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Dramaworks' 2023-24 season to include 'Death of a Salesman,' two world premieres

Staff Report
Palm Beach Daily News
A view from the stage at the Don and Ann Brown Theatre, home of Palm Beach Dramaworks. Five plays will be performed this season at Dramaworks.

Two world premieres and a season-wide focus on some of the country’s most contentious problems are part of the play lineup announced recently for the 2023-24 season at Palm Beach Dramaworks. 

Among those five plays is an American classic, Arthur Miller’s 1949 tragedy "Death of a Salesman." 

Kenneth Lonergan

“When I plan a season, my overall goal is to identify five diverse, quality plays that will entertain and challenge our audiences,” producing Artistic Director William Hayes said in a prepared statement. “It was only after putting together the upcoming season that I realized that all five plays, to a greater or lesser degree, really speak to this fraught time we’re living in." 

More:Review: At Dramaworks, 'Twelve Angry Men' pack an emotional wallop

The West Palm Beach-based company’s 24th season will open Oct. 13-29 with "Lobby Hero," a 2001 play by the American playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan. The four-character play concerns a murder investigation in a New York apartment building that raises questions of ethics, racism and sexism. 

Playwright Jenny Connell Davis.

Up next, from Dec. 8 to 24, is a world premiere, "The Messenger," by Jenny Connell Davis. The play is inspired by the life of Georgia Gabor, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, whose story is woven with that of a young American woman in 2020 facing racial discrimination. 

The Miami-based attorney and playwright Christopher Demos-Brown contributes a world premiere for the third Dramaworks offering, "The Cancellation of Lauren Fein." In this play, which runs from Feb. 2-18, 2024, a university professor, who with her wife is raising a 16-year-old African-American foster son, runs afoul of the school’s inclusion and diversity policies, threatening her career. 

Playwright Christopher Demos-Brown.

"Death of a Salesman," which runs March 29 to April 14, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of hapless Willy Loman, a traveling salesman in the twilight of his 34-year career who finds himself on the sour end of the American Dream.  

Lynn Nottage

The season closes with "Crumbs From the Table of Joy," a 1995 play by Lynn Nottage in which a widowed African-American man moves with his two teen daughters from Pensacola to New York's Brooklyn borough in 1950. The comedic drama touches on important racial and cultural issues of the time as the daughters, who are 17 and 15, take the first steps to building their own lives. The play runs from May 24 to June 9.  

More:Review: Settle in for the 'Duration,' with thought-provoking theater from Dramaworks

Palm Beach Dramaworks is based at the Don and Ann Brown Theatre at 201 Clematis St. in West Palm Beach. For tickets, call the box office at 561-514-4042, or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.