Presents

By Amy Herzog
Directed by Georgette Verdin

Opening Night January 29, 2026

“Mary Jane” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals 
on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com 

MARY JANE was originally produced in New York by New York Theatre Workshop, 
Jim Nicola, Artistic Director, Jeremy Blocker, Managing Director, September 25, 2017. 

MARY JANE was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, 
James Bundy, Artistic Director, Victoria Nolan, Managing Director, and received its first public performance on April 28, 2017.

Production Sponsors

The State of Illinois | Byline Bank | CBOE | Crain Mailing Foundation Dr. Scholl Foundation | Full Circle Foundation | Hagerty Consulting
Henrietta Lange Burk Fund | Lundstrom Family Foundation
Grumman Butkus Associates | Mammel Family Foundation
UL Research Associates

I read Mary Jane by Amy Herzog in 2018 before the pandemic. The play is semi-autobiographical, and based on Herzog's daughter Frances, who was born with nemaline myopathy and died at age 11 in 2023.

Our eldest daughter and my son were trying to have children and the play shook me. Then the pandemic hit and the global fear and malaise made challenging artistry too difficult for audiences to take on. We looked for hope and uplift for our stages. 

But in 2024 I was in New York, and Rachel McAdams was appearing in the play on Broadway. I went to a packed matinee. I was taken by how different it played as opposed to reading it, how resilient and inspiring Mary Jane was, and how much humor was in it. I think the context of the time influenced my opinion. Mary Jane’s strength in the face of her challenges felt like a call to arms against our toughest times. It celebrated the human spirit and resilience. Our empathy is raised, our spirits are strengthened and our gratitude is awakened. I also admire Amy Herzog’s bravery in putting elements of her own life on the stage. 

It reminded me that our theatrical choices are influenced by the moments we’re in. First Lady of Television could not have been more timely. Gaslight was also resonant. I think we’re ready for Mary Jane. She reminds us we’re capable of untold strength. 

-BJ Jones

I’m so grateful you’re here.

Mary Jane is a masterclass in quiet heroism. Directing it has been a profound reminder of theatre’s power to illuminate ordinary lives with extraordinary tenderness. 

Amy Herzog captures the truth and strangeness of Mary Jane’s life with astonishing honesty.

In this world, the surreal presses right against the mundane. Humor sits beside fear. Bureaucracy and exhaustion coexist with compassion and community. Grace shows up in fluorescent hallways. Humanity insists on itself.

Amy never sentimentalizes Mary Jane’s journey, and she never oversimplifies it—she allows the complexity of her life to breathe. This is a story that asks for care, for humor, and for courage—not just from the characters, but from us as storytellers, and from you as audience members.

My hope is that we’ve built a world that feels deeply recognizable to those who have lived some version of this, and illuminating to those who haven’t.

For my boys—Shire Jude and Sage Jasper

Georgette Verdin

 The following is an excerpt from a 2020 Yale Review interview with Amy Herzog conducted by Meghan O'Rourke. 

MO: Amy, you’ve written a very beautiful play, Mary Jane, about a mother dealing with an ill child. Can you talk about the process of writing that play? Has your experience of motherhood changed your writing in any way? 

AH: The way I finally found my way into that play, after a few years of writer’s block...was that I started to think that the story I wanted to tell about having a sick child was a story of strangeness. That gave me a way around the sentimental traps of the genre, so I knew for sure I wasn’t writing Lorenzo’s Oil. 

But I knew it would be an uphill battle getting an audience to experience the play the way I intended it, rather than as weepy because of the subject...I intended the experience to be more contemplative than cathartically emotional...I was afraid she [Mary Jane] would seem a little saintly. I firmly believe in representing motherhood in its less picturesque aspects. 

MO: Why is that important? 

AH: Many stories out there about special needs parenting have this lie at the core, something like, “You have power. You can fight for your kid, and in some meaningful way, you’ll prevail.” But for me, this is finally a story of failure. It’s a story of a mother who’s doing everything, and she can’t save this child. All she can do is be there through it and pay attention. It’s a different version of the not picturesque thing because on the level of plot, there’s no achievement. 

MO: It became an aesthetic problem when I started writing about chronic illness, because if you’re trying to write about something ongoing, what shape can you make of it without falsifying or sentimentalizing it? How do you think about this story as a kind of artistic problem, and a life problem? 

AH: When I was at MacDowell, I also met Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who became a good friend. And she said this thing that stayed with me, which was that she feels that women have many different lives. She was talking specifically about Dorothy Day, whose memoir I read at her suggestion; it also influenced Mary Jane. We know Dorothy Day as the nun who founded Catholic Workers, but before that, she was a Marxist and a Bohemian journalist and a nurse and a housewife and mother in Staten Island, and that’s an incomplete list. 

Mary Jane has a cast of all women, and each actor (other than the lead) plays two different roles. So the play offers a formal answer to the question of what happens to Mary Jane at the end: she’s going to go be someone else now. Like this child may not live, and then she won’t be the mother of a sick child anymore; she will be someone else. And, you know, that doesn’t mean that it’s a happy ending. 

Assistant Sound Designer - Hannah Kwak
Assistant Dramaturg - Lily DeKoven Weidenbach
Assistant Lighting Design - Andrei Borges

*Member of Actors' Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers

Video and/or audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited.

UNDERSTUDIES
Julia Rowley - Mary Jane
Barbara Figgins - Ruthie/Tenkei
Victoria Angelina Cruz - Sherry/Dr. Toros
Danielle Zuckerman - Brianne/Chaya
Elexis Selmon - Amelia/Kat

This performance will be performed without intermission.

​

 The scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designers in LORT Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829 of the IATSE. This Theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Amy Peter - The Theatre School at DePaul
Adam Pike - Victori Medical Rental
Matt Isler
Karina Danner-Koptik, MSN, APRN-CNS, CPON
Cathy McCann & Margaret Storey

BJ Jones
Artistic Director

Timothy J. Evans
Executive Director