Desert Ensemble Theatre (DET) has received seven Broadway World Palm Springs Awards for its record-breaking 2022–23 season, BroadwayWorld.com announced on Monday.
DET, founded in 2011, was chosen by Broadway World readers as Favorite Local Theatre Company. Its world premiere production of Kafka’s Joke by Rich Rubin received five wins, and the world premiere of Do Not Remove Label by DET Artistic Director Jerome Elliott Moskowitz, was named Best New Play or Musical:
- Best Direction of a Play: Jerome Elliott Moskowitz, Kafka’s Joke
- Best Ensemble: Kafka’s Joke
- Best New Play or Musical: Do Not Remove Label
- Best Performer in a Play: John A Corr, Kafka’s Joke
- Best Play: Kafka’s Joke
- Best Supporting Performer in a Play: Larry Dyekman, Kafka’s Joke
- Favorite Local Theater: Desert Ensemble Theatre
Desert Ensemble Theatre, in residence at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, has established a reputation for introducing audiences to new or recent socially relevant plays that deserve wider viewing. Next up for the company is The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, January 26–28 and February 2–4, 2024. The play, a hit on Broadway in 2018, is based on a book by Jim Fingal and John D’Agata that detailed their personal experience preparing a magazine essay for publication in 2003.
Fingal is a fresh-out-of-Harvard fact checker for a prominent but sinking New York magazine. D’Agata is a talented writer with a transcendent essay about the suicide of a teenage boy—an essay that could save the magazine from collapse. When Jim is assigned to fact check D’Agata’s essay, the two come head to head in a comedic yet gripping battle over facts versus truth.
The Lifespan of a Fact premiered on Broadway at Studio 54 in 2018 in a production starring Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale. “…buoyantly literate…wholly resonant questions [are] wrestled with in this briskly entertaining play…you’ll find yourself happy to have your preconceptions disturbed and assumptions unsettled.” —Washington Post.
Performances are part of DET’s 13th Season “Off-Center at the Cultural Center.” Curtain times are 7:30 pm Friday, 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm Saturday, and 2:00 pm Sunday. Tickets are $37.50 and are available at www.desertensembletheatre.org. For more information, call (760) 565-2476.
