Coming Up This Week in Theatre - 9/16/2008

Picnic - 9/16/2008

This American classic is staged by Chicago's own David Cromer whose previous work for Writers' Theatre includes The Price and Booth and whose highly acclaimed production of The Adding Machine is enjoying a successful run in New York. When a charismatic young drifter arrives in a small Kansas town on the eve of a Labor Day picnic, the simmering repressions of its residents come rapidly to a boil. Frequently hilarious and profoundly moving, Inge's masterpiece chronicles the hopes and despairs that lie between the realization of adulthood and the eternal optimism of youth.

Runs September 16- November 16, 2008.

Writers' Theatre performs in two performance spaces in Glencoe–its 50-seat venue at Books on Vernon, 664 Vernon Ave, and its 108-seat theatre at 325 Tudor Court in the Woman's Library Club. Subscriptions and Memberships are available at the Box Office, 376 Park Avenue, Glencoe, 847-242-6000 and www.writerstheatre.org.

Dylan McDermott in 'Three Changes' - 9/16/2008

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, has announced additional casting and dates for its 2008/2009 Season.

Golden Globe winner and Emmy Award nominee Dylan McDermott ("The Practice," Drama League Award nomination for The Culture Project's production of Eve Ensler's The Treatment, Broadway debut in Biloxi Blues) has joined the cast of the season's first production, the World Premiere of THREE CHANGES, a new play by Nicky Silver (Fit to Be Tied at Playwrights Horizons, The Food Chain, Pterodactyls, Raised in Captivity). Directed by Tony Award nominee Wilson Milam (The Lieutenant of Inishmore), the production will begin previews on Friday, August 22, 2008 with an Opening Night set for Tuesday, September 16. The limited engagement will run through Sunday, September 28 at Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street).

Mr. McDermott joins a cast that includes Emmy Award nominee Maura Tierney (Dr. Abby Lockhart on "ER," Some Girl(s) at MCC), Aya Cash (The Pain and the Itch at Playwrights Horizons, From Up Here at MTC) and Brian J. Smith (Good Boys and True at Second Stage, MTC's Come Back, Little Sheba). One final cast member will be announced in the coming weeks.

Dylan McDermott is a Golden Globe winner and Emmy Award nominee for his portrayal of Bobby Donnell on David E. Kelley's Emmy Award-winning series "The Practice." McDermott returned to television in the Fall of 2007 with the Mark Gordon-produced "Big Shots" and was last seen on screen in The Pang Brothers' The Messengers, which opened at #1 in February. In September 2006, McDermott returned to the stage in Eve Ensler's new play The Treatment, which opened the Impact Festival 2006, a New York City-wide arts festival as part of the Culture Project. McDermott was nominated for a Drama League Award for his performance.

Additional film credits include Edison opposite Kevin Spacey and Justin Timberlake, the Lions Gate crime-drama Wonderland opposite Val Kilmer and Josh Lucas, Texas Rangers, Three To Tango, the Jodie Foster-directed Home for the Holidays opposite Holly Hunter and Robert Downey, Jr., Steel Magnolias, Hamburger Hill, Miracle on 34th Street opposite Sir Richard Attenborough and In The Line of Fire opposite Clint Eastwood. Additional television credits include TNT's dramatic limited series "The Grid" opposite Julianna Margulies.

McDermott's other Theater credits include Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues on Broadway and Golden Boy directed by JoAnne Woodward at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

In addition to THREE CHANGES, the five other offerings in the 2008/2009 Season will be:

KINDNESS (September/October 2008) – the World Premiere of a new play written and directed by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Adam Rapp (Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons, Red Light Winter). Featured in the cast will be Academy Award and Emmy Award nominee Annette O'Toole (Best Original Song for A Mighty Wind, plus The Seagull at CSC, Martha Kent on TV's "Smallville"), Obie Award winner Ray Anthony Thomas (Forced Continuum) and Katherine Waterston (Los Angeles at The Flea, the film The Babysitters).

PRAYER FOR MY ENEMY (November/December 2008) – the New York Premiere of a new play by two-time Tony Award nominee, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time Obie Award winner Craig Lucas (Small Tragedy at Playwrights Horizons, The Light in the Piazza, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, The Dying Gaul), directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons, the current Tony-winning Broadway revival of South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza). Featured in the cast will be Tony Award nominee Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, the upcoming Hair for Shakespeare in the Park), 2008 Theatre World Award winner Cassie Beck (The Drunken City) and Skipp Sudduth (Lincoln Center's current South Pacific).

THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION (February/March 2009) – the New York premiere of a new play by Evan Smith (Psych and The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, Servicemen at The New Group), directed by Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie (Chicago, New Jerusalem). Featured in the cast will be five-time Tony Award nominee and three-time Obie Award winner Dana Ivey (Driving Miss Daisy, Sunday in the Park with George and Mr. Smith's The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, The Rivals, Butley).

INKED BABY (March/April 2009) – the World Premiere of a new play by 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn nominee Christina Anderson in her Off-Broadway playwriting debut, directed by Kate Whoriskey (Fabulation at Playwrights Horizons, The Piano Teacher). Ms. Anderson was selected by American Theatre Magazine as one of fifteen up-and-coming artists "whose work will transform America's stages."

OUR HOUSE (May/June 2009) – the New York premiere of a new play by Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck (The Butterfly Collection and Bad Dates at Playwrights Horizons, Mauritius, co-author of Omnium Gatherum), directed by Tony Award winner director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, plus The Credeaux Canvas and Baby Anger at Playwrights Horizons).

Additional casting for these productions will also be announced in the coming weeks.

Subscriptions to Playwrights Horizons' 2008/2009 season are now available, in 6-show (four Mainstage productions and two productions in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater) or 4-show (four Mainstage productions) packages. Packages include "Anytime" (6-show $260, 4-show $195), "Matinees" (6-show $240, 4-show $175), "Previews and Sunday Nights" (6-show $225, 4-show $160), and "Platinum Patron" (6-show with exclusive benefits, $1250). In addition to discounts on all Mainstage season attractions, subscribers receive priority seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins.

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is a writer's theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. In its 38 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, most recently being honored with a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for "ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work." Notable productions include four Pulitzer Prize winners: Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, as well as Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie's Grey Gardens (2006 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical), Bruce Norris's The Pain and the Itch, Lynn Nottage's Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Craig Lucas's Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey's James Joyce's The Dead, William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson's Goodnight Children Everywhere and Franny's Way, Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room, A.R. Gurney's Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's Violet.

Playwrights Horizons' 2008/2009 Season is generously supported by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Charina Endowment Fund, The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Shubert Foundation and Time Warner Inc.