MODERN TERRORISM, WATER BY THE SPOONFUL Included in Second Stage's 2012-13 Season

Following an acclaimed season which included the world premiere of Paul Weitz's Lonely, I'm Not and a critically lauded second staging of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winner, How I Learned To Drive, Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) has just announced two of the four mainstage productions in the company's upcoming 34th season. For subscription or ticket information, please call the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422 or visit the company's website, www.2ST.com. All productions are staged at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street (just west of Eighth Avenue).

Second Stage Theatre's upcoming season will continue the company's mission of producing bold new plays and musicals by American Playwrights as well as second stagings of the best of Contemporary Theatre.

The 2012-2013 season will kick off this fall with the world premiere comedy, Jon Kern's MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. This provocative satire will be directed by Peter DuBois, who staged Second Stage's popular and critical hits Becky Shaw, Trust and All New People. Previews will begin in mid-September prior to a mid-October opening.

The fall will continue with the New York Premiere of this year's Pulitzer Prize-Winning drama, WATER BY THE SPOONFUL, written by Quiara Alegría Hudes and directed by Davis McCallum. Previews will begin in mid-December and the production will officially open in early January, 2013.

Two additional productions are still to be announced.

More detailed information on Second Stage Theatre's upcoming season follows:

MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM

Winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award
World Premiere
By Jon Kern
Directed by Peter DuBois
Previews begin mid-September; opening mid-October

In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove comes MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, a provocative satire about a rogue group of 21st Century terrorists and their darkly comic misadventures. As a young bomber develops feelings for his beautiful, secretive conspirator, he is torn between his duty and his heart. When his hipster neighbor accidentally gets caught up in the plans, circumstances spiral out of control. This world premiere is the winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award.

Jon Kern, a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in playwriting and the University of Chicago, is the 2012 winner of the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, the largest playwriting prize of its kind in the United States, for Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want To Kill Us and How We Learn To Love Them. Jon recently joined the staff of the long-running hit television show, "The Simpsons," and is a member of the Ars Nova Playgroup, The Civilians R&D Group, and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. He was awarded a Van Lier Fellowship in Playwriting from New Dramatists in 2010 and is an alumnus of the Youngblood writers' group at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Jon is a born and bred New Yorker. His play We in Silence Hear a Whisper premiered in 2011, produced by Red Fern Theatre Company.

Peter DuBois returns to Second Stage where he directed Becky Shaw, Trust, and All New People. He also staged the West End production of All New People and The Almeida Theatre (London) production of Becky Shaw. His other credit include Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theatre Company); Measure for Pleasure, Richard III, Mom How Did You Meet the Beatles, Biro (Public Theater/NYSF); Jack Goes Boating, View From 151st Street (LAByrinth Theater Company/Public Theater). He has also staged works at American Conservatory Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, Humana Festival of New Plays, Manchester Opera House, Kings Theatre Glasgow. He was the Associate Producer at The Public Theater/NYSF from 2003-2005 and was their Resident Director from 2005-2008. He also served as Artistic Director of the Perseverance Theatre Company in Juneau, Alaska from 1997-2003. Peter is currently in his fourth season as the Artistic Director of The Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. Peter's productions have been on the annual top ten lists of The New York Times, Time Out, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Evening Standard, and the Improper Bostonian.

WATER BY THE SPOONFUL
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
New York Premiere
By Quiara Alegría Hudes
Directed by Davis McCallum
Previews begin mid-December; opening early January 2013

Elliot, a Puerto Rican veteran of the Iraq War, returns home to Philadelphia haunted by demons from the past, his family in flux, and his only career prospect at the local Subway sandwich shop. When his mother's online support group begins to overshadow his aspirations for the future, the real and online worlds – one forged by blood, another by survival – collide in this funny, urgent and timely 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner.

WATER BY THE SPOONFUL is the second in a trilogy of plays that began with Hudes' Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, a play about a young Marine coming to terms with his time in Iraq and his father's and grandfather's service in Vietnam and Korea. The third play in the trilogy, The Happiest Song Plays Last, is scheduled to make its world premiere in 2013 at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Quiara Alegría Hudes received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Water By the Spoonful. Her play, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, was a Pulitzer Finalist, and her most recent work, The Happiest Song Plays Last, will premiere next season at The Goodman Theatre. Hudes wrote the book to the Broadway musical In the Heights, which premiered off-Broadway and earned the Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. In the Heights transferred to Broadway where it received the Tony Award for Best Musical, a Tony Nomination for Best Book of a Musical, and was named a Pulitzer Finalist. Hudes wrote the book and lyrics for a children's musical, Barrio Grrrl!, which premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and toured nationally. Hudes was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she recently returned to receive a Resolution from the City of Philadelphia. Her first play was produced in the tenth grade by Philadelphia Young Playwrights, where she now serves as a board member and mentor to other young writers. After graduating from public school, she received a B.A. in music composition from Yale and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

Davis McCallum returns to Second Stage Theatre where he directed the world premiere of Michael Mitnick's Sex Lives of Our Parents as part of last summer's Uptown Series. He recently directed the world premiere of Gabe Kahane and Seth Bockley's February House at the Long Wharf Theatre, as well as its subsequent New York premiere at The Public Theater. Other New York credits include Sam Hunter's A Bright New Boise (Partial Comfort; Drama Desk Nomination), Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb), Greg Moss's punkplay (Clubbed Thumb), Chuck Mee's Queens Boulevard (Signature Theatre), Quiara Alegría Hudes' Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue (P73; Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Henry V (New Victory), Jane Eyre (The Acting Company), and Rob Urbinati's West Moon Street (Prospect Theater). Regonally, he has directed productions at the Guthrie, The Old Globe, Humana, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, Alliance, Chautauqua, the O'Neill, Playmakers Rep, Two River, and New York Stage & Film, among others. He also participated in the Drama League Director's Project and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program, received a Boris Sagal Fellowship, and was a Princess Grace Honoree.

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theatre produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America's best Contemporary Theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by ReGina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman.

The company's more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 14 Lucille Lortel Awards, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched "Second Stage Theatre Uptown" series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

Second Stage Theatre's upcoming world premiere production of DOGFIGHT, featuring music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a book by Peter Duchan and directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, will begin previews on Wednesday, June 27 and officially open on Monday, July 16.

Second Stage Theatre Uptown's first production, Alena Smith's THE BAD GUYS, directed by Hal Brooks and featuring Michael Braun, Roe Hartrampf, James McMenamin, Tobias Segal, and Raviv Ullman, will begin previews May 22nd and officially open on June 4th.

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street. With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions. Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway. The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city's Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com