HIR
By Taylor Mac
Directed by Steven Kunis AB ’17
24 Feb 2024
6:30 PM - 10:30 PM
Park Theatre, 13 Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London. N4 3JP
HCUK cost £42.50
Harvard / Yale Theatre Event
Tickets: https://www.yale.org.uk/event-5567184
Emmy and Golden Globe award winner, and Academy Award nominee Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives, Transamerica) makes her UK stage debut as the radical matriarch Paige in this disarmingly funny and strikingly original comedy. Named ‘one of the most exciting theatre artists of our time’ by Time Out New York, Pulitzer and Tony-nominee, and MacArthur “Genius Grant" recipient Taylor Mac explodes the dysfunctional family drama and reinvents it for our times.
Isaac, the prodigal son, returns from a war zone to discover his family home has been transformed by a domestic revolution. The patriarchy has fallen, and Paige has been liberated from an oppressive marriage. Enlisting her newly-out transgender teenager as an ally, Paige is now on a crusade to tear apart the old regimes. But as they soon realise, annihilating the past doesn’t always free you from it.
In a revival by critically-acclaimed director Steven Kunis AB ‘17, Hir grapples with a family in flux, as they attempt to build a brave new world out of the pieces of the old.
‘A remarkable, audacious, uproarious black comedy with a daring combination of realism and madcap absurdity.’ New York Times on the 2015 production at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan
★★★★★ ‘Taylor Mac’s Hir is more than a comedy about gender. It proves the potential of theatre.’ The Guardian on the 2017 production at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney
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Steven Kunis ’17 is an American theater director based in London. While at Harvard College he was an active member of the the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, the Lowell House Opera, and the Harvard Early Music Society.
In 2021, Steven was nominated for Best Director of a Play at the Off West End Theatre Awards for the UK Premiere of Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men (Southwark Playhouse), which was named by The Independent as one of the UK's top ten theatre events of 2021 (★★★★ Evening Standard , ★★★★ The Times, ★★★★ The Guardian, ★★★★ Independent). In 2023, he collaborated with Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro on a revitalized adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La ronde, which opened at the Waterloo East Theatre to critical acclaim and sold out 96 performances over a ten week run. It will return to London for six additional weeks in 2024 due to popular demand.
Steven also directed the UK premiere of Tanya Barfield's Bright Half Life (King's Head Theatre), and the world premiere of Olivier Award nominee Shaun Mckenna's Rocky Road (Jermyn Street Theatre), the latter of which was listed by The Guardian among the top online theatre experiences of UK lockdown. Other directing credits include the UK Debut of The Refugee Orchestra Project at the London Symphony Orchestra's St Luke's, and the acclaimed three-month run of S. Asher Gelman’s Afterglow (Waterloo East), for which Steven was again nominated Best Director at the Off West End Awards.
Steven is an alumnus of the Young Vic Genesis Directors Programme, and in 2020 was named an Emerging Leader in the UK Cultural Sector by Arts Council England and the Clore Foundation. His work has been supported by the Arts Council, Sonia Friedman Productions, the Directors Charitable Fund, Cameron Mackintosh, and the Clore Duffield Foundation.