Synopsis
Frank Theatre presents Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Martyna Majok’s SANCTUARY CITY, a story that brings light to the sacrifices made by DREAMers who struggle to establish a place for themselves in America, the only country they have ever known as home.
Two teenagers who were brought to America as children become one another’s sanctuaries from the harsh circumstances of post-911 Newark, NJ. When G becomes naturalized, she and B hatch a plan to marry so that he may legally remain in the country and pursue the future he imagines for his life. But as time hurtles on and complications mount, the young friends find that this promise challenges and fractures the closest relationship either has ever had.
What are they willing to risk for a future together in the only country they’ve known? They navigate the complexities of adolescence through their tender, joyful, and spirited connection — all while living the realities of being undocumented immigrants. Poignant, timely, and highly theatrical, SANCTUARY CITY illuminates the triumphs, challenges, and deep personal resilience of young DREAMers as they fight to establish a place for themselves and each other, and for the right to fully join the world in which they live.
Masks will be required on Friday, Feb. 7 and Sunday, Feb. 16.
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and raised in Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her Broadway debut play, Cost of Living, which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages. Most recently, she wrote the libretto for Gatsby, a new musical with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett, which will premiere this spring at A.R.T. Martyna has developed TV projects for HBO and is writing feature films for Plan B/Pastel/MGM/Orion, MRC/T-Street, and Participant/Killer Films.
“The political is not separate from these characters’ lives in America—especially, in the case of this play, regarding the absence of DACA. And Sanctuary City invites an audience into that world, with these particular characters at that particular time, which I think more and more feels like the time we’re living in now. For some people, it may be a world they’re unfamiliar with—or are more familiar with from news articles—and for them I hope the play contributes a more intimate and personal picture to those headlines and articles, a picture of a life. For others, it will be shorthand, an experience they know in their bones, which I hope will do for them something like what seeing the work of other playwrights writing from similar worlds and experiences does for me: to make me feel more connected, less lonely, and more alive. A tall order perhaps but that’s always the hope: connecting to the world, feeling fuller in one’s life, seeing and being seen. I hope it’s a night of communing in the theatre—whether it’s your world or very much not. Because ultimately…it is your world.” – Martyna Majok
“In plays like “Ironbound,” “queens” and now “Sanctuary City,” …Majok writes about the plight of undocumented immigrants, with a glowering side-eye cast on the rest of us. Her unsparing, unsentimental vision of America… is like Albee’s of the country club set in “A Delicate Balance”: friendly to guests in theory, fiercely rejecting in fact.” —New York Times
“[Sanctuary City] is the kind of piece that Majok, a Pulitzer Prize winner for Cost of Living, does best, a work of majestic beauty that rips your heart out and shows it to you in its effort to tell the truth about experiences that the largely upper-middle-class audiences wouldn’t otherwise have.” — TheaterMania
“Sanctuary City spins its finest gold out of the imprecision generated by the juxtapositions that Majok creates, switching back and forth between uproariously awkward prom dances and tense, taut confrontations, as if flipping through the disparate channels of B and G’s shared past.” — Slant Magazine
“At a time of profound polarization on this delicate issue, Majok has given us something that transcends politics as only the best and most humane art can.” — New York Stage Review
Ticket cost: Tickets are $30 ($25, students and seniors); Pay What You Can, Saturday, Feb. 1