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.

BASILICA
Written by Mando Alvarado; directed by Jerry Ruiz
May 1 – June 16; opening scheduled for May 16
At the Cherry Lane Theatre
In South Texas, two things loom large—the Catholic Church and Texas pride—and Joe Garza, a strong, hard-working man, embodies one more than the other. But when he learns that Gilbert Gonzalez has returned as the new pastor at the basilica, Joe's confronted with the choices he made in life and questions the past the only way he knows how—with anger, pride, and a biting tongue.

Mando Alvarado is an award winning playwright/screenwriter. His plays A King of Infinite Stage and Sangre were produced by NYC SummerStage and he wrote the book for the bilingual musical A Yellow Brick Road that premiered at the Lortel for TheaterWorks USA. His first feature film, Cruzando, which he co-wrote and co-directed is available on DVD and was distributed by Vanguard Cinema. Alvarado’s play Post No Bills was produced by Rattlestick.

CHARLES IVES TAKE ME HOME
Written by Jessica Dickey; Directed by Daniella Topol
May 29 – July 13; opening scheduled for June 13
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
When a father's love of music clashes with his daughter's passion for basketball, modernist composer Charles Ives is the perfect referee. Charles Ives Take Me Home is a comedic and poignant story of dissonance, defense, and devotion.

Jessica Dickey received a Susan Blackburn Prize nomination for Charles Ives Take Me Home. She made her playwriting debut with her hit one-woman show The Amish Project, which premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival. The Amish Project has since been produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Rattlestick, the American Theater Company (Chicago), the City Theatre (Pittsburgh), and internationally. Her newest play, Row After Row, has a scheduled production in Tucson next spring.

Also on the Rattlestick stage next season (January 8 – February 24) is The Amoralists production of the world premiere of Collision, written by Lyle Kessler and directed by Terry Kinney. In a college dormitory somewhere in the heart of America, three students, a professor, and a stranger collide in this dark comedy of emotions on the edge of the abyss.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multi-award-winning company which has produced over fifty world premieres in the past sixteen seasons and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for its work developing new and innovative work.

Rattlestick's Advisory Board participates in The Emerging Playwrights Project, which matches a new playwright with an established artist for an experienced eye and creative support. Playwright and artist mentors have included Edward Albee, Jon Robin Baitz, Zoe Caldwell, Arthur Kopit, Craig Lucas, Joe Mantello, Terrence McNally and Marsha Norman. Previous plays include Two Boys in a Bed, Message to Michael, Carpool, Volunteer Man, A Trip to the Beach, Ascendancy, Stuck, Vick's Boy, The Messenger, Saved or Destroyed, Neil's Garden, My Special Friend, Faster, Bliss, St. Crispin's Day, Where We're Born, Five Flights, Boise, Finer Noble Gases, God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, Miss Julie, Acts of Mercy: passion-play, Cagelove, It Goes Without Saying, Dark Matters, Stay, American Sligo, Rag and Bone, War, Geometry of Fire, That Pretty Pretty; or The Rape Play, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, Little Doc, underneathmybed, There Are No More Big Secrets, The Hallway Trilogy, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, The Wood, the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June, Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee - Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee - Outstanding Play of 2008), as well as The Aliens by Annie Baker (2010 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play).