Roundabout Theatre Company announced that Julia Cho and Kimberly Rosenstock will be coming to the not-for-profit institution with the announcement of their new plays as part of the fall 2010 season at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street).
Julia Cho's play The Language Archive will be directed by Roundabout Associate Artist Mark Brokaw at the Laura Pels Theatre. Roundabout commissioned The Language Archive, which won the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize awarded to an outstanding new English-language play by a woman.
Kimberly Rosenstock's play Tigers Be Still will be directed by Sam Gold at the Black Box theatre as part of Roundabout Underground. Roundabout Underground is an initiative to showcase new plays that will either allow an experienced director to go back to his/her creative roots or give a debut production to an emerging writer or director.
Roundabout also announces a new subsidiary rights practice for playwrights at the Steinberg Center. The practice involves Roundabout voluntarily foregoing its subsidiary rights participation for its regular runs at the Laura Pels Theatre, that began with Theresa Rebeck's The Understudy, and at the Black Box Theatre, regardless of the length of the run. In announcing this new policy, Todd Haimes stated, "I've always intended for the Steinberg Center primarily to be our home for new plays. I want that home to reflect the needs of the artists, and, for playwrights, we've concluded that this means foregoing our customary participation in subsidiary rights Off-Broadway. Making this change is just one part of how I see us continuing our commitment to new work and, most importantly, to living writers."
THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE at Laura Pels Theatre:
The Language Archive is a poignant and quirky comedy that seems to prove love is the one language that can leave us all at a loss for words. George is a man consumed with preserving and documenting the dying languages of far-flung cultures. Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.
The cast and design team will be announced shortly.
Roundabout Theatre Company commissioned the play, which was made possible by a generous grant from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation's Theatre Visions Fund Award. The play will have its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California from March 25th-April 25th, 2010 before traveling to Roundabout.
Julia Cho (Playwright) is the author of The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories, which have been produced at SCR, The Vineyard Theatre, The Public Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, East West Players and The Theatre @ Boston Court among others. An alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Ms. Cho is a member of New Dramatists.
Mark Brokaw (Director). For the Roundabout: After Miss Julie, Distracted, Suddenly Last Summer, The Constant Wife. Other Broadway: Reckless and the musical Cry-Baby. New York premieres include Mouth to Mouth, This is Our Youth (New Group); The Long Christmas Ride Home, Stranger, The Dying Gaul, How I Learned to Drive, (Vineyard Theatre); The Busy World is Hushed and Lobby Hero (Playwrights Horizons); As Bees in Honey Drown (Drama Dept.); The Good Times are Killing Me (Second Stage); Old Money (Lincoln Center); 2.5 Minute Ride (Public). Other work includes Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, La Jolla, Steppenwolf, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, New York Stage & Film, Sundance and the O'Neill Conference. He has also directed at London's Donmar Warehouse and Dublin's Gate Theatre. Mark is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre.
