s controversial Olivier Award-winning play Blackbird returns to New York City in a raw, intimate staging, making the audience a fly-on-the-wall in a disturbingly tense room. Lifetime member of The Actors Studio Suzanne Didonna will direct a cast of two, including Scott McCord (Amazon: “From;” The Actors Studio lifetime member), and Danish/American Emilie Rose Bak (Essentially Painless).

This complex drama depicts a story about an unconventional love and the crippling effects of abuse. Una, a 27-year-old woman, has tracked down Ray, a 55-year-old man, with whom she shares a dark past. The story unfolds and raw emotions run high as they revisit the passionate relationship they had fifteen years ago, when he was forty and she was only twelve. Controversial in its nature, it breaks boundaries and poses serious questions about society and morality. This intense work was commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, where it received its world premiere. Blackbird won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2007 and was Tony-nominated for its revival on Broadway in 2016.

“Our world is cluttered with notifications and filtered through screens, and in our rush to scroll past discomfort, we’ve lost the capacity to truly see each other, to witness each other’s humanity without looking away” states Didonna. “The subject of sexual abuse and its psychological aftermath isn’t comfortable, and it shouldn’t be. Perhaps in stripping away those barriers and collectively witnessing human pain in its rawest form, we are forced to slow down long enough to remember what makes us human.”

Content warning: Contains explicit sexual content and language, themes of abuse.

The runtime is 90 minutes with no intermission.