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NEW YORK, NY – Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of Evening Plays by Richard Maxwell. The Evening premiered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the winter of 2015. Samara was produced by Soho Rep. and premiered at A.R.T./New York Theatres in the spring of 2017. Paradiso premiered at Greene Naftali in New York City in the winter of 2018.

“When I watch one of Richard Maxwell’s productions, I always wait nervously, ready for the moment I have to lean forward. Each play holds out a promise of transcendence. His dramas pivot, reliably, from mundane social scenarios to the epic emotions he reveals underneath. At some point the rock riffs always kick in. Feelings that at first seem oddly absent in his bone-dry dialogue suddenly find heightened expression.” —Village Voice

Evening Plays collects three new dramas that are a response to Dante’s Divine Comedy by award-winning playwright Richard Maxwell. The Evening centers around three archetypal barflies who together form an elegy of universal loss. Samara is a mythic tale of redemption that follows a messenger through a bleak frontier in his quest to collect a debt, though the human cost of the journey may be more than he bargained for. And Paradiso, which takes place in the not-too distant future, describes three great loves: family, country, and God.

“Perhaps the greatest American experimental theater auteur of his generation.” —New York Times

Richard Maxwell is a playwright, director, and the artistic director of New York City Players. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and was a Doris Duke Performing Artist. In 2018, his play Paradiso premiered at Greene Naftali. Also, Maxwell will present a new work, Queens Row, at ICA London and will participate in the Chinati Foundation’s artist in residency program in Marfa, Texas, where his work Ads will be shown in the fall. Publications include The Theater Years, published by Greene Naftali and Westreich Wagner (2017), Theater for Beginners (2015), and Plays, 1999-2000 (2004), both published by TCG.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, leads for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 700 Member Theatres and affiliate organizations and over 7,000 Individual Members. Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theatre professionals each year. TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the annual TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theatre people; awards grants and scholarships to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG's partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute. TCG is North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 18 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist. It also publishes the award-winning American Theatre magazine and ARTSEARCH®, the essential source for a career in the arts. TCG believes its vision of “a better world for theatre, and a better world because of theatre” can be achieved through individual and collective action, adaptive and responsive leadership, and equitable representation in all areas of practice. TCG is led by executive director and CEO Teresa Eyring and deputy director and COO Adrian Budhu. www.tcg.org.

Evening Plays

By Richard Maxwell

152 pages

June 2020

$16.95

Paperback

978-1-55936-581-9

eBook

978-1-55936-896-4

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