Work of Devotion

Work of Devotion is a new play by Miranda Rose Hall, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury. It is a world premiere, produced Off-Broadway by Second Stage Theater, with performances planned to begin in February 2027 on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

The action follows a community of nuns in rural Italy in the eighth century. When the woman who leads them is killed in a sudden accident, the survivors are left to work out what kind of life they actually want. Second Stage presents it as a rowdy but serious-minded story told in a contemporary voice.

Because this is the first production of the script, there is no earlier staging to compare it with. The details below are everything the company has confirmed so far.

Only the setup has been made public, and it is a simple one. The women live under tight restrictions and are looking for meaning inside them. The death of their leader forces the community to decide how to go on without her.

That question, how do we want to live, drives the play. Names of individual characters, the shape of the acts and the ending have not been released.

Hall, a playwright and screenwriter based in Brooklyn, trained at Georgetown University and at Yale. She helped found LubDub Theatre Co., and her stage work includes The Sandwich Ministry and The Kind Ones.

Television is part of her career too, with writing credits on Alaska Daily. In 2020 she was honored with a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and she has been shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.