Placebo
- A new play by Melissa James Gibson
- Directed by Daniel Aukin
Melissa James Gibson's recent plays include What Rhymes with America; This; [sic]; Suitcase or, those that resemble flies from a distance; Brooklyn Bridge (with a song by Barbara Brousal) and Current Nobody. Her work has been produced and/ or developed at Playwrights Horizons, Center Theatre Group, Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, The Children’s Theatre Company, Steppenwolf, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Seattle Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab among others, regionally and internationally. Current commissions: Atlantic Theater Company; Second Stage Theatre. Honors: OBIE Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; Steinberg Playwright Award; Kesselring Prize; Whiting Writers Award; Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights’ Fellowship; LILLY Award; Jerome Fellow; MacDowell Colony Fellow; NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist. MFA: Yale School of Drama; graduate of New Dramatists. Teaching: Lecturer in the Program in Theater at Princeton University, spring semesters 2011 and 2012. Film: screenplay for All Is Bright, starring Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd and Sally Hawkins, directed by Phil Morrison (2013 Tribeca Film Festival premiere). TV: seasons 1 and 2 of “The Americans”; season 3 of “House of Cards”. THIS and Other Plays is published by TCG.
WORLD PREMIERE
A minty green pill—medication or sugar? Louise is working on a placebo-controlled study of a new female arousal drug. As her work in the lab navigates the blurry lines between perception and deception, more and more these same questions pertain to her life at home. With uncanny insight and unparalleled wit, Melissa James Gibson’s affectionate comedy examines slippery truths and the power of crossed fingers.
Featuring
Carrie Coon
William Jackson Harper
Alex Hurt
Florencia Lozano
Carrie Coon (Louise). Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Tony Award nomination, Theatre World Award). Other theater: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Arena Stage); Three Sisters, The March, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Steppenwolf Theatre Company); The Real Thing (Writers’ Theatre); Magnolia (Goodman Theatre). Film: Gone Girl. TV: “The Leftovers,” “Ironside,” “Intelligence,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “The Playboy Club.”
PH: A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick. Broadway: All the Way. Off-Broadway: Modern Terrorism (Second Stage); Massacre (Rattlestick); The Total Bent, Titus Andronicus (The Public); Ruined (MTC); Paradise Park, Queens Boulevard (the musical) (Signature). Other theater: You Got Older (HERE), Dance of the Holy Ghosts (NYS&F), Neglect (EST). Member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Off-Broadway : Scenes from a Marriage (NYTW), Caucasian Chalk Circle (CSC), Unrequited (The Public: Shakespeare Lab). Other theater: Other Desert Cities (Alley); A Behanding in Spokane (SF Playhouse); No Man's Land (ART), The Lion in Winter, Othello (Hedgerow Theatre). Film: The River Why. M.F.A.: NYU Tisch Graduate Acting
Creative Team
David Zinn
Scenic and Costume DesignerMatt Frey
Lighting DesignerRyan Rumery
Sound DesignerKyle Gates
Stage ManagerPlaywrights Horizons: Hir, The Flick (Drama Desk nomination, also Barrow Street and National Theater, UK), Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin, The Big Meal, Completeness, Placebo. Broadway: A Doll’s House Part 2 (costumes, Tony nom.), Amelie; Present Laughter; The Humans (Tony Award); Fun Home (Tony nomination); The Last Ship, In the Next Room (Tony nomination), Xanadu. Off-Broadway: Hamlet, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, 10 out of 12.
Playwrights Horizons: The Profane, Rancho Viejo, A Life, Placebo, This, Grand Concourse, The Call, Go Back to Where You Are, She Stoops to Comedy. Other Off-Broadway: Everybody (Signature), All the Ways... (MCC), War (LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard), The Way We Get By (Second Stage), Buzzer (The Public), An Octoroon (Soho Rep., TFANA), Generations (Soho Rep.). Regional: For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday (Humana Festival 2016, Berkeley Rep).
Most recently Kyle served as Producing Manager for Playwrights Horizons Theater School, an NYU Tisch studio, producing 50+ student theater projects a year. Before working in educational theater Kyle was a stage manager for over 15 years working on and off Broadway. Kyle holds a B.F.A. in Stage Management from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
The gifted Melissa James Gibson puts amusingly off-kilter exchanges in the mouths of her everyday characters with convincing grace. Carrie Coon and William Jackson Harper are excellent. Ms. Coon brings a touching, forlorn quality to her performance.
Smart, droll, beautifully observed, and beautifully performed.
Director Daniel Aukin’s work is sterling. Carrie Coon is incandescent. William Jackson Harper, Alex Hurt, and Florencia Lozano are terrific!
