DANA DELANY, DOT-MARIE JONES AND
THOMAS MURPHY MOLONY CAST IN
HIGHWAY PATROL
A GROUND-BREAKING NEW THRILLER CREATED FROM HUNDREDS OF DELANY’S TWEETS AND DIRECT MESSAGES
**CO-CREATED WITH AWARD-WINNING ARTISTS JEN SILVERMAN, DANE LAFFREY AND DIRECTOR MIKE DONAHUE, THE WORLD-PREMIERE PRODUCTION APPEARS
AT THE GOODMAN JANUARY 20 – FEBRUARY 18, 2024**
***TICKETS ON SALE TODAY!***
Part love story part ghost story—all true story. Emmy Award-winning actor Dana Delany (China Beach, Desperate Housewives) stars in her new thriller at Goodman Theatre this winter, appearing alongside three-time Emmy Award nominee Dot-Marie Jones (Glee’s Coach Beiste) and emerging Chicago actor Thomas Murphy Molony (A Christmas Story, The Musical at Marriott Theatre and Fun Home at Paramount) in the world-premiere production. Using Delany’s digital archives of hundreds of tweets and direct messages, co-creator Jen Silverman arranges and curates the text of the play from exchanges over Twitter—in collaboration with co-creators Dane Laffrey and Mike Donahue, who also directs. Casting is by Lauren Port, CSA. Highway Patrol appears in the 856-seat Albert Theatre January 20 – February 18, 2024. Tickets ($25 – 90; subject to change) are available at GoodmanTheatre.org/Highway or by phone at 312.443.3800.
“We live in an age where a whole lot of people have more meaningful relationships online than they do ‘IRL’. Dana’s brave, extraordinary new piece, which arrives 10 years after her remarkable lived experience, delves into the expansiveness of love, and the frailty that results in our dogged desire to hope for it,” said Goodman Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. “I’m thrilled to welcome her, along with Dot-Marie Jones and Thomas Murphy Molony, to the Goodman stage for this world-premiere production from a handful of deeply talented co-creators.”
Delany met artists Jen Silverman, Mike Donahue and Dane Laffrey while appearing in Silverman’s Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties at MCC Theater. For the past four years, they have collectively created Highway Patrol.
“Highway Patrol is a true story about an incident in my life that happened while I was appearing in Body of Proof for ABC, who had asked me to go on Twitter to support the show. Though I initially had no interest in Twitter, it was a time when this platform was the new frontier—and I ended up loving it, meeting people I never met, forming my own little niche,” said Dana Delany. “In developing this story for the stage with Jen, Mike and Dane, I think a lot of people will relate to the play in this moment, when so many of us have online relationships and use social media every day. It’s a chance to look at them in a deeper, communal way.”
TIMESTAMP: October, 2012: “@DanaDelany, Are you married? If not, I’d marry you.” When Cam, a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation captures actress Dana Delany’s attention on Twitter, she’s quickly swept into an intense, around-the-clock online friendship. But when Cam starts receiving messages from beyond, Dana is thrust into a world where unexpected revelations raise the question of how far we go to love and be loved.
ABOUT THE CAST AND CREATORS
Dana Delany (Dana) made her mark as Army nurse Colleen McMurphy on ABC-TV’s critically acclaimed series China Beach, for which she received two Emmy Awards and four nominations for Best Dramatic Actress. Over the course of her career, Delany has taken on a number of high-profile television roles, from playing a brilliant medical examiner in ABC’s Body of Proof to starring as Katherine Mayfair on ABC’s Desperate Housewives. She co-starred with Ron Perlman in the Amazon Studios drama Hand of God, played Edith Roosevelt to Aidan Quinn’s TR in The American Guest on HBO and is currently costarring with Sylvester Stallone in the new hit series, Tulsa King on Paramount +. She has also been the voice of Lois Lane on Superman:TAS, The Batman and Justice League. On film she was the voice of Andrea Beaumont in the cult favorite Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and appeared in several features including Light Sleeper, Housesitter, Tombstone and Fly Away Home to name a few. Following her graduation from Wesleyan University, Delany went to New York where she soon debuted on Broadway in Hugh Leonard’s A Life. Critical acclaim in a number of off-Broadway productions including Nicholas Kazan’s Blood Moon led to her arrival in Los Angeles for the west coast production of the controversial drama. Additional theater credits include Translations (Broadway), Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Globe Theatre and the Pulitzer prize-winning play Dinner With Friends, alternating roles in NY, LA and Boston. Delany also starred in the premiere of The Parisian Woman at South Coast Repertory, The Night of the Iguana at A.R.T. and most recently, the premiere of Good Night Nobody at the McCarter Theater.
Dot-Marie Jones (Andi) has received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations (2011, 2012, 2013) for her role as football coach ‘Shannon Beiste’ on FOX’s megahit television show Glee. In its third season, the show received a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. With an expansive list of diverse film and television credits, Jones is known for her poignant roles including Universal's Bros and Peacock's Killing It.
Thomas Murphy Molony, he/him (Cam) is honored to make his Goodman Theatre debut. Chicago credits include A Christmas Story! (Marriott Theatre) and Fun Home (Paramount Theatre). Television credits include American Rust (Showtime).
Jen Silverman, they/them (Creator and Text Arrangement and Curation) is a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. Plays include Spain (Second Stage Theater); The Moors (Yale Rep, Playwrights Realm); Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties (Woolly Mammoth, MCC Theater, Southwark Playhouse London); The Roommate (Humana Festival, Williamstown, Steppenwolf, etc); Witch (Writer’s Theatre, Geffen, Huntington) and Highway Patrol (Goodman). Books include the debut novel We Play Ourselves (named one of the best books of the year by Buzzfeed; a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), story collection The Island Dwellers (finalist for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize), and poetry chapbook Bath (selected by Traci Brimhall for Driftwood Press). Silverman is a three-time MacDowell Fellow, a member of New Dramatists and a Scholar of Note at the American Library in Paris. They wrote The Miranda Obsession as a narrative podcast for Audible, starring Rachel Brosnahan. They also write for television and film, including Tales of the City (Netflix) and Tokyo Vice (HBO/Max). Honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. Silverman's new novel There’s Going to be Trouble is upcoming from Random House in April 2024.
Mike Donahue (Creator and Director)’s OSCAR® qualifying debut short film, Troy, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and has gone on to screen at another 70 festivals internationally, including the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It has won numerous awards, including the Jury Award for Best Comedy at Aspen Shortfest 2023, the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short at Outfest 2022 and the Vimeo 'Unofficial Award' for Best US Narrative Short at Sundance. Troy is featured online in The New Yorker’s Screening Room. Donahue and writer Jen Silverman are currently working on their first feature, with Pacific Electric producing. For the past decade, Mike has worked as a theater director, primarily in New York and Los Angeles. Select credits include: the LA premiere of Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (Geffen Playhouse); Little Shop of Horrors with MJ Rodriguez, George Salazar and Amber Riley (Pasadena Playhouse); and the World Premieres of Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride (MCC, The Geffen, Denver Center), Silverman’s Collective Rage (MCC, Woolly Mammoth), and Ana Nogueira’s Which Way To The Stage (MCC).
Dane Laffrey (Creator) is a designer and creative based in New York. On Broadway, his credits include last season’s Parade (2023 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical) and A Christmas Carol, which he co-conceived with Michael Arden as well as designing set and costumes. Other Broadway credits include the 2018 Tony-winning revival of Once on this Island, Deaf West’s Spring Awakening and Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love. Dane also designs the set for Disney’s Hercules (The Public, Paper Mill and upcoming in Hamburg). Laffrey’s work with Jen Silverman and Mike Donahue includes Collective Rage…, Wink, The Moors, The Roommate and Troy, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and screened at Sundance 2023 as well as 70 other festivals. Laffrey won a 2017 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Set and Costume design and has been nominated for 2 Tony Awards, 2 Drama Desk Awards, 9 American Theatre Wing Henry Hewes Design Awards, 4 Ovation Awards (LA) and a Sydney Theatre Award (Australia), as well as numerous regional accolades. danelaffrey.com
ABOUT GOODMAN THEATRE
Chicago’s theater since 1925, Goodman Theatre is a not-for-profit arts and community organization in the heart of the Loop, distinguished by the excellence and scope of its artistic programming and community engagement. Led by Artistic Director Susan V. Booth and Executive Director/CEO Roche Schulfer, the theater’s artistic priorities include new play development (more than 150 world or American premieres), large-scale musical theater works and reimagined classics. Artists and productions have earner two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards and nearly 200 Joseph Jefferson Awards, among other accolades. The Goodman is the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson’s “American Century Cycle.” Its longtime annual holiday tradition A Christmas Carol, now in its fifth decade, has created a new generation of theatergoers in Chicago. The Goodman also frequently serves as a production and program partner with national and international companies and Chicago’s Off-Loop theaters.
Using the tools of theatrical practice, the Goodman’s Education and Engagement programs aim to develop generations of citizens who understand and empathize with cultures and stories of diverse voices. The Goodman’s Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement is the home of these programs, which are offered for Chicago youth—85% of whom come from underserved communities—schools and life-long learners.
Goodman Theatre was built on the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations. We recognize that many other Nations consider the area we now call Chicago as their traditional homeland—including the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, Kickapoo and Mascouten—and remains home to many Native peoples today. While we believe that our city’s vast diversity should be reflected on the stages of its largest theater, we acknowledge that our efforts have largely overlooked the voices of our Native peoples. This omission has added to the isolation, erasure and harm that Indigenous communities have faced for hundreds of years. We have begun a more deliberate journey towards celebrating Native American stories and welcoming Indigenous communities.
The Goodman was founded by William O. Goodman and his family in honor of their son Kenneth, an important figure in Chicago’s cultural renaissance in the early 1900s. The Goodman family’s legacy lives on through the continued work and dedication of Kenneth’s family, including Albert Ivar Goodman, who with his late mother, Edith-Marie Appleton, contributed the necessary funds for the creation of the new Goodman center in 2000.
Julie Danis is Chair of Goodman Theatre’s Board of Trustees, Lorrayne Weiss is Women’s Board President and Kelli Garcia is President of the Scenemakers Board for young professionals.
