Shanley’s new play is ‘Defiance’

A new play by John Patrick Shanley, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for his last play, “Doubt,” will have its world premiere in New York next February, the Manhattan Theatre Club says.

“Doubt” was a provocative story about a Catholic priest suspected by a nun of molesting children, and the new play, “Defiance,” promises to be equally controversial. The producers said in a statement it was set on a U.S. Marine Corps base in North Carolina in 1971. They said it involves two officers, one black, one white, who are on “a collision course over race, women and the high cost of doing the right thing.”