Jesse Eisenberg's THE REVISIONIST and More Set for Rattlestick Playwrights Season

Jesse Eisenberg, the actor and playwright who's best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in THE SOCIAL NETWORK and whose play ASUNCION played the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater last year, will bring a new play to the 2012-13 Rattlestick season.

The play, titled THE REVISIONIST, centers around "a fledgling science fiction writer suffering from writer's block travels to Poland to stay with his 73-year-old second cousin, a Holocaust survivor obsessed with herdistant American family." Kip Fagan, who also directed ASUNCION, will helm the production; it's slated for a February 6 start at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

The complete season is as follows:

THROUGH THE YELLOW HOUR
Written and directed by Adam Rapp
September 13 – October 28; opening scheduled for September 27
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
The United States has been attacked. Men are being castrated, women enumerated. Ellen has been in hiding for 52 days, subsisting on very little, hoping against hope for her husband to return. As the world around her falls further into senseless chaos, she takes an unlikely action, one that just might signal a new beginning.

Adam Rapp is an award-winning playwright and director whose work has been produced at the American Repertory Theatre, Atlantic, Barrow Street Theatre, Edge Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Steppenwolf, and more. He was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Obie Award winner for his play Red Light Winter. Past works at Rattlestick include Finer Noble Gases, American Sligo, and The Hallway Trilogy.

A SUMMER DAY
Written by Jon Fosse
Translated and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde
October 10 – December 8; opening scheduled for October 25
At the Cherry Lane Theatre
A visit to an old friend sparks the memory of a visit years earlier and the mysterious disappearance of a loved one. Set in two time periods in the same idyllic house overlooking a fjord, A Summer Day evokes the nostalgia of the end of an affair, capturing love both in the moment and as a distant memory. Acclaimed Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest living playwrights, receives his American premiere with this deep meditation on the nature of loss.

Jon Fosse has truly become a Norwegian cultural export—of all his country’s dramatists, only Ibsen has been staged more often. Fosse’s writing has been translated into more than 40 languages, and his plays have been performed more than 750 times around the world. His plays include And never we'll be parted, Someone is going to come, A Summer Day, Autumn Dream, and I am the wind. Fosse won the International Ibsen Award in 2012.

THE REVISIONIST
Written by Jesse Eisenberg; Directed by Kip Fagan
February 6 – April 20; opening scheduled for February 21
At the Cherry Lane Theatre
A fledgling science fiction writer suffering from writer's block travels to Poland to stay with his 73-year-old second cousin, a Holocaust survivor obsessed with herdistant American family. While David hopes the change of scenery will spur a creative reawakening, lonely Maria assumes he’s visiting primarily to connect with her. As their bond develops and peaks, Maria reveals a deep secret about her post-war past that ruptures their relationship and teaches them both something new about what it means to be family.

Jesse Eisenberg most recently wrote and starred in Rattlestick's Asuncion at the Cherry Lane Theatre, for which he was nominated for a Drama League Award. He has appeared in the films The Social Network (Oscar nomination), Zombieland, Adventureland (BAFTA nomination), The Squid and the Whale, andRoger Dodger. He is also a contributing writer for McSweeney’s and his humor essays have appeared in Harper’s and The New York Times.

THE CORRESPONDENT
Presented in association with terraNOVA Collective
Written by Ken Urban; Directed by Stephen Brackett
March 20 – May 4; opening scheduled for April 4
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
A grieving husband hires a dying woman to deliver a message to his recently deceased wife in the afterlife. When he receives letters signed by his wife, describing events that only she could know, he’s faced with determining if the correspondence is from a con artist or actually from a ghost.

Ken Urban has been produced at the Summer Play Festival at the Public Theater, Donmar Warehouse (London), The Flea, Lesser America, Playwrights Horizons, Epic Theatre Ensemble, Moving Arts, The Chocolate Factory (NYC), Theatre of NOTE, The Committee, and terraNOVA Collective. Awards include the Weissberger Playwriting Award from the Williamstown Theatre Festival and a playwriting fellowship from Boston’s Huntington Theatre.

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