Official: Joe Manganiello to Lead Yale Rep's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Victoria Nolan, Managing Director) has announced that René Augesen will play Blanche DuBois and Joe Manganiello will play Stanley Kowalski in its first-ever production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, the Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Mark Rucker, the production, which will open Yale Rep's 2013-14 season, will play September 20-October 12, at the University Theatre (222 York Street).

In the steamy French Quarter of New Orleans, an electrifying battle of wills ignites between Southern Belle Blanche DuBois and her working class brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. Nerves fraying and beauty fading, Blanche is both repelled and intrigued by Stanley's primal brutishness-even as he threatens to reveal her darkest secrets and destroy her illusions.

RENÉ AUGESEN (BLANCHE DuBOIS) previously appeared at Yale Rep in The Beaux' Stratagem and A Woman of No Importance. She was a core Acting Company member at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for twelve seasons, where she delighted critics and audiences in more than three dozen productions, including The Misanthrope, Scapin, The Tosca Project, Round and Round the Garden, Clybourne Park (west coast premiere), A Doll House, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, A Christmas Carol, November, Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo, War Music, Brainpeople, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Rock 'n' Roll, and most recently the world premiere of Dead Metaphor by George F. Walker. In New York, she has appeared in Spinning into Butter (Lincoln Center Theater), Macbeth with Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett (The Public Theater), It's My Party... with F. Murray Abraham and Joyce Van Patten (ArcLight Theatre), and Overruled (Drama League). Her other regional theatre credits include the world premieres of The Beard of Avon and The Hollow Lands at South Coast Repertory, as well as productions at Great Lakes Theater Festival, Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE, the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival, and Stage West. Film and television: The Battle Studies, Law & Order, Guiding Light, Another World, and Saint Maybe (HallMark Hall of Fame). As a 2011 Ten Chimneys Foundation Lunt-Fontanne Fellow, she was recognized for her extraordinary contributions to her community and to the overall quality of the American theatre. She is a graduate of Yale School of Drama.

Joe Manganiello (STANLEY KOWALSKI), a native of Pittsburgh, plays Alcide Herveaux on HBO's critically acclaimed True Blood and will appear alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington in David Ayer's film Sabotage in January. His other film and television credits Steven Soderbergh's wildly successful Magic Mike, Peter Parker's nemesis Flash Thompson in the Spider-Man trilogy directed by Sam Raimi, How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill, Two and a Half Men, White Collar, and ER. His theatre credits include Terrence McNally's Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Trip Cullman; Ojai Playwrights Festival, directed by Leonard Foglia), A Streetcar Named Desire (West Virginia Public Theatre), Drinking Games (finalist, HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival), Gloria Calderon Kellett's Wounded, and most recently, Tennessee Williams's Small Craft Warnings with William H. Macy (HERO Theatre benefit reading, Santa Monica). His first book, Evolution, will be published by Simon & Schuster in December. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and resides in Los Angeles.

Mark Rucker (DIRECTOR) previously directed the Yale Repertory Theatre productions of Twelfth Night, Landscape of the Body, The Cryptogram, Measure for Measure, The Imaginary Invalid, Kingdom of Earth, All's Well That Ends Well (with James Bundy), The Mistakes Madeline Made, and Rough Crossing. Mr. Rucker is the Associate Artistic Director at American Conservatory Theater, where he has directed mainstage productions of Maple and Vine; Higher; Once in a Lifetime; Marcus, or The Secret of Sweet; The Rainmaker; and The Beard of Avon. He is an Associate Artist at South Coast Repertory, where he has directed over 20 productions including world premieres by Richard Greenberg, Christopher Shinn, Annie Weisman, and Culture Clash. Other work includes productions at Magic Theatre, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Intiman Theatre, and The Old Globe. His first feature film, Die, Mommie, Die!, won a special jury prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. He is a graduate of UCLA and Yale School of Drama.

Yale Repertory Theatre has produced well over 100 premieres-including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists-by emerging and established playwrights. Eleven Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and eight Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Professional assignments at Yale Repertory Theatre are integral components of the program at Yale School of Drama, the nation's leading graduate theatre training conservatory.

Established in 2008, Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre is an artist-driven initiative that devotes major resources to the commissioning, development, and production of new plays and musicals at Yale Repertory Theatre and across the country. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than forty commissioned artists as well as the world premieres and subsequent productions of fifteen new American plays and musicals, including next season's The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, the Yale Rep-commissioned These Papers Bullets, and The House that will not Stand.

Other recent Binger Center-supported productions include Amy Herzog's critically acclaimed play, Belleville, a 2013 nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, currently running at New York Theatre Workshop, and The Realistic Joneses by Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Eno. Both Yale Rep-commissioned plays were cited among the year's Top Ten by The New York Times in 2011 and 2012 respectively. In the 2012-13 season, three productions were commissioned by Yale Rep and supported by the Binger Center: Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi, also seen at the American Repertory Theater; Sarah Ruhl's Dear Elizabeth, currently playing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and RoBert Woodruff and Bill Camp's new adaptation of Fassbinder's In a Year with 13 Moons. (For more information about the Binger Center for New Theatre, please visit www.yalerep.org/center.)

Photo Credit: RD / Cortes / Retna Digital