It's 1949 in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood, and there's no better
place to hear or play jazz than Paradise Club. Blue (Emmy Award winner,
Grammy Award winner, and 2020 Tony Award nominee Blair Underwood), club
owner and trumpeter, can wail like no other, but as forces outside the
club conspire to irreparably change life inside and outside Paradise's
walls, he must decide whether to stay or sell. Beholden to his
girlfriend (Grammy Award winner Kristolyn Lloyd) and fellow bandmates
(André Holland and Keith Randolph Smith), Blue faces an uncertain future
as he reckons with his troubled past. When Silver (Simone Missick), a
smooth and mysterious newcomer from Louisiana, steps onto the scene,
everyone in Paradise must choose how to survive.
For over six decades, Williamstown Theatre Festival, recipient of the
Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and the Commonwealth Award
for Achievement, has brought emerging and professional theatre artists
together to create a thrilling summer festival of premiere work
alongside fresh, new productions of the Western canon, accompanying
cultural events including Community Works and Late-Night Cabarets, and
readings and workshops of new plays. Under Artistic Director Mandy
Greenfield, WTF launched the Andrew Martin-Weber New Play and Musical
Commissioning Program, through which theatre artists, including Jocelyn
Bioh, Nathan Alan Davis, Halley Feiffer, Justin Levine, Matthew Lopez,
Jiehae Park, Benjamin Scheuer, and many others, create new work
supported by a year-round play development program. WTF runs unmatched
training programs for new generations of theatre talent, and artists and
productions shaped at WTF fill theatres in New York, London, and around
the country each season.
Williamstown Theatre Festival's productions of The Bridges of Madison
County, The Elephant Man, Fool for Love, Living on Love, and The
Visit enjoyed critically acclaimed runs on Broadway, with The Elephant
Man and The Visit receiving Tony Award nominations for Best Revival
of a Play and Best Revival of a Musical, respectively. WTF's world
premiere productions of Cost of Living (winner of the 2018 Pulitzer
Prize for Drama), Actually, Paradise Blue, and Moscow Moscow Moscow
Moscow Moscow Moscow played acclaimed Off-Broadway runs. In the
abbreviated 2019-20 theatrical season, Williamstown Theatre Festival was
represented or scheduled to be represented on Broadway, Off-Broadway,
and regionally by The Sound Inside and Grand Horizons, both of which
received Tony Award nominations for Best Play, The Rose Tattoo, Seared,
Selling Kabul, Unknown Soldier, and Lempicka. Visit us at
www.wtfestival.org.
