Animus Theatre Company's 2014 Season to Feature Matthew Lillard, Plays by Bob Glaudini, Tennessee Williams & More

Animus Theatre Company has announced its 2014 Season, which will feature Matthew Lillard, Leslye Headland, and Alan Langdon, with plays by Bob Glaudini, Tennessee Williams, and Headland. The MainStage Production will be Dutch Heart of Man by Glaudini, directed by Alan Langdon, running April 24th thru May 11th. The Workshop Production will feature four short plays by Tennessee Williams: Moony's Kid Don't Cry; The Long Goodbye; Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen; and The Pink Bedroom. The one-act plays, all presented nightly, will be directed by Matthew Lillard and run August 1st thru 10th. Both productions will be presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in downtown NYC, the 2014 home of Animus Theatre Company. The season will be rounded out in the fall/winter with a multi-media festival headlined by Leslye Headland's Seven Deadly Sin Cycle Plays (Cinephillia, Bachelorette, Assistance, Surfer Girl, Reverb, and The Accidental Blonde) presented as a collection of readings for the first time in New York City. Cast and creatives for all of the above will be announced at a later date.

Matthew Lillard is a well-known and respected American actor making his New York directorial debut with Animus. He is best known for his roles as Brian Speer in the Academy Award Winning The Descendants, Stevo in SLC Punk, Stu Macher in Scream, and Shaggy in Scooby-Doo. He recently starred alongside Sir Patrick Stewart in Stephen Belber's Match, and currently appears on the critically acclaimed FX series, The Bridge, as troubled journalist Daniel Frye. He recently made his film directing debut with Fat Kid Rules the World. He returns to NYC after having studied at NYU and has been a member of Animus since 2013.

Leslye Headland is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director best known for her 2012 film Bachelorette (starring Kirsten Dunst and Rebel Wilson). Her play Assistance is currently being adapted by NBC as a series starring Krysten Ritter, and she is the head writer of the 2014 film, About Last Night, itself an adaptation of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Bachelorette made its NYC premiere at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in 2010 and Assistance had its New York debut at Playwrights Horizons in 2012.

Bob Glaudini is an American playwright, actor and director perhaps best known for his stage and screen versions of Jack Goes Boating (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman). He is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company, which debuted Dutch Heart of Man at The Public Theater in 2003. Alan Langdon, widely regarded as one of the premiere acting teachers and directors in New York, was the founding Artistic Director of The Actors Space and was the Director of Apprentice Workshops at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He is currently on the faculty of the Circle in the Square Professional Workshop, and has been a member of Animus since 2013.

Animus Theatre Company (Jonathan Judge-Russo, Artistic Director; Amy Northup & Jeff Todesco, Managing Directors) was founded in 2011. Previous productions include the critically lauded Where's My Money? by John Patrick Shanley and William Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. To quote their mission statement: "Animus is an ensemble of artists that seeks to develop new work and realize the full potential of infrequently produced plays that explore the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. Our work will challenge our artists and audiences to face problems on both interpersonal and global levels in new ways through a deeper sense of mutuality with those characters and circumstances witnessed and experienced on stage."