Play Reading Club: Ironbound

Join our monthly play reading club! Each month, we gather to discuss a new, exciting or confounding play that has caught our attention. This month, we’re reading IRONBOUND by Martyna Majok

ABOUT THE PLAY

At a bus stop in a run-down New Jersey town, Darja, a Polish immigrant cleaning lady, is done talking about feelings; it’s time to talk money. Over the course of 20 years, and three relationships, Darja negotiates for her future with men who can offer her love or security, but never both. Award-winning playwright Martyna Majok’s IRONBOUND is a darkly funny, heartbreaking portrait of a woman for whom love is a luxury—and a liability—as she fights to survive in America.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland, and aged in Jersey and Chicago. Her plays have been performed and developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Women’s Project Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Kennedy Center, among others. Awards include the Helen Merrill Award for emerging playwrights, Helen Hayes Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play, an ANPF Women’s Invitational Prize, David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize, the New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellowship, the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, and the NNPN Smith Prize for Political Playwriting. Majok has received commissions from the Bush Theatre in London, La Jolla Playhouse, The Foundry Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Yorker website, and Geffen Playhouse. Majok has a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. She is currently a part of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School and the Core Writer Program at the Playwrights’ Center. Publications: Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, TCG, Playscripts, and Smith & Kraus. Majok is an alumna of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood and Women’s Project Theater’s Lab, and a member of The Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America East, and New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects. Majok was a 2012-2013 NNPN Playwright-in-Residence and the 2015-2016 Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellow at The Lark.