London-born Daniel Kaluuya makes his American stage debut next February in Grass, a world premiere by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that opens Park Avenue Armory's 20th-anniversary season in New York. Phelim McDermott follows in September with a new Einstein on the Beach that starts life in Manchester.
Grass runs in the Armory's vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall from 19 February to 28 March 2027, with press night on Friday 26 February. Kaluuya plays a son on a road trip through the American South with his mother. The two of them are trying to rebuild their family tree from the strangers and the history they meet along the way.
London took notice of Kaluuya on stage long before Hollywood did. His lead in Roy Williams's Sucker Punch at the Royal Court in 2010 won him the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for outstanding newcomer. He has since won an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and is best known on screen for Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.
Sarah Benson directs and Mimi Lien designs the set, the same pairing behind Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon in New York in 2014. Lighting is by Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier, sound by Bray Poor, costumes by Enver Chakartash, special effects by Jeremy Chernick, and wigs and make-up by Cookie Jordan. The Armory has commissioned and produced the play with the National Black Theatre. Tickets start at $40, fees included.
Einstein on the Beach opens in Manchester first
The season's other British headline belongs to Phelim McDermott, the Manchester-born co-founder of Improbable, who won the 2023 Olivier Award for Best Director for My Neighbour Totoro. His new staging of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach completes his run through Glass's three portrait operas, after Satyagraha and Akhnaten.
UK audiences see it first. English National Opera and Factory International open the production at Aviva Studios in Manchester from 29 May to 12 June 2027, as part of Factory International's 2027 season. It then crosses to the Armory's Drill Hall from 14 to 29 September 2027, in Glass's 90th year. Tom Pye designs, and the Armory co-commissioned the piece with ENO, Factory International and Improbable.
Deborah Warner's first Armory season
This is also the first season programmed by Deborah Warner, the British director who now leads the Armory as its Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director, though some of it was lined up by her predecessor, Pierre Audi. Warner brings her own Peace Camp: A Vigil from 9 June to 8 August. It reworks the installation of glowing tents she first set along the UK coastline for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, now with a soundscape by Mel Mercier and a weekly overnight opening from dusk to dawn.
The Drill Hall year continues with Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch's concert installation Audience Plant 2027 (14-19 October), with improvised sets led by Jason Moran. It closes with the Belgian company FC Bergman's wordless Guernica Guernica (8-20 December), built from Picasso's painting with a cast of more than 80. A Recital Series and Moran's Artists Studio run alongside in the building's period rooms.
The full New York line-up, recitals included, is set out on News From Broadway.
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