Ironbound & Sanctuary City: Two Plays

by Martyna Majok

Overview

Obie Award for Playwriting: Sanctuary City

Two compelling, uncompromising plays about the immigrant experience by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Cost of Living. With humor, grace, and an unsentimental eye, Martyna Majok explores the challenges immigrants face as they strive to carve out a place in a harsh and often indifferent America.

In Ironbound, Darja, a Polish immigrant, negotiates the terms for her future at a rundown bus stop in New Jersey. Over the course of 20 years and three relationships, Darja’s initial search for love becomes eclipsed by her desire for security and survival.

In Sanctuary City, two undocumented teenagers seek refuge in each other and make a pact to stake their claim in America together. But as their experiences and opportunities diverge, their bonds begin to fray, and each must make a difficult choice about what they are willing to sacrifice for their dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559369763
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	03/05/2024
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	420,131
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland, and raised in Jersey and Chi­cago. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cost of Living, which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. She is the recipient of many awards including the Arthur Miller Foundation Legacy Award, a Steinberg, an Obie, a Lucille Lor­tel, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a Cham­pions of Change Award from New York City’s Mayoral Office, the Lanford Wilson Award, a Lilly Award, and the Hodder Fel­lowship from Princeton University. Martyna wrote the libretto for Gatsby, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett. She has developed TV projects for HBO, and is writing feature films for Plan B/Pastel/MGM and Participant. lan B/Pastel/MGM and Participant.

Editorial Reviews

If Martyna Majok’s talent weren’t so impressive and her subject so imper­ative, it would be easy to leave her in peace with her Pulitzer. But the Amer­ican theater needs her sensibility right now . . . Majok has made it her mission to bring to the stage those characters who historically have played a subor­dinate role in the theater—the name­less, faceless workers who are hanging on by a thread.” —Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

 “A knockout . . . You seldom see plays that are both harsh and wonderful, but that is the balance that Majok strikes in Ironbound.” —Nelson Pressley, Washington Post

 “A quietly gripping play . . . Majok’s perceptive drama, Ironbound, with its bone-dry humor and vivid characters, illustrates how vulnerable people like Darja are hostages to the vagaries of chance.” —Charles Isherwood, New York Times

 “In Sanctuary City, America is in the background, and it threatens to take control of the story at any moment. But we understand these two charac­ters because, at Majok’s urging, we’ve taken their timbres into our minds and put them in their rightful places: the unique person over and above the faceless crowd.” —Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker

From the Publisher

Hypnotic and heartbreaking…Majok has given us something that transcends politics as only the best and most humane art can.” 

New York Stage Review on Sanctuary City

[Majok] meticulously exposes the way that relationships contract and expand over the years… As her two main characters grow around each other like ivy, the poetry of patterned connection emerges most profoundly through memory’s own twisted vines.” 

Slant on Sanctuary City

I have rarely seen a play that so effectively embodies the way external forces — in this case, immigration policies in the United States — distort the inner lives of actual humans. What love is, and can ever mean, is lost in the muddle between the heart and the law.” 

The New York Times on Sanctuary City

You seldom see plays that are both harsh and wonderful, but that is the balance that Polish-born playwright Martyna Majok strikes…she writes with such energy and charisma that the play’s four characters feel vivid and real…The play never sugarcoats, yet it steers clear of bleakness because Majok’s language is so entertainingly alive.”

The Washington Post on Ironbound

"A knockout! It strikes at the heart of the immigrant experience."

The New York Times on queens

[A] topical and insightful drama…a tough, moving portrait of a woman stuck in place.”

Time Out New York on Ironbound

"Ms. Majok's perceptive drama, with its bone-dry humor and vivid characters, illustrates how vulnerable people like Darja are, hostages to the vagaries of chance, unless they can manage to climb out of poverty."

The New York Times on Ironbound

A knockout! It strikes at the heart of the immigrant experience.

The New York Times on Queens