Casting has been revealed for Playwrights Horizons and Breaking the Binary Theatre's upcoming world premiere of Sarah Mantell's In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, playing the Off-Broadway company's mainstage October 10-November 17 and opening October 29. Sivan Battat is directing.
The cast will feature Barsha (formerly known as Debra Barsha) as Horowitz, Sandra Caldwell (Sophisticated Ladies) as El, Donnetta Lavinia Grays (The Skin of Our Teeth) as Jen, Ianne Fields Stewart (Pose) as Sara, Deirdre Lovejoy (Lucky Guy) as Ani, Tulis McCall (What Everywoman Knows) as Ash, and Pooya Mohseni (Madam Secretary) as Maribel.
A work of speculative fiction, the play follows a band of queer warehouse workers traveling from job to job as oceans rise and coastlines recede.
“A lot of the people who are forced to live as itinerant workers are doing so because they don't have other choices, because our country has fundamentally failed them," says Battat in a statement. "One thing in your life can go wrong and suddenly you’re stuck in a cycle, doing manual labor into your 70s. These characters have had no path out of class struggle. One of the most important things about the play is how this community has formed as a result of that—that no one, structurally speaking, is looking out for us, so we’ll do it for each other.”
Adds Mantell: “Women, trans, and nonbinary artists deserve to be center stage. The canon has always held white male actors from cradle to grave and we deserve those kinds of futures, too. I have been reliably informed that this was one of the most extensive casting processes in Playwrights Horizons' history, and I believe it. Come see what our extraordinary company of artists has made. Similarly, I haven’t seen a lot of playwrights who the field perceives as female get a career break over the age of 40. It’s something I have honestly been scared about—and I don’t know if I would have had the chance to put a play like this into the theatre world in this big way if I was perceived as closer to the age of my characters.”
The production will feature scenic design by Emmie Finckel, costume design by Mel Ng, lighting design by Cha See, and sound design by Sinan Refik Zafar. The creative team also includes voice, text, and dialect coach Gigi Buffington, dramaturg Zeina Salame, intimacy coordinator Alex Might, production stage manager Ryan Gohsman, and assistant stage manager Holly Adam.
Tickets are on sale at PlaywrightsHorizons.org.
