XYZ Theatricals
​Proudly Presents the World Premiere of
​BROOM PLAY

Written by MATTE KRANZ

Starring MIKE DONOVAN, MATTE KRANZ

Directed by EGOR TRUKHIN

THREE-WEEK LIMITED ENGAGEMENT

NOVEMBER 5 – 29, 2026 AT THE PLAYER’S THEATER

OPENING NIGHT IS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 AT 7 P.M.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

XYZ Theatricals is pleased to announce the world premiere production of Matte Kranz’s BROOM PLAY, directed by Egor Trukhin. The physical tragicomedy BROOM PLAY will play a three-week limited engagement at Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre, The Player’s Theater (115 MacDougal St, 3rd Floor Loft). Performances begin Thursday, November 5 and continue through Sunday, November 29. Opening Night is Saturday, November 7 (7 p.m.). ​ Tickets are $25-$95 and available at https://ci.ovationtix.com/277/production/1288031. ​

Two janitors return every day to the same room to do the same work: cleaning a space that refuses to get clean, in a building that never gives them water, with only one mop, and no brooms. ​ One has stopped wanting and calls it peace. The other remains consumed by the possibility that life could become something more. Through eccentric clowning and moments of unexpected tenderness, their repetitive life forms into a tragicomedy about an overwhelming desire for a radical turn in life and also the gut-wrenching fear of that change: a tension the play itself embodies through multiple endings, shifting form with every performance. ​ A nod to Beckett, Ionesco, and the European theatre of the absurd, Broom Play brings the comic, the frightening, and the tragic into the same world.

"We are living in a time when the funny and the frightening exist together in the mind of a human being. The air we breathe today is the air of terrible daily losses. It is a time of crisis inside the human being, a time when tectonic plates are shifting. Very Shakespearean time," said director Egor Trukhin. “The person of the twenty-first century is a deeply confused person. At the same time, this person desperately searches for love, an escape from loneliness, hope, and light. All of this is present in the air today. Broom Play tries to catch that air.
​​
​At the center of Broom Play is a very important mechanism: the repetition of the same day through the work of these two janitors. They do the same things again and again. And the more they repeat it, the more something accumulates inside them, almost like a nuclear explosion. This play is the anticipation of that explosion.”

The production stars Mike Donovan (The Banana Children, All Hail Santa Claus, Miles Away) as Harr’, and Matte Kranz (Artificial, The Gates, Meme Me) as Jerryll.

Hera Jung is the stage manager. Director of Marketing & Publicity is Katie Rosin/Kampfire.

BIOGRAPHIES

MATTE KRANZ (Jerryll, Playwright) is a Polish American actor, playwright, and filmmaker from the California Bay Area, now based in New York City, where he is currently pursuing an MFA in Acting at Columbia University. He holds a BFA in Acting from UC Santa Barbara. His award-winning work has screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Santa Monica International Film Festival. Recent acting credits include Artificial (dir. Luca Guadagnino), The Gates (dir. Jared Rushanan), and Meme Me (dir. Alec Goldberg). As a filmmaker, he has written and directed several award-winning short films, including A Boring Dystopia and The Fly. His stage work spans classical and contemporary theatre, with roles in Hamlet, Henry VI, and Three Sisters. Kranz is fluent in Polish and Spanish and trained in clown, stage combat, fencing, and corporeal mime.

EGOR TRUKHIN (Director) is a New York-based theater and film director, writer, and actor whose work has been presented across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he trained as an actor at the Oleg Tabakov Moscow Theater School before studying directing for five years at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS), where Yuri Butusov mentored him. His directing credits include Shakespeare’s Hamlet, presented at festivals in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Yerevan, and Kaliningrad; Florian Zeller’s The Mother at the Moscow Art Theatre; and his original work I Am Here, which premiered in Tel Aviv and subsequently toured internationally across 17 countries. His production So Many of You premiered in Tbilisi in 2024 and was later presented at the Rustaveli National Theatre. In January 2026, Trukhin’s original wordless tragicomedy Six Characters, inspired by Luigi Pirandello, was presented at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. He is the founder and artistic director of Trukhin Ark, a production company focused on auteur theater, film, and international artistic collaboration, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Directing at Columbia University School of the Arts under the mentorship of Anne Bogart. His film work includes the short In Silence, which he wrote and directed and which received Best Experimental Film at Moscow Shorts and a Jury Mention at the Beijing International Short Film Festival. Upcoming work: The Black Monk by Chekhov at HERE Arts Center January-February, 2027, created and directed by Egor Trukhin. (Short clip of previous work of Egor Trukhin.)

XYZ Theatricals (Producer) is a New York-based theatrical producing, management, and investment company dedicated to developing, producing, and supporting work across Broadway, Off-Broadway, commercial, and international stages. Founded by XiaoYan Zhu and Zihe Tian, XYZ works across executive and line producing, general management, company management, theatrical consulting, and investment, combining artistic development with strategic and practical production management. Some recent projects include: The Fear of 13 (Investor, James Earl Jones Theatre), Everybody Has a Story to Tell (Producer, Remote Theater Project), and The Censorship of Dreams (General Manager, Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa ETC). Upcoming projects: The Unraveling (Line Producer, A.R.T./New York) and The Black Monk (Producer, HERE Arts Center).

# ​ ​ ​ ​ # ​ ​ ​ ​ #