NEWSLETTER
Performances Begin May 2026
New York, N.Y. (November 5, 2025) – The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Executive Director, Patrick Willingham) announced today that the world premiere production of GIRL, INTERRUPTED has been added to The Public’s 2025-2026 season. The new play with music is scheduled to begin in The Public’s Martinson Hall in May 2026. Casting will be announced at a later date.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok brings GIRL, INTERRUPTED to the stage for its world premiere. This shattering new take on Susanna Kaysen’s groundbreaking memoir features original music from two-time Grammy Award winner Aimee Mann and choreography by Tony Award winner Sonya Tayeh. After being checked into a psychiatric hospital, Susanna finds herself trapped in a place that’s both refuge and prison, discovering unexpected connection with the young women of her ward as they all fight for control, stability, and hope. Tony Award nominee Jo Bonney directs this captivating new play with music.
Artistic Director Oskar Eustis shares, “Martyna is a playwright of extraordinary sensitivity and power; Aimee is a songwriter of unparalleled insight and beauty. Together they’ve created a breathtaking look at women, mental illness, and the all-too flawed systems America has created to handle them. Heart-breaking, inspiring, and profound, under Jo Bonney’s magnificent leadership, this is a show unlike any other.”
The Public’s 2025-26 Season is underway with Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo’s return to The Public with the family drama THE OTHER AMERICANS, a gripping tale about the American dream directed by Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Tony Award-nominated writer and director duo Jordan E. Cooper and Stevie Walker-Webb have also returned to The Public with OH HAPPY DAY!, featuring original music by Grammy Award-winning gospel artist Donald Lawrence for this biting new play about confronting the divine. The Public’s collaboration with Ma-Yi Theater Company continues with the first of two plays in this season’s residency, DID YOU EAT? (밥 먹었니?), featuring playwright and performer Zoë Kim’s autobiographical journey through love’s many forms, directed by Chris Yejin. THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS, Obie Award winner Ethan Lipton’s irreverently funny musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Skin of Our Teeth, makes its world premiere in a production directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman. The fall season closes out with INITIATIVE, a world premiere play by Emerging Writers Group alumnus Else Went and directed by Emma Rosa Went following the intertwined lives of seven teens from 2000-2004 in “Coastal Podunk, California.”
BIOS:
MARTYNA MAJOK (Book) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her Broadway debut play, Cost of Living, which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Other plays include Queens, Sanctuary City, Ironbound, and the libretto for Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett. Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Arthur Miller Foundation Legacy Award, Obie Award for Playwriting, Hull-Warriner Award, Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin Hadley Danks Award for Exceptional Playwriting, Off Broadway Alliance Best New Play Award, Princeton's Hodder Fellowship, Lark / PoNY Fellowship, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play, Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Champions of Change Award from the NYC Mayor’s Office, Francesca Primus Prize, two Jane Chambers Playwriting Awards, Lanford Wilson Prize, Lilly Award, Helen Merrill Award, Helen Hayes Awards' Charles MacArthur Award, Jean Kennedy Smith Award, NNPN Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, and Merage Foundation Fellowship for The American Dream, among others. Majok is currently adapting Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for Broadway and is working on several feature film adaptations, including Audition, which she will co-write with Lulu Wang. Her first screenplay, Preparation for the Next Life, was just released in theaters.
AIMEE MANN (Music) is one of the most distinguished singer-songwriters of her generation. Her successful solo career has spanned several decades with several Grammy nominations, two Grammy Awards, and the release of nine critically acclaimed solo albums, including the profoundly popular soundtrack for the film Magnolia, which garnered an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination for Best Song in 2000. Time magazine has said, “Mann has the same skill that great tunesmiths like McCartney and Neil Young have: the knack for writing simple, beautiful, instantly engaging songs,” while NPR voted her one of the “Top 10 Best Living Songwriters” along with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. Her release in 2017 called Mental Illness won her a Grammy for Best Folk Album. Her latest release Queens of the Summer Hotel came out to critical acclaim. It is based on music she wrote for the stage adaptation of the memoir Girl, Interrupted. Earlier in her musical life, Mann fronted the band Til Tuesday, releasing three albums. She has also made numerous memorable cameo appearances in films such as The Big Lebowski and TV shows like “Portlandia” and “The Daily Show.”
SONYA TAYEH (Choreography) is a creative visionary whose work relating to the body in motion explores many different worlds. She is the dance backbone behind numerous stage and screen projects, notably in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, for which she won the Tony Award for outstanding choreography. Produced on stages globally, Tayeh has gleaned many accolades for her distinguished work across genres on both stage and screen including two Emmy nominations, an Obie Award, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, and a Critics Circle Award. Her work has been characterized as a powerful weaving of versatility and theatrical range constructing onstage worlds for which she has been lauded for her chameleon-like choreography and ability to adapt her storytelling to any scale. For a deeper look inside Tayeh’s work visit sonyatayeh.com.
JO BONNEY (Director) has directed the premieres of plays by Alan Ball, Hilary Bettis, Eric Bogosian, Eleanor Burgess, Hammaad Chaudry, Culture Clash, Eve Ensler, Jessica Goldberg, Isaac Gomez, Danny Hoch, Ione Patricia Lloyd, Neil LaBute, Warren Leight, Martyna Majok, Lynn Nottage, Dan O'Brien, Dael Orlandersmith, Suzan-Lori Parks, Darci Picoult, John Pollono, Will Power, David Rabe, Jose Rivera, Abby Rosebrock, Seth Zvi Rosenfeld, Alexis Scheer, Christopher Shinn, Diana Son, John Turturro & Ariel Levy, Universes, Naomi Wallace, and Michael Weller. Bonney has also directed plays by Caryl Churchill, Nilo Cruz, Anna Deavere Smith, Charles Fuller, Lisa Loomer, Paul Lucas, Carey Perloff, and Lanford Wilson. Bonney received a Tony Award nomination for Direction of Cost of Living, two Obie Awards for Sustained Excellence of Direction, Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Musical and Best Revival, Drama Desk nomination for Direction of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, AUDELCO Award for Father Comes Home from the Wars, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, Alliance, and Lilly Award. Bonney is the editor of Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century (TCG).
THE PUBLIC continues the work of its visionary founder Joe Papp as a civic institution engaging, both on-stage and off, with some of the most important ideas and social issues of today. Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public’s wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City’s five boroughs, Public Works, and Joe’s Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musicals Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hell’s Kitchen by Alicia Keys and Kristoffer Diaz. Their programs and productions can also be seen regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 64 Tony Awards, 195 Obie Awards, 62 Drama Desk Awards, 64 Lortel Awards, 36 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, 70 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. publictheater.org
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