QUEENS
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Trip Cullman
Presented by Manhattan Theatre Club
NY City Center, Stage I
131 West 55th Street
Fall 2025
From Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok comes an epic drama about hunting for the American Dream, finding family, and facing the ghosts you left behind. In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive. Directed by Trip Cullman, Queens chronicles the strivers who sacrificed whole worlds for the chance at something remarkable.
“Queens means the world to me,” said Martyna Majok. “I first began writing it in 2016 and I’ve been searching for it ever since, in various workshops, productions, and late nights and early mornings. I worried I’d never write another original play again until I figured out this one; so haunted was I by these women, so driven to do right by them. It’s with tears that I now write that I finally feel like I’ve found their story. These characters are some of the dearest creations of my life. They’re like family. And I’m bursting with love and pride to share them with this city. I’m immensely indebted to the many generous artists and institutions that have supported and cared for this play over the years. And I’m especially grateful to MTC for encouraging me and producing this newly reimagined version of Queens. It moves me so very much that it’s finding a home in one of the theatres that first gave me one. As I read the headlines and witness this country, I hope this story can offer a place at the hearth of the impossibly complicated experience of immigrant women -- an experience that, for some, costs entire lives.”
Martyna Majok returns to MTC following the Broadway premiere of her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cost of Living, which was also Tony-nominated for Best Play in 2023. MTC also produced the New York premiere of Cost of Living at NY City Center in 2017. This newly imagined version of Queens was commissioned by The Hermitage Greenfield Prize (The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Andy Sandberg, Artistic Director) and co-commissioned by The Almeida Theatre, Rupert Goold, Artistic Director, Denise Wood, Executive Director, and Manhattan Theatre Club, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Barry Grove, Executive Producer through the Edgerton Foundation New Play commission program.
Trip Cullman directed MTC’s critically acclaimed world premiere of Joshua Harmon’s We Had a World this season, and previously directed the MTC productions of Choir Boy and Murder Ballad. His other major credits include the Broadway productions of Cult of Love, The Rose Tattoo, Lobby Hero, Six Degrees of Separation, and Significant Other, among others.