Comedy-Drama, Full-length

Mark and Jason were keeping things casual until Jason got pregnant. But however unplanned the pregnancy was, nothing could be less expected than the chain of events it would set in motion. Robert O’Hara’s audacious, hilarious allegory envisions an uncannily familiar future – one long after women have gone extinct from centuries of mistreatment – where man’s capacity to eff everything up soars to new heights.

Casting:

Character List Actor 1. (20-40’s) JASON Actor 2. (20-40’s) MARK Actor 3. (20-40’s) OBGYN, PRISON OBGYN, CO-HOST BOB, FEMINIST 1 Actor 4. (20-40’s) DETECTIVE, CO-HOST BOB, CIVIL WRITER, FEMINIST 2 Actor 5. (50-60’s) WARDEN, MARK’S FATHER, FEMINIST Actor 6. (50-60’s) NOT MARK’S FATHER, JASON’S FATHER, FEMINIST

Author's note on casting: "Although the gender of the characters is defined as Male, I would like to encourage the Casting of Actors of any and all gender identities and those who reject the binary."

Production Notes: Mankind had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizon, (Adam Greenfield, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director; Carol Fishman, General Manager) in New York, December 2017 on the Mainstage Theatre. The production stage manager was Erin Gioia Albrecht. Featuring: André De Shields, Bobby Moreno, Jason Anson Mount, Mark Stephen Schnetzer, Ariel Shafir, and David Ryan Smith. Mankind is a Playwrights Horizons Commission with the support of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Author

Robert O'Hara

ROBERT O’HARA has received the NAACP Best Play and Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, two Obies and the Herb Alpert Award. Broadway: Slave Play (Tony Nomination). Off Broadway: He directed the world premieres of Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria’s In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney’s The Brother/ Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy, Kirsten Childs’ Bella: An American Tall Tale, Baum and Cheri’s Gun and Powder at Signature Theater, Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun at Williamstown Theater Festival, Aziza Barnes’ BLKS at MCC, Inda Craig-Galvan’s Black Superhero Magic Mama at The Geffen Theater, the Universes’ Uni/Son, inspired by the poetry of August Wilson at OSF and Shakespeare’s Macbeth at Denver Center for the Performing Arts, as well as his own plays, Mankind, Bootycandy and Insurrection: Holding History. His plays Zombie: The American and Barbecue world premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theater...[FULL BIO]