Off-Broadway’s The New Group has announced four titles to comprise its 2017–2018 season at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Among them is a world premiere starring Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny and the Off-Broadway premiere of Jerry Springer—The Opera.

The season kicks off with Seth Zvi Rosenfeld’s Downtown Race Riot; Scott Elliott will direct the world-premiere production, beginning performances in November. Sevigny will star as Mary Shannon, a single mother in the ’70s whose son—along with his best friend—face a moral dilemma in the wake of the violent 1976 rampage in Washington Square Park, which left a young Dominican man dead and several other people of color injured.

The season continues in the winter with the Off-Broadway premiere of Jerry Springer—The Opera, directed by John Rando. The show, written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, heightens the drama of The Jerry Springer Show to operatic proportions with an absurd cast of characters and a series of arias. Joshua Bergasse will choreograph.

Scott Elliott will direct the New York premiere of David Rabe’s Good for Otto, which will begin in early 2018. The play will feature Ed Harris and Amy Madigan as Dr. Michaels and his colleague Evangeline in a rural Connecticut mental health center. The play premiered at the Git Theatre in Chicago in 2015.

Lily Thorne’s Peace for Mary Frances will make its world premiere in May 2018. Lois Smith will take on the title character—a daughter of Armenian refugees who, at 90, has her dream of dying peacefully disrupted as three younger generations of women battle for their family legacy in her home. Lila Neugebauer will direct.

Additional information, including dates and further casting, will be announced at a later time.

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