Downstate is a button-pushing play from provocateur Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park) that looks at the limits of compassion, the desire for retribution, and what happens when society decides some acts are unforgivable. In downstate Illinois, at a group home for registered sex offenders, four men are living with the realities of post-incarcerated life. When a man shows up to confront the piano teacher convicted of abusing him as a child, events begin to build to an explosive conclusion in this riveting play that The New York Times calls “a squirmy moral thrill-ride.”
Runtime: 2 hours and 30 minutes including a 15 minute intermission
Please note late seating will be determined at the discretion of House Management.
In the interest of welcoming people with a wide range of needs and life experiences, Studio offers a bit of information on what you will encounter in the play. Use this information as it is helpful to you.
Downstate is a provocative play set in a group home for men who have completed their sentences for sexual crimes against minors. It discusses incidents of sexual abuse in frank detail and describes or depicts physical violence and self-harm. Studio encourages audience members to consider their own needs and boundaries in deciding whether to experience this production.
This production includes simulated vaping.
For more information, check the full content warning below. The full content warning includes spoilers.
Downstate is generously underwritten by Susan and Dixon Butler & Sari Hornstein.
Bruce Norris is the author of Downstate, which received the 2024 Obie award for Playwriting. Other plays include Clybourne Park, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2011) and the Olivier Award, Evening Standard, and Tony Awards, as well as The Low Road, The Qualms, Domesticated, A Parallelogram, The Unmentionables, The Pain and The Itch, and Purple Heart.
David Muse is in his fifteenth season as Artistic Director of Studio Theatre, where he has directed Love, Love, Love; Fun Home; People, Places & Things; Cock (the in-person and digital productions); The Children; The Remains; The Effect; The Father; Constellations; Chimerica; Murder Ballad; Belleville; Tribes; The Real Thing; An Iliad; Dirt; Bachelorette; The Habit of Art; Venus in Fur; Circle Mirror Transformation; reasons to be pretty; Blackbird; Frozen; and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow. As Studio’s Artistic Director, he has produced 120 productions; established Studio R&D, its new work incubator; significantly increased artist compensation; created The Cabinet, an artist advisory board; and overseen Open Studio, a $20 million expansion and upgrade of Studio’s four-theatre complex. Previously, he was Associate Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, where he has directed nine productions, including Richard III, Henry V, Coriolanus, and King Charles III (a co-production with American Conservatory Theater and Seattle Rep). Other directing projects include Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune at Arena Stage, The Bluest Eye at Theatre Alliance, and Patrick Page's Swansong at the New York Summer Play Festival. He has helped to develop new work at numerous theatres, including New York Theatre Workshop, Geva Theatre Center, Arena Stage, New Dramatists, and The Kennedy Center. David has taught acting and directing at Georgetown, Yale, and the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy of Classical Acting. A nine-time Helen Hayes Award nominee for Outstanding Direction, he is a recipient of the DC Mayor’s Arts Award for Outstanding Emerging Artist and the National Theatre Conference Emerging Artist Award. David is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale School of Drama.
