Iowa
- Lyrics by Todd Almond
- Lyrics by Jenny Schwartz
- Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll
Playwrights: Iowa (music and lyrics), Stage Kiss (performer). Todd wrote and starred in The Tempest, The Odyssey, and The Winter's Tale all for The Public. As a composer and orchestrator, Almond has written and arranged music for Noises Off! on Broadway, Fucking A at Signature, and How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Lincoln Center Theater, Kelli O’Hara Live at Carnegie Hall, and the recent film adaptation of Michael John LaChiusa’s Hello Again. As a playwright, Almond’s musical Girlfriend, based on Matthew Sweet’s album of the same name, continues to have productions around the country, as does his musical Melancholy Play, written with Sarah Ruhl. Other New York acting credits include Girl from the North Country on Broadway and at The Public, People are Wrong at the Vineyard, Piece of Meat opposite Sherie Rene Scott, and "Law and Order: SVU." As a musical director, Almond tours with Laura Benanti and Judy Kuhn, and recently made his PBS debut with Andrew Rannells, Live From Lincoln Center.
Jenny Schwartz’s (Playwright) plays include God’s Ear, Somewhere Fun, Cause for Alarm, and 41-derful. Jenny directed 41-derful for Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks 2014. Somewhere Fun premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in 2013, directed by Anne Kauffman. God’s Ear was produced in New York by New Georges and the Vineyard Theatre, also directed by Anne Kauffman. God's Ear has been produced nationally and internationally from Lisbon, Portugal to Boise, Idaho to Sydney, Australia. With Todd Almond, Jenny was the 2012 recipient of the Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre to support the development of Iowa at New Dramatists. Iowa was also developed at Sundance Theatre Institute Theatre Lab at Mass / MoCA. Other awards and honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin H. Danks Award in Drama, a Kesselring honor, two grants from Lincoln Center’s Lecomte Du Nuoy Foundation, and Soho Rep’s Dorothy Streslin Playwriting Fellowship. God's Ear and Somewhere Fun were both finalists for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Jenny chairs the Soho Rep Writer / Director Lab with Ken Rus Schmoll and teaches playwriting at Playwright’s Horizons Theatre School / NYU Tisch. She received an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University, is a graduate of Juilliard’s playwriting program, is a member of both The Clubbed Thumb Writers Group and New Dramatists.
Playwrights Horizons: world premiere of Iowa by Jenny Schwartz and Todd Almond. He directed Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist for both 13P and the Vineyard Theatre and her one-act October/November for Ensemble Studio Theater’s 2008 Marathon. Recent credits include Max Posner’s Judy for Page 73, Kate E. Ryan’s Card and Gift for Clubbed Thumb and Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand at New York Theatre Workshop (Lucille Lortel nomination). Previous work includes The Grown-Up, Death Tax (Humana Festival); George Brant’s Grounded (Walkerspace); Not What Happened (BAM Next Wave); Red Dog Howls (NYTW); Luther, Telethon, Amazons and Their Men, Demon Baby (Clubbed Thumb); A Map of Virtue, Mark Smith, Aphrodisiac (13P); Telephone (Foundry Theatre); Middletown (Vineyard Theatre); What Once We Felt (LCT3); Hello Failure (PS 122); and Cause for Alarm (NY Fringe Festival). Ken is a usual suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a three-time Sundance Theatre Institute alum, co-chair of the Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, co-mentor of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship and the recipient of two Obie Awards.
WORLD PREMIERE
Mom found her soul-mate on Facebook, and he lives in Iowa. So Becca says goodbye to her beloved math teacher, bulimic best friend, neighborhood pony and her mildly deficient teenage life, and she follows her wayward mother to a new, uncharted beginning. But in this fanciful, absurdist, and intoxicating musical play from the imagination of Jenny Schwartz and Todd Almond nothing can prepare them for what they’ll find.
Featuring
Cindy Cheung
April Matthis
Annie McNamara
Karyn Quackenbush
Carolina Sanchez
Lee Sellars
Jill Shackner
Kolette Tetlow
Playwrights Horizons: Log Cabin, Iowa. Also: Golden Shield (MTC), Tiny Beautiful Things (Long Wharf), The Great Immensity (Civilians/Public), Middletown (Vineyard), The Seagull, Antigone (NAATCO), Sugar House…(Ma-Yi), Sides…(Ma-Yi/Miyagi). Film/TV: The Sinner (Netflix, October 2022), The Flight Attendant, Billions, Awkwafina, Thirteen Reasons Why, High Maintenance, Bull, Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, Love Boat Taipei (upcoming), Mistress America, Obvious Child, Children of Invention, Lady In The Water. Love to Walter and Eddie.
Obie Award winner. Playwrights Horizons: Iowa. Off-Broadway: Fondly, Colette Richland; On the Levee; Lear; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928). Other New York theater: Hollow Roots; I Bought a Bunker, B**** ; Good Heif; Dead City; Anna Bella Eema. Regional: A Streetcar Named Desire, Rust, Sans-Culottes in the Promised Land, Home.
Playwrights Horizons debut. Off-Broadway: GATZ (The Public), The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) (NYTW). Other New York theater: 41-derful, U.S. Drag (Clubbed Thumb), A Map of Virtue (13P), That Pretty Pretty or The Rape Play (Rattlestick), God’s Ear (New Georges), Port Authority Throw Down (Working Theater), Film/TV: Blue Jasmine, “Mozart in the Jungle,” “The Knick.”
Broadway: Bronx Bombers, Imaginary Friends, Annie Get Your Gun, Blood Brothers. Off-Broadway: Love, Loss and What I Wore; I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change; The Green Heart, Preppies. National tours: Annie Get Your Gun; Stop the World, I Want to Get Off; Annie. Regional work includes Florence in Chess, Rosamund in The Robber Bridegroom, Petra in A Little Night Music and Kathy Selden in Singin’ in the Rain.
Playwrights Horizons and New York debut. National tour: West Side Story. Regional: Seussical – The Musical (Roxy Performing Arts Center. 2014 graduate of Westminster College of the Arts, where credits included productions of Merrily We Roll Along, A New Brain, The Producers and Rent.
Playwrights Horizons: Gun-shy. Broadway: Talk Radio, A Time to Kill, West Side Story. Off-Broadway: A Small, Melodramatic Story (The Public), The Alchemist (CSC). Extensive Regional credits including work at La Jolla, Huntington Theatre Company, George Street Playhouse, The Alley, The Guthrie, Berkshire Theatre Festival and Long Wharf. Film/TV: Groundhog Day, “E.R.,” “Law & Order,” “The Untouchables.”
Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Les Misérables (Young Cosette during the show’s first Broadway run). Off-Broadway: Landscape of the Body (Signature), Hereafter Musical (Snapple Theatre Center). Other New York credits: Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers & Hammerstein (Radio City Music Hall), Last Dance (York Theatre), Stand Tall (NYMF), A Charity Case (Theatre Row). TV: “The Americans,” “The Michael J. Fox Show,” “Ed.”
Playwrights Horizons debut. National tour: Once. Regional: A Musical Christmas Carol (Civic Light Opera), High School Musical, Jr. (New Hazlett Theater). Member of the Children’s Festival Choir of Pittsburgh.
Creative Team
Dane Laffrey
Scenic DesignerArnulfo Maldonado
Costume DesignerTyler Micoleau
Lighting DesignerDaniel Kluger
Sound DesignerJ. Oconer Navarro
Music Direction byRichard A. Hodge
Production Stage ManagerPlaywrights: Rancho Viejo, Indian Summer, Iowa, The Christians. Broadway: set for the current revival of Once On This Island, set and costumes for Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, set for Fool For Love. Other Off-Broadway: MTC, Roundabout, Atlantic, BAM Harvey, Labyrinth, Second Stage, Vineyard, LCT, MCC, Soho Rep., Rattlestick, Transport Group, others. Regional: Humana Festival, Mark Taper Forum, Old Globe, Geffen, Williamstown, Huntington, Goodspeed, Denver Center, Center Stage, Dallas Theatre Center, others. International work in Tokyo, Oslo, Osaka, and throughout Australia. 2017 Obie for Sustained Excellence in set and costume design; nominations for a Drama Desk Award and five ATW Henry Hewes Awards.
Arnulfo Maldonado is a New York City based set and costume designer. He is a recent Tony Award® Nominee for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for the Broadway production of Buena Vista Social Club (Schoenfeld Theatre, dir: Saheem Ali), as well as for A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson (Lyceum Theatre, dir: Stephen Brackett). In addition, Arnulfo received the 2020 Obie for Sustained Excellence in Set Design, as well as a Special Citation Obie as part of the Creative Team of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson. Arnulfo is a recipient of a Princess Grace Fabergé Theater Award and a multiple Henry Hewes Design. Lortel Award, and Drama Desk nominee
Tyler Micoleau (Lighting Designer, he/him). Playwrights Horizons: Familiar, Iowa, Antlia Pneumatica (Drama Desk nomination), Refuge. Vineyard Theatre: Middletown, God’s Ear, Arlington. Broadway: Buena Vista Social Club (upcoming), Into The Woods, American Buffalo, Be More Chill, The Band’s Visit (Tony Award for Best Lighting Design). Recent Off-Broadway: Hold On To Me Darling (Lucille Lortel), Like They Do In The Movies (PACNYC), Camp Siegfried (2ST), A Case For The Existence of God (Signature). Other notable Off-Broadway: When The Rain Stops Falling (Lincoln Center Theater, Lucille Lortel Award), Blasted (Soho Rep, Hewes Award), Bug (Barrow Street Theater, Lortel and OBIE awards). OBIE award for sustained excellence.
Daniel Kluger is a composer, music producer, orchestrator and sound designer.
Known for his Tony, Grammy and Olivier nominated bluegrass orchestrations of the Broadway revival of OKLAHOMA!, Kluger’s musical work spans a range from electronic dance music, to neoclassical chamber composition, jazz and atmospheric synth soundscapes. He has created original scores for dozens of award-winning theater projects, films and podcasts.
‘Iowa’ is never predictable — and its strangeness is purposeful, offering a real warning about the surreal world around us.
★★★★ Critic's Pick! Iowa’s satirical cartoonishness is captured splendidly in Ken Rus Schmoll’s staging, and the cast of eight sustains a remarkable tone of committed absurdism.
