The Wanderers Upstage Guide

Spotlight on The Wanderers.

Spotlight on The Wanderers Creative.

Playwright Anna Ziegler

Scenic Design Marion Williams

Lighting Design Kenneth Posner

Hair & Wig Design Tommy Kurzman

Director Barry Edelstein

Costume Design David Israel Reynoso

Sound Design Jane Shaw

What is the show about?

Orthodox Jews Esther and Schmuli are newly married, and their future is written in the laws of the Torah. Secular Jew Abe is married to Sophie. He is a famous novelist who believes he can write his own future…until an unexpected email from a movie star puts his marriage to the test and threatens to prove him wrong. As the story unfolds both couples must confront the question,

Can we be happy with what we have while we have it? 

Where & When.

Brooklyn, NY – 1973 and 2015

The play moves between the past and present. When in the past, the setting is in Williamsburg – specifically within the community of Satmar Jewish people. To learn more about this community, be sure to read The Jewish Diaspora in the US and Community and Tradition in Satmar Hasidism.

Meet the characters.

Esther
Schmuli
Abe
Sophie
Julia Cheever

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Anna Ziegler

Playwright

ANNA ZIEGLER (Playwright) has written the plays Actually (produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geffen Playhouse, London’s Trafalgar Studios and more; L.A. Ovation Award winner for Playwriting for an Original Play), the widely produced Photograph 51 (directed on the West End by Michael Grandage and starring Nicole Kidman; WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play; Chicago Tribune’s #1 play of 2019 and a “Best of the Year” play in The Washington Post and UK’s The Telegraph), Boy (Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award nominee), The Wanderers (City Theatre and The Ernst Deutsch Theatre (Hamburg); previously produced at The Old Globe; Theater J; Gesher Theater (Israel); Craig Noel Award winner for Outstanding New Play), The Last Match (Roundabout Theatre Company; The Old Globe; Writers’ Theatre; City Theatre), and A Delicate Ship (New York Times Critic’s Pick). She holds commissions from, among others, Roundabout Theatre Company, Second Stage Theatre and Grove/Whitman. Oberon/Bloomsbury Books has published a collection of her work entitled Anna Ziegler: Plays OnePlays Two, is forthcoming. Recent: Photograph 51 at Melbourne Theatre Company and Ensemble Theatre (Sydney); The Great Moment at Seattle Rep (world premiere); Antigones at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference; The Janeiad at Cape Cod Theatre Project and Ojai Playwrights Conference. She is developing television and movie projects with Paramount, Defiant by Nature and Leviathan Productions. Photograph 51 is available on Audible and in Bloomsbury’s Modern Classics series. More at annabziegler.net.

Kenneth Posner

Lighting Design

KENNETH POSNER (Lighting Design). Roundabout: The Wanderers, Amy and the Orphans, John Lithgow: Stories by Heart, If I Forget, Harvey, Death Takes a Holiday, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The Understudy, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, The Man Who Had All the Luck, Uncle Vanya, Give Me Your Answer Do, Side Man, The Lion in Winter, Little Me, A View From the Bridge, The Father, The Rehearsal and Misalliance. He designs on Broadway, throughout the United States and internationally. Recipient of Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics’ Circle and Obie awards.

Tommy Kurzman

Hair & Wig Design

TOMMY KURZMAN (Hair & Wig Design). Broadway credits include I Need That, Gutenberg! The Musical!, The Cottage, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Pictures From Home, The Collaboration, Macbeth, Mrs. Doubtfire, All My Sons, True West, Saint Joan, My Fair Lady, The Little Foxes and Bright Star. Off-Broadway credits include Little Shop of Horrors, MCC, Atlantic, The New Group, The Public, MTC and NWS. Regional credits include Huntington, Muny, Geva Theatre, Resident Ensemble Players, Cape Playhouse, Signature VA and MSM. Instagram: @tommykurzmanwigs

Barry Edelstein

Director

BARRY EDELSTEIN (Director) is Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director of The Old Globe in San Diego, and is a stage director, producer, author, and educator. His Globe directing credits include the 2018 world premiere of The Wanderers, the world premieres of Rain and the American premiere of Life After, The Twenty-Seventh Man, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Othello, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and, during the pandemic, Hamlet: On the Radio. He also directed All’s Well That Ends Well as the inaugural production of the Globe for All community tour, and he oversees the Globe’s Classical Directing Fellowship program. In addition to his recent Globe credits, he directed The Tempest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. As Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at The Public Theater (2008–2012), Edelstein oversaw the company’s Shakespearean productions as well as its educational, community outreach, and artist-training programs. At The Public, he staged the world premiere of The Twenty-Seventh Man, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Steve Martin’s WASP and Other Plays. He was also Associate Producer of The Public’s Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino. From 1998 to 2003 he was Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company. His book Thinking Shakespeare is the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions. His podcast Where There’s a Will is upcoming from the Globe and Pushkin Industries. He is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

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