Archduke

Belgrade, 1914. Three strangers, poor, alone, and adrift, each receive a death sentence in the form of a tuberculosis diagnosis. But being young men with nothing to lose makes them the perfect recruits for The Black Hand — a secret organization looking to strike a blow in the name of Serbian nationalism. Set against the backdrop of the 20th century beginning to discover its identity — and with playwright Rajiv Joseph’s signature dark humor — Archduke draws parallels to our own troubling times and asks: How (and when) does a century define itself?

Archduke is a new play from Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Rajiv Joseph, one of the most exciting playwrights of our time. Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Guards at the Taj) returns to the Taper with this world premiere that poetically traces a group of young men along their unlikely path to terrorism at the onset of World War One.