Rostam From Vampire Weekend Is Scoring Michael Cera’s Broadway Debut

OAKLAND, CA - DECEMBER 6: Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend performs as part of Live 105's Not So Silent Night at Oracle Arena on December 6, 2013 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Rostam From Vampire Weekend Is Scoring Michael Cera’s Broadway Debut

OAKLAND, CA - DECEMBER 6: Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend performs as part of Live 105's Not So Silent Night at Oracle Arena on December 6, 2013 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Kenneth Lonergan’s 1996 play This Is Our Youth is coming to Broadway, and as The Hollywood Reporter reports, it’s bringing some other newcomers with it. For one, the play will mark the Broadway debuts of Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, and Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson. It’s also the first Broadway tilt for Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanlij, who’s somehow finding time to contribute original music to the play between touring with VW and hitting the studio with seemingly every indie rock luminary imaginable.

None of these connections are all that surprising given that the play is being produced by EGOT winner Scott Rudin, who’s had a producer credit on an astonishing number of indie-friendly films by the likes of the Coen Brothers (Inside Llewyn Davis, No Country For Old Men), David Fincher (The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Wes Anderson (everything since The Royal Tenenbaums), and Noah Baumbach (everything since The Squid And The Whale). Rudin’s current Broadway credits include The Book Of Mormon and the revival of A Raisin In The Sun starring Denzel Washington. This Is Our Youth’s director will be Anna D. Shapiro, who’s currently directing James Franco in Of Mice And Men.

The play’s original 1996 cast was Josh Hamilton, Mark Ruffalo and Missy Yager, and others who’ve acted in it over the years include Hayden Christensen, Matt Damon, Colin Hanks, Jake Gyllenhaal, Casey Affleck, Anna Paquin, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Alison Lohman. Here’s what it’s about, per THR:

Set in an apartment on New York’s Upper West Side in 1982, Lonergan’s play explores 48 hours in the lives of three disaffected college-age friends who were small children in the 1960s. They find the values they were raised to believe in becoming obsolete at the dawn of the Reagan era. A favorite with critics as well as actors, the play has long been regarded as a perceptive snapshot of the limbo between adolescence and adulthood.

The play will first be staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company from 6/18 to 7/27 before moving to Broadway’s Cort Theatre. New York previews begin 8/18, and the play opens officially on 9/11.

So… what is Rostam’s take on Upper West Side 1982 going to sound like?

[Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images.]

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