American Repertory Theater has named the company for the world premiere of 1972, a rock opera by Chadwick Stokes and Jessie Nelson that runs at Harvard’s Farkas Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Tuesday, October 27 to Sunday, November 22.
The piece is presented as a heightened concert. It opens officially on Sunday, November 1, with the press performance on Wednesday, November 4. Nelson, the Tony-nominated writer of the book for Waitress, directs; Stokes, the singer-songwriter behind the Boston bands Dispatch and State Radio, wrote the score and is also in the cast, as Depot.
It is set in the months before Roe v. Wade. Hannah, pregnant and running from an abusive relationship, falls in with three outcasts riding the rails across America and, after a narrow escape from an illegal abortion, finds her way to the Janes, the underground network of women who risked everything to give others a choice. The writers drew on the real stories of those women.
Gracie McGraw plays Hannah, with Jackera Davis as Louisa, Darren Buck as Eddie and Dr. Don, Khaila Wilcoxon as Harlan, Will Urmston as Pinto and JR King as Demi and Rick. Hannah Foxman (Jane and the Lawyer), Britney King and Darby Patterson play Janes, and Jhardon DiShon Milton and Tommy Ng complete the ensemble.
The design team is Amy Rubin (scenic), Nicole Jescinth Smith (costumes), Ben Stanton (lighting), Justin Stasiw (sound) and Krystal Balleza (hair, wigs and makeup), with choreography by Jill Johnson and music direction by Jacob Yates.
Several performances are followed by conversations included in the ticket price, among them a session with members of the Jane Collective after the Saturday, October 31 performance and one with Heather Booth, a founding member of the Collective, on Friday, November 13. The Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute is also mounting free pop-up exhibitions of early-1970s writing, posters and press at 3 James Street on select dates. Standard tickets start at $43, and A.R.T. reports very limited availability.
