Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 has its sights set on the Broadway stage! A Broadway-bound stage adaptation is in development with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok. For more information, or to sign up to receive news on the world premiere production, visit FahrenheitLive.com.
Bradbury’s hauntingly prophetic classic is set in a not-too-distant future, where a fireman’s role is not to put out fires, but to start them. Books are forbidden and burned, and those who defy the rules to preserve them – and the dangerous ideas they contain – are tracked down and punished. With uncanny insight into the potential of technology, over seventy years from its first publication, Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose still has the power to dazzle and shock. The novel’s enduring popularity over seven decades has led to over 12 million copies sold worldwide. It has been translated into more than 58 languages – and has had a continuous place on school curriculums for many generations. Since it was first published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 has served as inspiration for countless artists across many genres and mediums.
The book was previously adapted into a play in the late 1970s, which had its official world premiere in November 1988 by the Fort Wayne, Indiana Civic Theatre. The stage adaptation diverges from the book and seems influenced by Truffaut’s 1966 movie adaptation. The production had its UK premiere in 2003, and made its New York premiere in 2006 at 59E59 Theaters.
The Off-Broadway theatre The American Place Theatre also presented a one man show adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 as a part of their 2008–2009 Literature to Life season.
Majok said, “The relevancy of mind domination and the end of the world in our current age needs no words; what struck me most in Fahrenheit 451 was its lens on our loneliness. How our yearning for connection and fear of its absence can be feasted upon. How we long to devote ourselves to something true and lasting in a fracturing society. And the ways we blow up our lives to unearth the truth we’ve buried – which will shatter us into our most honest selves. As Bradbury writes, ‘We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in awhile.'”
“It is a privilege and thrill to bring this seminal novel to the stage, with one of our most visceral and acclaimed living writers,” said the producers in a statement. “Mr. Bradbury’s and Ms. Majok’s works both stem from the deeply human and personal, and we’re excited by the significance of this collaboration.”
The Bradbury Estate commented that, “We are delighted to bring Fahrenheit 451 to a new audience, with the impact and intimacy that only theater can offer, to be working with producers who care so deeply for the work and with Martyna Majok, a truly great dramatist of enormous intelligence, sensitivity and skill.”
About Martyna Majok
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and raised in Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her Broadway debut play, Cost of Living, which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages, and the libretto for Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Arthur Miller Foundation Legacy Award, The Obie Award for Playwriting, The Hull-Warriner Award, The Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin Hadley Danks Award for Exceptional Playwriting, The Sun Valley Playwrights Residency Award, Off Broadway Alliance Best New Play Award, The Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play, The Hermitage Greenfield Prize, as the first female recipient in drama, The Champions of Change Award from the NYC Mayor’s Office, The Francesca Primus Prize, two Jane Chambers Playwriting Awards, The Lanford Wilson Prize, The Lilly Award’s Stacey Mindich Prize, Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play from The Helen Hayes Awards, Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, ANPF Women’s Invitational Prize, David Calicchio Prize, Global Age Project Prize, NYTW 2050 Fellowship, NNPN Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, and Merage Foundation Fellowship for The American Dream. Martyna studied at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, University of Chicago, and Jersey public schools. She was a 2012-2013 NNPN playwright-in-residence, the 2015-2016 PoNY Fellow at the Lark Play Development Center, and a 2018-2019 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Martyna has developed TV projects for HBO and is writing feature films for Plan B/Pastel/MGM/Orion and Killer Films.
