Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company presents Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ critically acclaimed dark comedy The Comeuppance in collaboration with The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Following its world premiere in 2023 at Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre, The Comeuppance was nominated for five Lucille Lortel Awards, winning Outstanding Play. Directed by Wilma Co-Artistic Director Morgan Green, and featuring Jordan Bellow, Alana Raquel Bowers, and The Wilma’s Hothouse Company members, Taysha Canales, Sarah Gliko, and Jaime Maseda, the production runs from September 8 to October 6 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (641 D St NW) before moving to The Wilma from November 19 to December 8. Tickets and further information can be found here.
Jacobs-Jenkins’ witty and moving dark comedy focuses on five friends in 2023 who reunite twenty years after graduating from a high school in Prince George’s County, outside of Washington, DC. Known as the “Multi-Ethnic Reject Group,” they were once bonded by their outsider status and the traumas of their teenage years. Gathered on a porch ahead of their high school reunion, they reminisce about their younger selves and reveal how their lives have unfolded since graduation. As the gathering progresses, they drink, fight, play a truth game, and lament the disappointments of their adult lives. Throughout the evening, they are haunted by a mysterious otherworldly figure that inhabits each character, forcing them to confront the possibility that their past actions may have sealed their present fates irrevocably.
“What a joy it is to have Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ incredible talent back on the Woolly stage, especially with a show set right here in PG County,” says Maria Manuela Goyanes, Artistic Director. “The Comeuppance features Branden’s signature rich, suspenseful, and skillful writing, and never lets the audience off the hook in the most exciting ways. This is our second collaboration with The Wilma, fresh from being the first theater company in Pennsylvania to be recognized with the Regional Theatre Tony Award.”
“This is The Wilma’s second co-production with Woolly Mammoth, and we are thrilled to continue this supportive relationship,” says The Wilma Theater’s Co-Artistic Director, Morgan Green. “In The Comeuppance, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins weaves politics into the minutiae of our daily lives and into the fiber of our relationships with crisp perception and deliciously dark humor. This play is an X-ray of the millennial soul and a much-needed reflection on the impact of lockdown and our ability to connect with one another.”
ABOUT THE CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright, producer, and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. His plays include Girls, Everybody (Signature Theatre), War (Yale Rep; Lincoln Center/LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre), Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience), and Neighbors (The Public Theater). Most recently he was the showrunner, executive producer, and writer for Hulu/FX’s drama series, “Kindred,” based on Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking novel. A Premiere Resident playwright at Signature Theatre, his honors include USA Artists, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award and he currently serves as Vice President of the Dramatists Guild council. He teaches at Yale University.
Morgan Green is a director of plays, films, and dinnertime. She is a Co-Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Wilma Theater in Philadelphia where she premiered the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham by James Ijames as a film in 2021. Credits include: Staff Meal by Abe Koogler (Playwrights Horizons), School Pictures by Milo Cramer (Playwrights Horizons, Wilma Theater), Eternal Life Part 1 by Nathan Alan Davis (Wilma Theater), Cute Activist by Milo Cramer (The Bushwick Starr), The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe (Marin Theater Company) and Associate Director for Amélie, a new musical (directed by Pam Mackinnon, Broadway). Morgan co-founded New Saloon Theater Company, best known for MINOR CHARACTER: Multiple Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time presented at the 2019 Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater. Her short film One More Time With Feeling premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London in October 2023. Proud member of SDC.
Jordan Bellow (Emilio) is a performer of stage and screen. NY credits include California at Clubbed Thumb, Gnit and Richard II + Henry IV at Theatre for a New Audience, Interior at 59E59, T
Alana Raquel Bowers (Ursula) is an actor, dancer, singer and producer from Baltimore, MD. Most recently seen in Molière in the Park’s production of The Miser. Broadway: Chicken and Biscuits (Circle in the Square Theater). Off-Broadway: Bernarda’s Daughters (The New Group and the National Black Theater at the Signature Theater), What To Send Up When It Goes Down (A.R.T./New York Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, American Repertory Theater, the Public Theater, and BAM, respectively) Off-Off Broadway: SCRAPS (The Flea Theater), Film/TV credits: “FBI: Most Wanted” (CBS), “Dr. Death” (Peacock). Producer credits: The Transatlantic Residency with Irish Repertory Theater and the Apollo, Anansi Creative Studio’s Storytellers Spotlight Series. Proud alum of the Baltimore School for the Arts and NYU Tisch Drama.
Taysha Canales (Kristina) Regional credits: Cymbeline, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival); All My Mothers Dream In Spanish (Azuka Theatre); KISS, FAT HAM (2021 filmed World Premiere), Dance Nation, There, Dionysus Was Such A Nice Man, Romeo and Juliet, Passage, Passing Strange, Blood Wedding, When the Rain Stops Falling, An Octoroon, The Hard Problem (Wilma Theater); A Streetcar Named Desire, NO CHILD…(2021 Filmed Production), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Bête, The Jungle Book, Wayside Stories From Wayside School (Arden Theatre); Shakespeare In Love, All My Sons (People’s Light). Taysha is the 2018 F. Otto Haas Emerging Philadelphia Theater Artist Recipient and a three-time Barrymore Award nominee. She is a founding member of the Wilma Theater’s resident acting company, the Hot House. BFA in Acting from Arcadia University. Next production: Tonya in King Hedley II at the Arden Theatre.
Sarah Gliko (Caitlin) is an actor/musician and founding member of the Wilma HotHouse Acting Company, where select productions include: The Good Person of Setzuan, Eternal Life Part 1, (Barrymore Award-Supporting Performance), KISS, The Cherry Orchard, Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Drama League Award Nomination), Constellations, When The Rain Stops Falling (Barrymore Award-Ensemble), and the U.S. premiere of Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem. Other recent credits include: Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Run Bambi Run, a new rock musical w/ music by Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes); The Tempest, Sense & Sensibility (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival); Mountain Home Christmas (Greenbrier Valley Theatre); TOWN (Theatre Horizon); A Small Fire w/ Bebe Neuwirth and The Bridges of Madison County (Barrymore Award-Lead Performance), both at Philadelphia Theater Company. She has worked locally with Arden Theatre Co, Act II Playhouse, Azuka Theatre, Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Delaware Theatre Co, Inis Nua Theatre, Lantern Theater Co, Montgomery Theatre and The Walnut St Theatre. She is also a grateful recipient of the 2019 Independence Foundation Fellowship Award.
Jaime Maseda (Paco/Simon) is a Barrymore-nominated performer based in Philadelphia. He has worked across disciplines with various artists and companies, including Pig Iron Theatre Company, Miguel Gutierrez, the Arden Theatre, the Wilma Theater, Azuka Theatre, People’s Light, Orbiter 3, Magda & Chelsea, Mel Krodman & Kelly Bond, George & Co.; as well as in collaborative partnership with NYC-based artist Iris McCloughan as No Face Performance Group.
The Director is Morgan Green, the Scenic Designer is Jian Jung, the Lighting Designer is Minjoo Kim, the Costume Designer is Kitt Crescenzo, the Sound Designer is Jordan McCree, Fight & Intimacy Choreographer is Eli K. Lynn, the Associate Lighting Designer is Scott Monnin, the Associate Costume Designer is Jessica Utz, the Associate Sound Designer is Diana Carey.
The Comeuppance, a co-production with The Wilma Theater, runs September 8-October 6, 2024, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets online.
ACCESS PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Mask Required: Sunday, September 22 @2pm AND Wednesday, October 2 @8pm
Open Caption: Thursday, September 26 @8pm
Audio Described: Saturday, September 21, 2024 @3pm
ASL: Sunday, September 29, 2024 @7pm
ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY
The Tony Award-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company creates badass theater that highlights the stunning, challenging, and tremendous complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a high standard of artistic rigor while simultaneously daring to take risks, innovate, and push beyond perceived boundaries. One of the few remaining theaters in the country to maintain a company of artists, Woolly serves an essential research and development role within the American theater. Plays premiered here have gone on to productions at hundreds of theaters all over the world and have had lasting impacts on the field. Currently co-led by Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas, Woolly is located in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White House. This unique location influences Woolly’s investment in actively working towards an equitable, participatory, and creative democracy.
Woolly Mammoth stands upon occupied, unceded territory: the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank whose descendants belong to the Piscataway peoples. Furthermore, the foundation of this city, and most of the original buildings in Washington, DC, were funded by the sale of enslaved people of African descent and built by their hands.
ABOUT THE WILMA THEATER
Established in 1979, the Wilma Theater (265 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19107), recipient of the 2024 Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre, is a non-profit theater company creating living, adventurous art engaging artists and audiences in imaginative reflections on the complexities of contemporary life. The theater presents bold, original productions representing a range of voices, viewpoints, and styles in order to develop the form and push existing conventions. Many of the roles in the Wilma’s productions are cast from its acclaimed, award-winning resident artists, the HotHouse Company, who meet weekly to train, read plays, and develop their artistry. The organization is currently led by a creative cohort of three co-artistic directors, Morgan Green, Lindsay Smiling, and Yury Urnov, and Managing Director Leigh Goldenberg. In 2024, Wilma became the first Pennsylvania theater company to receive The Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre.
