Becky Nurse of Salem Tickets

A New York-premiere play by two-time Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl, Becky Nurse of Salem, debuts with Lincoln Center Theater in fall 2022. Get Becky Nurse of Salem tickets now.

The dark comedy Becky Nurse of Salem is a play about two maybe-witches: Rebecca Nurse and Becky Nurse. Rebecca was one of the 200-plus people accused of witchcraft (and one of 14 hanged) during the 1692-1693 Salem Witch Trials. Becky, a descendant of Rebecca's, lives in present-day Salem, where former witch trial sites are now drugstores and coffee chains. She works at one place that remains magical, though: a museum decidated to those trials. She also can't seem to catch a break, being constantly befallen by bad luck. She wonders if her ancestry has anything to do with it; perhaps it's a curse. Misogyny and witchcraft have a long and still-continuing history, after all. Or maybe, Becky is just struggling to figure out her present, and in the play, she turns to pills, a bartender named Bob, and a little witchcraft of her own to do it.

Before Becky Nurse of Salem came to New York, the show had its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in California in 2019. Now, playwright Sarah Ruhl is doubly represented off Broadway in the 2022-23 season. After Becky Nurse of Salem's run, Signature Theatre will stage her world-premiere play Letters From Max, adapted from her 2018 memoir featuring correspondences between Ruhl and her late poetry student. Ruhl remains best known for writing In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and The Clean House, both of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In the Next Room also got a Tony Award nomination for Best Play, and The Clean House won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for excellent work by non-male writers. In 2016, Ruhl earned a Samuel French Award for Sustained Excellence in American Theatre.

Ruhl isn't the only Tony honoree involved in Becky Nurse of Salem off Broadway. The title character is played by Deirdre O'Connell, a 2022 Tony winner for her performance in Dana H. on Broadway. Previously, she won Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards for performing the role off Broadway at Vineyard Theatre. O'Connell has had a decades-long career as an Off-Broadway staple; she won a special Obie Award for career excellence in 2005 and a Lifetime Achievement Lucille Lortel Award in 2022.

Directing Becky Nurse of Salem in New York is Rebecca Taichman, yet another Tony winner. She made her Broadway directing debut in 2017 with Indecent, which she co-created with Paula Vogel, and won the Tony for Best Direction of a Play that year. She has since directed Time and the Conways on Broadway, and her previous Off-Broadway directing credits include Indecent at Vineyard Theatre, School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, and Ruhl's Orlando and Stage Kiss. She directed the new musical Sing Street, based on the same-named film, at New York Theatre Workshop in 2019, and its 2022 pre-Broadway run in Massachusetts.

Tickets to Becky Nurse of Salem are available now.