Lee Sunday Evans loves new plays. She鈥檚 also built a career collaborating with writers who aren鈥檛 afraid to experiment with form. 鈥淚鈥檓 interested in compelling, incredible stories being told onstage in surprising ways,鈥� says the Obie-winning director. 鈥淚 tend to gravitate toward scripts that play with that in some way.鈥� Her latest project, the world premiere of Sunday by Tony-winning playwright Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) at Off-Broadway鈥檚 Atlantic Theater Company, is a play about a group of 20something New York City friends who gather for a book club meeting.
Anxious to prove their intellectual worth, their emotional truths come pouring out. 鈥淏eing where they are in their lives, there鈥檚 a restless searching, a heat, going on in this group of people,鈥� explains Evans. 鈥淚n this lovely, simple evening that they鈥檙e having, there鈥檚 also an undercurrent of something else going on. Jack makes room for that in the script in a really exciting way.鈥�
Evans was drawn to the physicality of storytelling in Sunday. 鈥淛ack has put these amazing proposals into the script: for internal movements and dance breaks,鈥� says the director and choreographer. As a former dancer, this is where she thrives. 鈥淚 have a real passion for the emotionality you can connect to in people鈥檚 bodies,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he kind of athleticism and dynamism of actors鈥� bodies onstage can be so powerful to experience from the audience. I鈥檓 interested in physical language having the widest range of expression onstage and the way that can create an intoxicating magnetism.鈥�
Sunday, which plays September 4鈥揙ctober 13, is a return Off-Broadway for Thorne, who has penned the scripts to recent Broadway blockbusters like King Kong and Cursed Child. 鈥淗e has a sharpness of insight about relationships that I think is exciting for people to see in a different context,鈥� says Evans. Her collaboration with the playwright is an exciting new one; the two worked together for the first time during a workshop of Sunday in London.
Just as she is drawn to experimental storytelling, Evans has found her own developmental process to be experimental and exploratory in nature. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something about the 鈥榥ot understanding鈥� in the early stages of a play that I think is really important,鈥� says the director. 鈥淚t leads me to create productions that I didn鈥檛 necessarily imagine when I first read the play.鈥�
