DANA H. tells the harrowing true story of a woman held captive in a series of Florida motels for five months. Told in Dana's own words and reconstructed for the stage by her son, playwright Lucas Hnath, this groundbreaking work shatters the boundaries of the art form and challenges our understanding of good and evil.
Within the first 30 minutes of this 75-minute drama, you may find yourself asking, as I did, 'Well, why didn't she do this?' Or 'Why did she do that?' to escape earlier. Or, 'Is she making this up?' The power of Hnath's play - the playwright adapted the interviews conducted by Steve Cosson - is the dark alternate reality it creates. Soon after her abduction, Dana left the world we know, that she herself knew, to enter another. The old rules of behavior or ways of looking at strangers no longer applied. Dana escaped the Aryan Brotherhood, but has never been able to return to the real world or, at least, the world she knew before her long, horrifying ordeal.
What if I told you that the best acting on Broadway is coming from a woman who doesn't utter a single word? As you might have heard, in Lucas Hnath's Dana H.-now on Broadway after runs in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York at off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre-the dynamite Deirdre O'Connell lip-syncs every bit of dialogue. In another ingenious turn, that dialogue itself is cut together from multiple 2015 interviews between Hnath's mother, Dana Higginbotham, and Steve Cosson, artistic director of The Civilians.
2020 | Off-Broadway |
Vineyard Off-Broadway Premiere Off-Broadway |
2021 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2022 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Awards | Deirdre O'Connell |
2022 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Play | Dana H. |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Les Waters |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Deirdre O'Connell |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Sound Design of a Play | Mikhail Fiksel |
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