Southbank Theatre Presents Describe the Night

Southbank Theatre brings Describe the Night to the Shelton Auditorium from November 5 to 15, 2026. It's an Obie Award-winning thriller by Rajiv Joseph that looks at truth, propaganda, and history across ninety years of Russian history, from 1920 to 2010. The play follows seven men and women bound together by history, myth, and conspiracy theories across three eras.

In 1920, the writer Isaac Babel wanders the countryside with the Red Cavalry. Seventy years later, a mysterious KGB agent spies on a woman in Dresden and falls in love. And in 2010, an aircraft carrying much of the Polish government crashes in the Russian city of Smolensk. The three storylines run through the same themes of how history is recorded and who gets to tell it, and the play connects them across nearly a century of Russian life.

Joseph wrote the play and it won the Obie for Best New American Play in 2022. This is the second time he's won that particular award; his first was in 2016 for Guards at the Taj, which also won a Lortel for Best Play. He's received artistic grants from the Whiting Foundation, United States Artists, and the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. This production is directed by Paige Scott.

There are plenty of options to catch it over the ten-day run. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 4:00 PM, and Sunday at 2:00 PM. If you're looking for a weekday evening, the Thursday and Friday slots work; if you'd rather go on a weekend, you've got the Saturday matinee and the Sunday afternoon show to choose from. It runs from November 5 through November 15 at the Shelton Auditorium.