Extended to May 25!

IRONBOUND

by Martyna Majok
directed by Emilie Whelan

Following last season’s hit production of Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living, OTP is thrilled to stage Majok’s breakthough 2014 play Ironbound, directed by Emilie Whelan (Cost of Living), featuring OTP Associate Artistic Director Lisa Ramirez.

In a run-down New Jersey town, Darja, a Polish immigrant, is barely getting by on housecleaning and factory jobs.

Over the course of 20 years and three relationships, Darja negotiates for her future with men who can offer her love or security—but never both.

Darkly funny, perceptive and heartbreaking, Majok’s drama is an unflinching portrait of an immigrant woman's struggle for survival: a woman for whom love is both a luxury and a liability—and the American Dream is always just out of reach.

PERFORMANCES

MAY 2–25, 2025
THU / FRI / SAT / SUN @ 7:30pm

Previews: Fri 5/2 & Sat 5/3
Opening Night: Sun 5/4

Run Time: 90 minutes (no intermission)

PRIORITY TICKET
(Reserved seating)
$60

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET
(Seating assigned upon arrival)
$35

PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN TICKET
(Or any amount at the door — contact box office for availability)
$10 / $20

Please note: Online ticket sales close 1 hour before the start of each performance. Tickets may be purchased at the door — subject to availability.

Masked Audience Performance: We seek to be accessible and to meet the needs of our community, and a mask-required show allows members of our community who need or prefer to gather in masked spaces the chance to do so. At these performances, masks will be required inside the theater but are optional in the lobby and common spaces. The actors will be unmasked during the show.

Questions? Contact the Box Office at 510.646.1126 or boxoffice@oaklandtheaterproject.org

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IN THE MEDIA

“A one-of-a-kind love story… Finely calibrated performances… Martyna Majok’s Ironbound is all about ambivalence, the impossibility of definitions, the irrelevance of categories”
— San Francisco Chronicle Review

“Lisa Ramirez is extraordinary as Darja… a taut, tense, yet tender and loving exploration of a Polish immigrant’s struggles… highly recommend”
— Theatrius

“Playwright Martyna Majok, perceptive Director Emile Whelan, and the commanding Lisa Ramirez fully inhabit the essence of Darja. Ramirez exhibits a roller coaster of feelings, and masterfully utilizes gestures, movements, and powerful silences… This is must see.”
– Front Row Review

“Carefully textured… compelling drama”
— 48 Hills

“Sensitive direction by Emilie Whelan… Ramirez is spellbinding… Oakland Theater Project, on its cozy, simple stage (housed in a downtown store), routinely presents touching stories that enlighten and fascinate audiences. Ironbound is yet another one.”
— SF Gate

“Martyna Majok’s Ironbound takes Oakland Theater Project’s space, strips it back, and fills it with longing and pain, in a deeply human way… the skilled cast serves this frank dialogue straight up”
— Midbrow

“Oakland Theater Project nails it again with this beautifully stripped-down gut-punch of a play”
– For All Events

Datebook Pick!
”In Martyna Majok’s breakout 2014 play, privation turns characters to brutes. Each line rips off another Band-Aid. No one can afford dignity. And yet human frailty and need still peek through the hardness. Majok’s characters might spout callousness, but her writing aches with compassion for them — how their core of vulnerability won’t be pulverized.”
— San Francisco Chronicle

Editor’s Pick!
”Heartbreaking and tender, the story does not soften the pain as much as make it ring with authenticity.”
— East Bay Express

“[A] quietly gripping play… Ms. Majok’s perceptive drama, with its bone-dry humor and vivid characters, illustrates how vulnerable people like Darja are hostages to the vagaries of chance, unless they can manage to climb out of poverty.”
— New York Times

“You seldom see plays that are both harsh and wonderful, but that is the balance that Polish-born playwright Martyna Majok strikes…she writes with such energy and charisma that the play’s four characters feel vivid and real…The play never sugarcoats, yet it steers clear of bleakness because Majok’s language is so entertainingly alive.”
— Washington Post