Watch Jake Gyllenhaal in Sea Wall/A Life
We really have something special to look for in the New Year since Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal will perform in New York premiere Sea Wall/A Life.
The show will have a performance from 26 January until 24 March in the Public’s downtown space on Lafayette Street in New York City. Don’t miss the chance to watch this A-list actor perform on stage and buy your tickets now.
Tony nominee Tom Sturridge will join Jake Gyllenhaal in this play written by Tony and Olivier winner Simon Stephens and Broadway alum Nick Payne and directed by Carrie Cracknell. This play is basically a pair of two monologues, first performed by Sturridge, about love and the human need to know the unknowable. The second will be performed by Gyllenhaal and is about how we say goodbye to those we love the most.
These one-person plays offer their audience intimacy and urgency of an encounter with someone who needs to get something important off their chest. Sturridge has previously collaborated with Stephens on Heisenberg and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time but hasn’t performed on Broadway since his 2017’s 1984. Gyllenhaal also made a short break from performing after his 2017’s Sunday in the Park with George. This is Gyllenhaal’s third collaboration with Payne since they worked on Constellations and If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.
In A Life, Gyllenhaal plays a man struggling to reconcile his emotions surrounding the death of his father and the birth of his daughter. The piece started as a monologue that Payne performed at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2013, in the aftermath of his own father’s death. Gyllenhaal spent the next four years begging the playwright to let him perform it. By the time he decided to let him, Payne had become a father, and two worked together with Cracknell to bring A Life into its current form. Gyllenhaal was eager to perform something so personal and vulnerable.
“The nature of being alone onstage, as much as it might delight the 30 per cent narcissist that I am, terrifies the other percentage,” he says. “At its best, it’s not a performance. There are no masks, no protection.”
Gyllenhaal is most famous for his roles in blockbuster movies like Prisoners, Southpaw (see trailer above), Nightcrawler and Prince of Persia. We simply can’t wait to get to the theatre and immerse ourselves in a different type of performance.
Tickets for all dates can be found here.
Sea Wall/A Life
Show Date and Time: Friday, 1 February 2019, 8 pm
Show Location: Public Theatre-Newman Theater, New York City, New York
Show Duration: TBA
