The Billie Holiday Theatre in Bedford-Stuyvesant will launch its Spring 2024 Season titled “RESISTANCE," with a revival of Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage.
This production of Nottage’s classic comedic celebrates a homecoming for the acclaimed playwright’s Brooklyn roots as well as her rich history to the theater, according to a news release.
The preview performance will be on Wednesday, April 17, with opening night taking place on Thursday, April 18, and running through May 19.
“Fabulation is set in Brooklyn, and I’m beyond thrilled to be sharing the play with my hometown audience. The very first theater I ever experienced was at the Billie Holiday, and so this is definitely a full circle moment for me,” said Nottage.
Originally produced by Playwrights Horizon in 2004, the award-winning Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine is a satirical tale set in New York City following successful African-American publicist Undine Barnes Calles as she stumbles down the social ladder after her husband embezzles her hard-earned fortune and suddenly disappears. When her life begins to unravel in one hilarious reversal after another, Undine is forced to return to a life she had long left behind. Pregnant and on the brink of social and financial ruin, she goes back to her childhood home in Brooklyn's Walt Whitman projects and faces the challenge of transforming her setbacks into small victories in a battle to reaffirm her right to be.
"As a native to our hamlet of Brooklyn and the first woman playwright to earn two Pulitzer Prizes in theatre, I can’t think of a more integral artist to draw from than the brilliant Lynn Nottage who is not only a daughter of Brooklyn but also very much part of The Billie’s artist family,” said Executive Director Shadawn Smith. “With this being our first major theater production held on The Billie’s stage in quite some time, we chose a work that reinforces The Billie’s role as an incubator for Black voices, a bastion for the Black Theater canon and the place where Black theater lives and thrives!"
Tickets are $60 with discounts available for students and seniors. For more information, tickets and ticket packages, please visit TheBillieholiday.org.
