{"id":229017,"date":"2026-05-12T20:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/229017\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:34:20","slug":"anna-d-shapiro-will-direct-are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-off-broadway-featuring-rotating-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/229017\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna D. Shapiro Will Direct Are You Now or Have You Ever Been Off-Broadway, Featuring Rotating Cast"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new production of Eric Bentley<\/a>\u2019s 1972 play,\u00a0Are You Now or Have You Ever Been,\u00a0will play\u00a0a limited 15-week engagement at New York City Center Stage I beginning June 2.<\/p>\n

A rotating all-star cast to be announced will be part of the\u00a0docudrama that\u00a0drops audiences\u00a0into the tense world of\u00a0the 1940s House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings.\u00a0Using only the original transcripts, the play features the words of Arthur Miller<\/a>, Jerome Robbins<\/a>, Paul Robeson<\/a>,\u00a0Elia Kazan<\/a>, Lillian Hellman<\/a>, Abe Burrows<\/a>, and Lionel Stander<\/a> as they faced impossible choices: defend their integrity,\u00a0protect their careers, or betray their peers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony winner\u00a0Anna D. Shapiro<\/a> (Eureka Day<\/a>, The Minutes<\/a>, August: Osage\u00a0County) will direct.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first encountered\u00a0Are You Now or Have You Ever Been\u00a0when I directed it at my small theatre in Chicago during\u00a0college,\u201d said Shapiro in a statement. \u201cIt was such a great experience then\u2014filled with intensity and terror\u2014and I\u2019m so ready to wrestle\u00a0with it again, now, a time of more threat to our freedoms than I\u2019ve experienced in my lifetime. With this incredible rotating\u00a0company, it\u2019s sure to be a thrilling\u2014and scary\u2014experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upcoming production will also have scenic design by\u00a0Andrew Boyce<\/a>, costume design by\u00a0Johanna Pan<\/a>, lighting design by\u00a0Donald\u00a0Holder, sound design by\u00a0Milbo Music, and projections design by\u00a0Brittany Bland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been played a 32-performance run on Broadway at the Century Theatre in February and March 1979 directed by John\u00a0Bettenbender.<\/p>\n

Bentley was honored\u00a0with a 2006\u00a0Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also\u00a0wrote extensively on drama and performance with works including the\u00a01946 book The Playwright as Thinker, which helped define modern theatre criticism.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Richards<\/a>, Rebecca Gold<\/a>, and Ira Pittelman<\/a> are producing.<\/p>\n

For ticket information, visit\u00a0AreYouNowPlay.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new production of Eric Bentley\u2019s 1972 play,\u00a0Are You Now or Have You Ever Been,\u00a0will play\u00a0a limited 15-week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-229017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}