Playwrights Horizons will give Alexandra Tatarsky's Sad Boys in Harpy Land an Off-Broadway run at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater November 2-26, with an official opening November 13. The piece is the first in a series of innovative solo works performed by their creators.

Sad Boys in Harpy Land tells the story of a young Jewish woman who thinks she is a small German boy who thinks he is a tree. Iris McCloughan directs the show, and the creative team also includes composer and sound designer Shane Riley and set, costume, and props designer Andreea Mincic. 

Playwrights Horizons' series aims to engage playwrights whose methods sit outside conventional theatre's definition of playwriting. For Tatarsky, that includes deconstructing the idea of a female solo performance, warping expectations to create an unconventional "extended crisis of meaning." The season will also feature the New York premieres of Milo Cramer's School Pictures, directed by Morgan Green, and Ikechukwu Ufomadu's Amusements, directed by Nemuna Ceesay. 

"I got excited when [Playwrights Artistic Director] Adam Greenfield emphasized that a playwright can mean someone who's writing on their feet, who's working with language sculpturally in space, who's thinking about where the form can be stretched and expanded," Tatarsky says. "Doing this piece at Playwrights Horizons...helps foreground how we’re looking at a story from several hundred years ago, and still asking what it means to be a playwright: grappling with the state, grappling with privilege, grappling with access, grappling with shame, grappling with questions about theatre’s purpose.”

Sad Boys in Harpy Land was commissioned by Abrons Arts Center through the Jerome Foundation AIRspace Residency Program and developed through residencies at FringeArts, the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program at 1812 Productions, MAAS, and Poetry Electric at La Mama ETC.

Click here for more information or to purchase tickets.