An acclaimed play that had its Broadway opening in the fall of 2019 is making its West Coast premiere in Marin County in September, and it will mark the first in-person performances at Marin Theatre Company since the start of the pandemic.

The play is The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp, and the Broadway production starred Mary-Louise Parker and Will Hochman and ran from September 2019 to January 2020. The Marin Theatre Company production will be directed by company Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis, and will star Bay Area actor Denmo Ibrahim as Professor Bella Baird.

"The Sound Inside is a sublime play, a mesmerizing thriller that offers two actors amazingly complex characters," said Minadakis. "I am delighted to be working on this piece with Denmo Ibrahim who returns to our stage after creating the genre-breaking live and interactive digital experience, Brilliant Mind, and where she last performed the title character in Heather Raffo’s Noura."

Rapp, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his 2005 play Red Light Winter, is a master of foreboding and plays about desperate characters. The Sound Inside centers on a creative writing professor at Yale who is in her 50s and was just diagnosed with cancer, and the young student whose work she admires and whose story, real and fictional, becomes entwined in her own.

New York Times critic Jesse Green called it "a play about writing" and a "gripping mystery" that is "almost erotic in its withholding."

The play was nominated for six 2020 Tony Awards, including Best Play.

The Marin Theatre Company production opens September 14 with previews beginning September 9. It will run through October 3. Find tickets here.

Photo of actor Denmo Ibrahim, via her website. Photo by Clara Rice