Off-Broadway theatre company The New Group is celebrating its 30th anniversary with some stars!
Marisa Tomei will star in the first play of the theatre's 2024–25 30th anniversary season. In Babe by Jessica Goldberg, directed by The New Group Founding Artistic Director Scott Elliott, Tomei will play a music producer who is forced to reevaluate the compromises she's made in her career to support her husband, who is a more famous producer. The play first premiered in 2022 in Los Angeles. The work will play the Pershing Square Signature Center in the fall, being produced in association with Red Yes Studio.
Directly following Babe, the company will produce a revival of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class starring Calista Flockhart, Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman), and Christian Slater. The tragedy, first produced in 1977, follows the Tate family as they struggle to keep ahold of their rundown family farm. The production will run in winter 2025, with Elliott directing. It will also play at the Signature Center.
Other shows in The New Group's 2024–25 season include a new musical from the creators of the famed pandemic Zoom play Circle Jerk called The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse. Created by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley, the musical follows three Gen Zers who are determined to uncover what happened to an early 2000s one-hit-wonder named Coco. The show will run at the Signature Center spring 2025.
The final production of the theatre company's 24–25 season will be Bowl EP, written and directed by Nazareth Hassan. The show follows two young rappers and will feature original music. Bowl EP is a coproduction with Vineyard Theatre and National Black Theatre, and it will run at the Vineyard Theatre.
Said Elliott in a statement: "Every milestone feels like a bit of a miracle, and we couldn't be more grateful that our audiences and artists keep coming back to The New Group for our specific brand of risk and reimagining. For these three decades, we've set about presenting singular, intimate, theatrical ways of looking at our peculiarly American conundrums—and past our shared myths—through vivid characters and ensembles. Looking forward to the next 30."
Founded in 1995, The New Group is committed to producing "power, contemporary theatre." It was the original producer for Avenue Q, which eventually went on to win a Tony Award for Best Musical. Visit TheNewGroup.org.
