Kevin Barry's Dark Comedy 'The Abduction' Begins Casting for Off-Broadway Run at Producers Club NYC

A new two-hander dark comedy is heading to the Producers Club in New York City, and it is looking for actors now. 'The Abduction,' written and directed by Kevin Barry under the banner of Open Road Stage, is currently in casting with a production start scheduled for January 2027. The play is a sharp, grounded odd-couple comedy set at the real-life Camp Hero military base in Montauk, Long Island, and for actors with strong comedic timing and genuine chemistry, this is an opportunity worth pursuing immediately.

Kevin Barry is wearing every creative hat on this one, serving simultaneously as writer, director, artistic director, and managing director of Open Road Stage. He is also handling casting himself, which means direct contact with the decision-maker is entirely possible at this stage. Barry's work with Open Road Stage has centered on character-driven, dialogue-intensive material, and 'The Abduction' fits squarely in that tradition. The script is described as dry, specific, and built on the kind of lived-in friendship dynamic that requires actors who can hold a scene with economy and precision. If you have done this kind of work before, the material will tell you immediately whether you are right for it.

The play follows Francine, a middle school math teacher and secret UFO believer, and Ruth, her deeply skeptical best friend who was promised dinner and wound up at an abandoned Cold War military base instead. What starts as a comedic fish-out-of-water situation gradually escalates through layers of conspiracy: a Washington-funded UFO research group, a plan to disrupt a Presidential Address with analog UFO photographs, a buried Nazi-era government lab, and something in the sky that may not be as fictional as Ruth hoped. The tone is calibrated and character-first. Barry is not writing genre spectacle here. He is writing two people who know each other so well that every disagreement carries twenty years of history behind it. The sci-fi and conspiracy elements serve the friendship, not the other way around.

Open Road Stage is producing in partnership with Producers Club NYC, a well-established multi-venue performing arts complex at 358 West 44th Street in the theater district of Manhattan. The Producers Club has long served as an incubator for new and developing work, offering intimate black-box performance spaces that suit exactly the kind of close-quarters two-hander Barry has written. It is a practical and appropriate venue for this material, and its location in the heart of Midtown makes it accessible for New York-based talent and theater professionals across all departments. The venue context also signals a production operating in the professional New York theater space, with the kind of infrastructure and industry visibility that can give a new work real traction.

The production start is set for January 20, 2027, which puts this play well over a year out from its first performance. That timeline is actually useful context for actors and theater professionals evaluating the opportunity. Barry is casting now, while there is time to develop the right pairing, which suggests he is approaching this with patience and an eye toward finding chemistry rather than simply filling roles quickly. For actors, that is a good sign. It means the casting process is likely to be collaborative and considered rather than transactional. Stage managers, production designers working in the intimate theater space, and any production staff connected to the Producers Club ecosystem should take note as well, as a production of this scope will begin assembling its full team well before rehearsals begin.

The physical production will be set primarily at the Producers Club, though Camp Hero in Montauk is listed as a location, likely referencing research, development, or design reference rather than a performance venue. Camp Hero is a genuinely fascinating setting. The decommissioned radar installation at the eastern tip of Long Island has accumulated decades of folklore around government experiments, UFO sightings, and alleged secret research programs. It served as a primary inspiration for the Duffer Brothers when developing 'Stranger Things,' and that cultural resonance is baked into Barry's script. For designers and production staff building the world of this play, understanding Camp Hero's visual and atmospheric identity, the rusting radar dish, the overgrown military architecture, the flat Long Island light at dusk, will be central to realizing the material in an intimate stage context.

For working theater professionals and actors in the New York market, 'The Abduction' represents the kind of early-stage opportunity that rewards quick action. Casting is open now, and with Kevin Barry handling the process directly, the path to a conversation is shorter than it would be on a larger institutional production. Full production details, contact information, and listing updates are available now at ProductionList.com. If this material is in your wheelhouse, the time to reach out is before the field narrows.

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