Vineyard Theatre to present new plays by Tina Satter and Antoinette Nwandu in 2019-2020 season

Vineyard confirms Tina Satter's Is This a Room and the world premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song for its 2019-2020 Off-Broadway season.

Today the Vineyard Theatre revealed two of its three productions for the company's upcoming 2019-2020 Off-Broadway season.

Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern commented: "We are thrilled to announce two of our 2019-20 productions -- Tina Satter's Is This a Room, and Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song. These extraordinary new plays intertwine the deeply personal and political in revealing ways, reminding us how historical events shape, and are shaped by, individual lives. Tina and Antoinette are gifted artists who have created works inspired by recent events in our country, and fueled by theatrical imagination, which speak powerfully and exhilaratingly to our current moment. We truly look forward to sharing these new works and to the conversations that they inspire, and to announcing our winter show and developmental lab production soon."

Is This a Room will kick off the season in the fall of 2019, whilst Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song will conclude the season in spring 2020. A third production (for winter 2020) will be announced at a later date.

Is This a Room is conceived and directed by Tina Satter.

Synopsis: "A true story, still unfolding. June 3, 2017. A 25-year-old former Air Force linguist named Reality Winner is surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated, and then charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S elections. Reality remains in jail with a record-breaking sentence. The FBI transcript of her interrogation is the heart of Is This a Room, in which an extraordinary human drama unfolds between the complex and witty Reality, and the agents who question her. As Reality's autonomy shrinks before her eyes, a simmering real-life thriller emerges, asking what it is to have honor in this American moment, and how the personal can reverberate globally."

The world premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song will be directed by Danya Taymor.

Synopsis: "Los Angeles in the mid-nineties and twelve-year old Jackie is at a crossroads. She's just been accepted to a private school in Brentwood, the affluent, white neighborhood that also happens to be ground zero for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. At home, the Lord is alive and well, the rent's past due, and Momma's boyfriend just came back to town. Sexuality and spirituality, race and class, love and violence collide as Jackie attempts to make sense of her life in relation to the women in her real and imaginary landscapes. With an astonishing mix of humor, tenderness and theatrical daring, this coming-of-age story explores the barriers that keep Jackie from finding her authentic self, and the cost of overcoming them."

Exact dates, casting and additional creative team information for both productions will be announced in due course.

^{(Photos courtesy of Sam Rudy Media Relations)}