Munich Medea: Happy Family

January 30–February 25, 2024
FranceWorld Premiere
Why did you tell them about our secrets? Why share things with them that they cannot understand?
Meet the Artists

Corinne Jaber (Writer) is of Syrian/German heritage and was born in Munich and raised in Canada and Germany. She is an award-winning actress as well as a writer/director. She has been part of many international theatre productions in English as well as in French, such as - to name but a few - Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata, A Dybbuk for 2, by and with the late Bruce Myers, Irina Brook's Beast on the Moon (for which she obtained a “Molière” the best actress award in France) and more recently Oh My Sweet Land, a monologue which she conceived and co-authored together with Amir Nizar Zuabi as well as acted in. For many years she has worked with Afghan actors in Kabul on Shakespeare. Their work culminated in a production of Comedy of Errors at the “Globe to Globe Festival” for the Globe Theatre in London. Her play The Bus that didn’t stop on the Partition of India has now developed into her very first film Borderlines which she also produced and directed. She is currently in the process of post-production.

Lee Sunday Evans (Director) Lee Sunday Evans is a two-time Obie Award-winning Director + Choreographer and the Artistic Director of Waterwell. She most recently directed the acclaimed production of Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things and was just announced as the director of a Broadway-bound musical adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. She is developing a TV project for A24. Notable credits include Dance Nation by Clare Barron, Detroit Red by Will Power, Sunday by Jack Thorne, In the Green by Grace McLean, Miller, Mississippi by Boo Killebrew, Home by Geoff Sobelle, and Sobelle’s Food, which she co-directed. She also directed The Courtroom by Arian Moayed (NY Times Best Theater of 2019) which she just directed as a feature-length film that premiered in the 2022 Tribeca Festival.

Crystal Finn (Actor) is thrilled to be working for the first time with WP, and to be back working with PlayCo after performing in their production of one of her all-time favorite plays Villa, by Guillermo Calderon. NY theater includes many world premieres at Playwright’s Horizons, Roundabout, MTC, 59E59, Fulcrum, and Clubbed Thumb where she is an affiliated artist. In 2022 she made her Broadway debut in Birthday Candles, by Noah Haidle, for which she won a Theater World Award. She is also a writer and is working on a solo show about Wittgenstein and a book of essays about acting.

Heather Raffo (Actor) is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”. Having helped forge a new genre of Arab American theater, she’s spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq: from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work 9 Parts of Desire (2003), to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah (PBS film 2012), to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect, in Noura (2018). A film adaptation of Nine Parts, released on PBS in 2023, is a radical reimagining of her groundbreaking play from the vantage point of 20 years after the war.  A recent Creative Capital, NPN and APAP grantee, Raffo is currently building an ambitious new theatrical platform following migration and the global economy which aims to be the first ever-evolving, multi-locational theater platform.

Kurt Rhoads (Actor) Broadway: Julius Caesar. Off Broadway: Off Peak by Brenda Withers, 59E59 St Theatre; Fashions for Men, Mint Theatre; Othello, The Good Natur’d Man, Pearl Theatre; The Case of Kaspar Mayer, Ubu Rep, Americana Absurdum, Present Company. Regional: Arena Stage, How I Learned to Drive, Agamemnon and his Daughters; Everyman Theatre: Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Sweat; Old Globe: Fiction, Dinner with Friends; Denver Center: Book of Will. 25 seasons of acting and directing at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Video Games: Red Dead Revoler, Redemption, GTA San Andreas, III, Bully. 73 plays with his wife, Nance Williamson. Education: University of Chicago, DePaul University.

Kristen Robinson (Set Designer) is an award-winning designer, artist, and educator. Her work ranges from experimental opera to regional theatre and everything in between. Select design credits include: Drinking in America (Audible Theater), Don Giovanni, (Wolftrap Opera), Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), In the Green (LCT3), Heart of Darkness (Baryshnikov Arts Center), Minor Character (Under the Radar Festival), Everybody Black, The Thin Place (Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville), graveyard shift (Goodman Theatre), Familiar (Steppenwolf Theatre), Ethel (Alliance Theatre). She is the Assistant Professor of Scenic Design at Purchase College. A Princess Grace Fellow, she holds her MFA from Yale University and is a proud member of USA 829. You can view her work at kristenrobinsondesign.com.

Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (Lighting Designer) is an award-winning designer for theatre, dance, opera, musicals, music performances and large-scale immersive installation.  NY Times described her designs as “clever” and “inventive”.  Recent: Kimberly Akimbo (Broadway), King Lear (STC), WILD: A Musical Becoming (A.R.T.), The Nosebleed (LCT3), Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre), Walden (Theaterworks), Golden Shield (MTC), cullud wattah (The Public), Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova). Plus designing for immersive experiences like Nevermore Park: Home of Flyboy with artist Hebru Brantley.

Dina El-Aziz (Costume Design) Off-Broadway: I Thought I Would Die But I Didn’t (The Tank) Eh Dah? Questions for My Father (Hypokrit Theatre/NYTW Next Door) The Russian and The Jew (Anna & Kitty Inc/The Tank), Dead Are My People (Noor Theater/NYTW's Next Door); Field Awakening (Corkscrew Festival); Alternating Currents (The Working Theater); Other theatre: P*ssyC*ck Know Nothing, News Of The Strange, Marjana and the Forty Thieves, Pay No Attention To The Girl (Target Margin Theater). Regional: 9 Parts of Desire (Portland Center Stage); King Lear (Northern Stage); Noura (The Guthrie); Noura (The Old Globe); Yasmina’s Necklace (Premiere Stages); Selling Kabul (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Pay No Attention To The Girl (Target Margin Theater/Spoleto Festival); We’ve Come to Believe, The Corpse Washer, How to Defend Yourself (Actors Theatre of Louisville/43rd Humana Festival), Heartland (Geva Theatre Center). Film: Roommates (Short); Keiko’s Hands (Short); Jihadi Street (Short); Shift (Short); Prisoners of War (Short). JS Seidman Award.

UptownWorks/Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols, Bailey Trierweiler (Sound Design) The UptownWorks sound team is a group of designers that creates collaboratively for theatre, film, podcasts, music production and other media. Select design highlights include Lady Day (Baltimore Center Stage); Tiny Father (Barrington Stage/Chautauqua); Avaaz (South Coast Rep); Singularity Play (HarvardTDM); Black Odyssey (Classic Stage); Chicken & Biscuits (Asolo Rep); Espejos:Clean (Hartford Stage/Syracuse Stage); Which Way To The Stage (Signature DC); the ripple, the wave...(Berkeley Rep/Goodman); Blues Clues & You! (Round Room Live); Queen (Long Wharf Theater/A.R.T.NY); Fires in the Mirror (Baltimore Center Stage/Long Wharf Theatre). This design was led by Daniela Hart (uptownworksnyc.com), Bailey Trierweiler (btsounddesign.com) and Noel Nichols (noelnicholsdesign.com). Daniela, Noel & Bailey received their MFAs in Sound Design from Yale School of Drama.

Munich Medea: Happy Family surrounds two childhood friends, Caroline and Alice, who reestablish contact after more than 20 years. As they begin to unravel shared memories, they discover the part that Caroline’s father, a renowned theatre actor, played in both their lives and how it affects them to this very day. Corinne Jaber's new play captures the wild vulnerability of youth and the heavy armature of adulthood in unsparing, theatrical detail, led by award-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Oratorio for Living Things, Dance Nation, [PORTO], A Beautiful Day in November… (both at WP) and at PlayCo Caught and Intractable Woman.).

Reviews for MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY

"Crystalline: clear, sharp, and liable to make you bleed." - Vulture

"Skillfully drawn characters break the fourth wall to persuade, question, and even indict the audience in the story." -Theatermania

MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY addresses, but does not depict, sexual assault. We recommend this piece for people ages fourteen and up. Please email us at tickets@wptheater.org if you would like more information or details on content.

Community Partners

The Hearth
Noor Theatre
SheNYC Arts

Related Media

Written by

Corinne Jaber

Directed by

Lee Sunday Evans

Featuring

Crystal Finn Heather Raffo Kurt Rhoads

Set Design

Kristen Robinson

Lighting Design

Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew

Costume Design

Dina El-Aziz

Sound Design

UptownWorks/Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols, Bailey Trierweiler

Production Stage Manager

Jaimie Van Dyke

Production Manager

Gary Levinson

House Manager

Michael Valladares

Casting

Kelly Gillespie, CSA

Artwork Design

Omnivore Inc

Press Representation

Blake Zidell & Associates

Venue

WP Theater 2162 Broadway, 4th Floor New York, NY, 10024

A Co-Production with

WP Theater