Ayo Edebiri On 'Proof' Broadway Toll: 'Grieving For Work'
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- Ayo Edebiri stars as Catherine in the first Broadway revival of David Auburn's Proof at Booth Theater, directed by Thomas Kail, with the limited run taking its final bow on July 19.
- Edebiri said co-star Jin Ha told her she was "sort of grieving for work," explaining the daily pounding headaches and weight loss she has experienced while performing the play eight times a week with 10-hour rehearsals.
- Edebiri called stage acting an "athleticism" and invoked Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score," noting that each performance differs based on "who is in the space and sharing space with us."
- Don Cheadle also makes his Broadway debut opposite Edebiri as the mathematician Robert, saying he is "going through this pretend torture every night, but it's like your endocrine system was doing the same thing."
- Adrienne Warren plays sister Claire and Jin Ha plays Hal, the drama centering on a notebook containing a revelatory mathematical proof discovered after Robert's death and the dispute over its true authorship.
- Proof originally debuted on Broadway in 2000, winning a Pulitzer Prize and per the source an Emmy Award, and was later adapted into a John Madden-directed film starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Why it matters: Two first-time Broadway leads — a Golden Globe and Emmy winner in Edebiri and an Oscar nominee in Cheadle — anchor the first-ever revival of a Pulitzer-winning drama about legacy and intellectual authorship, with the limited engagement closing July 19, leaving audiences a narrow window to see this pairing live.
