About
the Play:
Admissions is a full-length drama by Joshua Harmon.
Sherri is Head of Admissions at an exclusive college prep school, a
liberal who is fighting to diversify the student intake. When her son
is deferred from his university of choice, and his best friend –
who 'ticks more boxes' – is accepted, her personal ambition
collides with her progressive values and she is forced to make a
choice between her beliefs and what's best
for her son. Piercing and provocative, Admissions
dares to question whether the race to the top is ever simply black
and white.
Admissions explodes the
ideals and contradictions of liberal white America. Meet Bill and
Sherri Mason, the headmaster and head of admissions respectively of
Hillcrest, a second-tier New Hampshire boarding school. When this
very liberal, very progressive couple arrived 15 years ago, the
student population at Hillcrest was 94 percent white. Deeply
committed to diversity, Sherri has boosted the number of students of
colour
from six to 18 percent, a figure she still considers embarrassingly
low. However, Bill and Sherri's dedication to diversity is put to the
test when their son Charlie, an outstanding Hillcrest student who has
dreamed of attending Yale since he was a child, learns his
application has been deferred. Complicating matters, Charlie's
classmate and best friend Perry, whose father is African-American,
has been admitted to Yale even though his academic and
extracurricular achievements are nowhere near Charlie's. Convinced
that Yale based its decisions on race, Charlie claims to be a victim
of reverse discrimination. And as their son lashes out, Sherri and
Bill are forced to examine just how far their commitment to diversity
goes. Are they true disciples? Or total hypocrites. What ensues is a
no-holds-barred look at privilege, power, and the perils of
hypocrisy.
Admissions premiered in 2018 at
the Lincoln Center in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
off-Broadway in New York City, where
it was awarded the 2018 Outer Critics Circle Award
for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play, and the 2018 Drama Desk Award
for Outstanding Play. Since
then it has become one of the most frequently produced plays in the
world, enjoying regional premieres at professional theatres across
the US, transferred to Trafalgar Studios in
London's
West End, and
has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.
Cast: 3 female, 2 male
What people say:
"Astonishing and daring. An
extraordinarily useful and excruciating satire – of the left, by
the left, for the left – for today." — The New
York Times
"The
nuanced and competing truths in this 90-minute play are like a first
act that dares its spectators to create a second out of post-show
conversations." — Time Out New York
"A smart, hilarious and
provocative drama." — The Hollywood Reporter
"The smartest, bravest play
the West End has seen in ages." — Spectator
(London)
"Shockingly
insightful and outrageously hilarious satire about class, race and
the increasingly unbridgeable American cultural divide."
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Bold.
Brilliant." — The Daily Telegraph
(London)
"A blistering, disturbingly
apt critique of how white supremacist ideas blight the white liberal
elite." — Chicago Reader
"Masterful.
Expertly crafted. An absorbing drama and a prod to self-examination."
— Miami Herald
About the Playwright:
Joshua Harmon is an American poet, novelist, short story
writer, and essayist. A graduate of Juilliard, his work has been
produced and developed by Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), Williamstown
Theatre Festival, Hangar Theatre, Ars Nova, and Actor's Express,
where he was the 2010-2011 National New Play Network
Playwright-in-Residence. He has received fellowships from MacDowell,
Atlantic Center for the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and the Eudora
Welty Foundation.