Brooklyn Goes to Williamstown: An interview with playwright Martyna Majok
On an unseasonably cold, blustery night in early May, I had the pleasure of attending, for the 12th time, the Juilliard Drama Division’s annual Playwrights Evening at the Pershing Square Signature Center on Theatre Row. The evening featured scenes from new work by Juilliard’s 2015-2016 playwright fellows. Having completed their yearlong fellowships with co-directors of the program Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman, the five playwrights were showcasing their works for an invited audience of family, friends, alumni, agents and one journalist.
The evening’s opening scene was from Martyna Majok’s play “Cost of Living,” which will have its world premiere from June 29 to July 10 at this summer’s Williamstown Theatre Festival. The production is to be directed by Obie Award-winner Jo Bonney and will star Rebecca Naomi Jones, Wendell Pierce, Katy Sullivan and Gregg Mozgala.
Majok’s other plays include “Mouse in a Jar,” “queens,” “Petty Harbour,” “reWilding,” “the friendship of her thighs,” “Buffalo, Maine” and “Ironbound,” which was first performed at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company two summers ago as part of the First Look Repertory of New Work; it had its New York City premiere at Rattlestick/Women’s Project in 2016. Her plays have also been presented at the Marin Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Red Tape Theatre and The Kennedy Center.