WHAT'S HAPPENING

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PLAY TO SHINE LIGHT ON DISABILITY EXPERIENCE, CAREGIVING ON BROADWAY

Martyna Majok's acclaimed play that focuses on the experience of two different people with disabilities and their caregivers is heading to Broadway. The show Cost of Living will make its debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater this fall, the Manhattan Theater Club said.

Cost of Living, Martyna Majok's play that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, will be getting its Broadway premiere this fall, The announcement follows an acclaimed Off Broadway run of the play by MTC. The director Joe Bonney and stars Katy Sullivan and Gregg Mozgala will resume their roles for the Broadway staging at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

This insightful, intriguing work is about the forces that bring people together, the complexity of caring and being cared for, and the ways we all need each other in this world.

COST EFFECTIVE: Katy Sullivan and Gregg Mozgala will reprise their starring roles in Cost of Living when it debuts on Broadway this fall.

Cost of Living is an in-depth exploration of disability, caregiving, and privilege. Its synopsis reads: "What is the road that brought us here? Unemployed truck driver Eddie sits at a bar alone, recalling his final moments with wife, Ani, when a car accident turned the focus of their relationship from divorcing to caregiving. Overworked, under-qualified, and nearly homeless, Jess takes on another job to make ends meet – this time, as a personal caregiver for a wealthy and beautiful graduate student named John, who has cerebral palsy. The histories, influences, and challenges of four lives converge in the meeting of two strangers in a small, empty apartment in Bayonne, NJ."

Cost of Living premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016 and appeared Off Broadway the following year. The Pulitzer committee described Cost of Living as an "honest, original work

that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver."

"I was once employed as a personal caregiver for two men with disabilities," said playwright Majok, "and I suppose when I started writing, I had been wondering about care. About the nature of helping others and being helped. And I was thinking about need and survival – and not just in an abstract sense but in the real and the tangible. I tried to build a home for four people in Cost of Living where they could feel held by each other - and where I could be held. And hopefully, someone in an audience."

Majok, who has won several prestigious awards for her work, is known for giving the voiceless a voice in her plays, which include stories of people who are immigrants, women and disabled. "I grew up in a multicultural neighborhood where almost everyone was from somewhere else," she says. "And we rarely see conversations between immigrants from different places onstage."

"Cost of Living provides a piercing look at the obstacles faced by disabled people and, more importantly, the human condition in general" said Frank Scheck for the Hollywood Reporter. "The characters, dialogue and situations resonate with emotional truth about loneliness, financial desperation and the vulnerability of disabled people forced to rely on others to assist them with basic human needs."

For more information on the play and the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, visit manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2022-23-season/cost-of-living