Pullman and Stiles Set for Taper's 'OLEANNA' 5/28 - 7/12

 Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles will star in David Mamet's OLEANNA at the Mark Taper Forum, it was announced today by Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie.
OLEANNA replaces the previously announced Uncle Vanya as the third production in the Taper's 2009 season at the Los Angeles Music Center, Thursday, May 28 through Sunday, July 12, 2009. Opening is set for Friday, June 5.

OLEANNA will be presented at the Taper in association with Jeffrey Finn.

Tony Award winner Doug Hughes will direct OLEANNA, the gripping account of a power struggle between a male university professor and one of his female students.

"We are happy to welcome Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles to the Taper, especially in OLEANNA, a play that is almost incendiary in its dramatic punch. David Mamet really provokes arguments with this play. It will be especially fun after the performances to stand in the Taper lobby and listen to the conversations."

Uncle Vanya was cancelled because "the casting we anticipated for this production did not come together as we had planned," said Ritchie.

OLEANNA is a two-character play by David Mamet about the power struggle between a university professor and one of his female students who accuses him of sexual harassment and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. The play's title, taken from a folk song, refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia. The play premiered in May 1992 in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the first production of Mamet's new Back Bay Theater Company with William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon in the title roles. The pair later appeared Off-Broadway as well. Macy later went on to star in the film version alongside Debra Eisenstadt. Stiles appeared in the 2004 London production opposite Aaron Eckhart.

With a major career in stage, film and television, Bill Pullman is perhaps best known for his roles in the films Independence Day, Lost Highway, Sleepless in Seattle, Ruthless People, While You Were Sleeping, The Grudge, Spaceballs, Scary Movie 4 and the recent Bottle Shock and Noble Son. On stage Pullman received a 2002 Drama Desk Award nomination when he starred opposite Mercedes Ruehl in Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway, and a second Drama Desk nomination for his appearance in Albee's Peter and Jerry in 2007 at Second Stage in New York. He was also nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for the 2006 Kennedy Center production of The Subject Was Roses.

Julia Stiles earned rave reviews in a previous production of OLEANNA in London's West End in 2004. Having begun her career in the Theater at a young age in New York City, her additional stage credits include the 2002 Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night as Viola, James Lapine's Fran's Bed at Playwrights Horizons and The Vagina Monologues. She made her cinematic debut at age 15 in I Love You, I Love You Not with Claire Danes. She followed this with many films, most notably, 10 Things I Hate About You, Save the Last Dance, Mona Lisa Smiles, two David Mamet films State and Main and Edmond and the three Bourne movies - The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.
David Mamet is the author of numerous plays including Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award, 2005 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play), American Buffalo, Boston Marriage, November and Speed-The-Plow, which is currently enjoying a hit revival production on Broadway. He has written the screenplays for such films as The Verdict, The Untouchables and Wag the Dog, and has twice been nominated for an Academy Award. He has written and directed 10 films including Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, House of Games, Spartan and Redbelt. He is co-creator and Executive Producer of the CBS television show "The Unit," and is a Founding Member of The Atlantic Theater Company.

Doug Hughes won the 2005 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lortel and Callaway awards for his direction of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt. His other Broadway credits include A Man for All Seasons, Mauritius, Inherit the Wind, A Touch of the Poet, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way and Frozen (Tony nomination). His many Off-Broadway productions include The Grey Zone (Obie Award), Flesh and Blood (Callaway Award), Farragut North, Howard Katz and The Paris Letter, and he's also directed numerous production for most of the nation's leading theatre companies. He's Resident Director of New York's Roundabout Theatre Company and in 2005 he won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence.

Center Theatre Group (CTG), a non-profit organization, is one of the largest and most active theatre companies in the nation, programming subscription seasons year-round at the 739-seat Mark Taper Forum and the 1,600 to 2,000-seat Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center of Los Angeles, and the 317-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

Tickets for OLEANNA will go on sale on Friday, February 27 and can be purchased by calling CTG Audience Services at (213) 628-2772 or online at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org or in person at the CTG box office located at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.