Atlantic Theater to Feature Works by Auburn, Coen, Pinter and More in 2010-2011 Season

Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director, Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) has announced its 25th Anniversary season productions. The 2010-2011 season will feature world premieres from Academy Award® winner Ethan Coen, Pulitzer and Tony Award® winner David Auburn, Lucy Thurber, a return to the work of Tony Award® and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter and a 25th anniversary one-act festival that will reunite a who's who of Atlantic alumni playwrights, directors and actors.

As Atlantic prepares for its next 25 years and beyond with a first time ever renovation of its main stage home at the Linda Gross Theater, its 2010-2011 productions will be performed at satellite Off-Broadway stages including Classic Stage Company, The Lucille Lortel Theatre and at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

The 2010-2011 season begins at Atlantic Stage 2, the company's state-of-the-art Second Stage, with the world premiere of BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, by Lucy Thurber, who returns to Atlantic following her acclaimed play Scarcity. Irish director Caitriona McLaughlin stages the new play after working with the playwright Off-Broadway last season.

Atlantic returns to the work of Tony Award® and Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter with THE COLLECTION & A KIND OF ALASKA: TWO PLAYS BY Harold Pinter following its critically hailed 2005 production of his first and last plays The Room and Celebration. This first main stage production opens at Classic Stage Company this fall.

A new world premiere adaptation of Langdon Mitchell's 1906 comedy THE NEW YORK IDEA by Tony Award® and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Auburn (Proof). This Atlantic commission will play at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the Spring.

Academy Award® winning filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) returns to Atlantic with his third world premiere production FOUR PICKUPS, directed by Neil Pepe, who also staged Coen's hit comedies Almost an Evening and Offices. This special co-production with St. Ann's Warehouse will be performed in their flexible DUMBO, Brooklyn space in April.

Atlantic concludes its 2010-2011 season at Atlantic Stage 2 with 10X25, a one act festival debuting world premiere short plays that will reunite a host of notable playwrights, directors and actors who have worked at the company over the past twenty five seasons.

In addition to its 2010-2011 season, Atlantic Theater Company subscribers will have exclusive access to the upcoming world premiere Broadway production of Atlantic co-founder David Mamet's play A LIFE IN THE THEATRE starring Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight, which also marks Atlantic artistic director Neil Pepe's return to Broadway following his critically acclaimed staging of Mamet's Speed-the-Plow.

2010 - 2011 Atlantic Theater Company SEASON

AT ATLANTIC STAGE 2
WORLD PREMIERE

BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

By Lucy Thurber, Directed by Caitriona McLaughlin

Heartbroken over the sudden death of her sister, Kate, Abby delves into the world of Kate's final novel to deal with her grief and somehow move on. As the lines blur between the fictional world and her own reality, Abby attempts to make sense of life and death in this funny and poignant play.

AT Classic Stage Company
WORLD PREMIERE

THE COLLECTION & A KIND OF ALASKA: TWO PLAYS BY Harold Pinter

By Harold Pinter

Atlantic eagerly returns to the work of Harold Pinter, several seasons after its acclaimed production of his first and last plays, The Room and Celebration. Here again, the plays are separated chronologically by many years; both, however, are steeped in the author's signature humor, mystery and psychological tension. In The Collection (1962), a 4:00am phone call and a surprise visitor set off a series of conversations about potential infidelities among two couples. And a middle-aged woman who has been asleep in a hospital room awakens after thirty years and must reorient herself to a greatly changed world in A Kind of Alaska (1982), which was inspired by the work of Oliver Sacks in his seminal book, Awakenings.

AT Lucille Lortel THEATRE
WORLD PREMIERE ADAPTATION

THE NEW YORK IDEA

Adaptation by David Auburn from the original play by Langdon Mitchell

Atlantic Commission

Cynthia Karslake is a freewheeling young divorcee in 1906 New York City society. She has decided to settle down again into a much more stable, reliable relationship with the prominent Judge Philip Phillimore. Little does she know, however, that neither of their impetuous and blowsy ex-spouses, nor her beloved race horse Cynthia K is yet down for the count. In this sharp-tongued comedy, David Auburn sheds vibrant new light on a little known play from a century ago that offers a surprisingly contemporary look at social mores, status and attitudes about sex and divorce in upper crust New York.

CO-PRODUCTION WITH St. Ann's Warehouse
WORLD PREMIERE

FOUR PICKUPS

By Ethan Coen, Directed by Neil Pepe

Ethan Coen returns to Atlantic following the success of his hit comedies Almost an Evening and Offices with the world premiere of four short plays centered around pickup trucks. Atlantic is thrilled to present them in a special co-production with St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

AT ATLANTIC STAGE 2
WORLD PREMIERE

10 X 25 ONE ACT FESTIVAL

Atlantic Theater Company concludes its 25th Anniversary season with a major celebration of its history with 10X25, an all-commissioned series of evenings of short plays by twenty five of the extraordinary playwrights who have been produced there since 1985. 10X25 will unite and reunite Atlantic ensemble members, playwrights, and frequent guest actors and directors in three separate evenings of ten minute plays which will run the gamut of theatrical styles and content. Playwrights already confirmed to participate include Leslie Ayvazian, Annie Baker, Stephen Belber, Bekah Brunstetter, Moira Buffini, Kia Corthron, Tom Donaghy, John Guare, Peter Hedges, Kevin Heelan, Tin Howe, Craig Lucas, David Mamet, Peter Parnell, Keith Reddin, Kate Robin, Kate Moira Ryan, Eddie Sanchez, Lucy Thurber, and Jeff Whitty.

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David Auburn (Playwright). Plays include Proof (2001 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award® and New York Drama Critics Circle Award), Amateurs and An Upset (EST Marathons), The Journals of Mihail Sebastian, and Skyscraper. Recent film work includes The Girl in the Park (writer/director).

Ethan Coen (Playwright) returns to Atlantic with his third world premiere production. He made his Off-Broadway debut as a playwright with the sold out world premiere of Almost an Evening at Atlantic 2007 and returned the following season with the world premiere hit comedy Offices, both directed by Neil Pepe. He has written a collection of stories, Gates of Eden and a collection of poems, The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way. With his brother, Joel, Ethan Coen has made thirteen movies including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Burn after Reading, A Serious Man and the Academy Award® winning film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Their next movie, to be released at Christmas, is an adaptation of Charles Portis's True Grit.

CAITRIONA MC LAUGHLIN (Director) is an Irish theatre director currently based in London. Recent productions include Still, the Blackbird Sings by Dave Duggan (Playhouse Derry and Irish Tour, 2010), Killers and other Family by Lucy Thurber (Rattlestick Theatre), The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar (Farquhar festival, Blue Eagle Theatre Company). Previous directing work includes The New Statesman (Ambassadors Theatre Group and No.1 Tour), Shadowbox (Southwark Playhouse), Masks and Faces, Frank Pig Says Hello, Allports Revenge and Lullabies of Broadmoor (The Finborough Theatre) and Roman Nights, Modern Man and Pete n Me (The New End Theatre, London). Caitriona was awarded a Clore Fellowship in 2007 and spent time on secondment at The Royal Court Theatre in London before becoming Associate Director of The Playground Studio in London.

LANGDON ELWYN MITCHELL (Playwright). (1862-1935) American playwright and poet. He was born in Philadelphia, he studied in Dresden and Paris, attended the Harvard and Columbia law schools and was admitted to the New York bar in 1886. He often wrote under the pen name of John Philip Varley, and his plays include In the Season (London, 1893), Becky Sharp (1899), a dramatization of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and The New York Idea. Mitchell became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The world premiere of The New York Idea opened at The Lyric Theatre in November of 1906, and ran until January of 1907. It was notably produced and staged by Harrison Fiske as a star vehicle for his famous wife, Mrs. Fiske.

Neil Pepe (Director) made his acclaimed Broadway debut with the hit revival of Atlantic co-founder David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and this fall will stage the playwright's A Life in the Theatre starring Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight on Broadway. Last winter, he directed Frank Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses with Martin Sheen and Frances Conroy at the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. He has also directed Ethan Coen's Almost an Evening and Offices at the Atlantic where he has been the Artistic Director since 1992. Previous productions at the Atlantic include David Mamet's Keep Your Pantheon and School; David Pittu's What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling; David Mamet's American Buffalo starring William H. Macy (also Donmar Warehouse, London); Harold Pinter's Celebration and The Room; David Mamet's Romance (also Mark Taper Forum, L.A.); Jez Butterworth's Mojo, The Night Heron and Parlour Song; Milos by John Guare; Tom Donaghy's The Beginning of August (also South Coast Rep.); Howard Korder's Sea of Tranquility; Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange; Hilary Bell's Wolf Lullaby; Edwin Sanchez's Clean; and Quincy Long's Shaker Heights. Other credits include David Mamet's Keep Your Pantheon and The Duck Variations (Center Theatre Group, L.A.); Further than the Furthest Thing by Zinnie Harris (Manhattan Theatre Club); Eric Bogosian's Red Angel (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and Jessica Goldberg's Refuge (Playwrights Horizons).

Harold Pinter (Playwright) was born in London in 1930 and died on Christmas Eve, 2008. He was married to Antonia Fraser. He wrote twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Sleuth, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000. In 2005 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other awards include the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, the Legion D'Honneur, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. He received honorary degrees from eighteen universities.

Lucy Thurber (Playwright) is the author of eight plays: Where We're Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity and Dillingham City. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity, and developed Bottom of the World at Perry-Mansfield in 2009. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We're Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay, and produced a critically acclaimed revival of Killlers and Other Family in 2009, directed by Caitriona McLaughlin. Lucy has twice collaborated with the director Lear deBessonet , both on Quixote, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community in Philadelphia, and also on her play Monstrosity for 13P. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre, and acting editions of her work are published by Dramatists Play Service. A member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages, she was also the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and is developing a new musical with Bigheart productions, Lear deBessonet and The Citizen's Band. Lucy currently teaches writing at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) is the award winning Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to producing great plays simply and truthfully utilizing an artistic ensemble. Atlantic believes that the story of the play and the intent of the playwright are at the core of the creative process. Atlantic maintains an ensemble of acclaimed actors, writers and directors including Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and director David Mamet and Academy Award® nominated actor William H. Macy who founded Atlantic twenty five years ago in 1985.

Atlantic and Neil Pepe were awarded a 2009 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Body of Work last season for "exceptional craftsmanship, dedication to excellence and productions that engage, inspire and enlighten." In 2006, Atlantic was awarded the Lucille Lortel Prize for Outstanding Body of Work as its critically acclaimed production of Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant Of Inishmore transferred to Broadway, where it was nominated for five 2006 Tony Awards® including Best Play.

Atlantic's acclaimed world premiere production of its first musical Spring Awakening, with music by Duncan Sheik, book and lyrics by Steven Sater and direction by Michael Mayer, won 8 Tony Awards®, including Best Musical.

Atlantic's 2009-2010 season featured Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet returning to the company he founded with a double bill of one-act plays - the world premiere of School and the New York premiere of Keep Your Pantheon, directed by Neil Pepe; fellow Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Sam Shepard made his Atlantic debut with the U.S. premiere of The Abbey Theatre's production of Ages of the Moon, starring Stephen Rea and Sean McGinley; Bekah Brunstetter made her Off-Broadway debut with the world premiere of Oohrah!; the critically acclaimed American premiere of Moira Buffini's play Gabriel directed by David Esbjornson and starring Tony Award® nominee Zach Grenier and Lisa Emery; and the extended sold out world premiere engagement of Stephen Belber's play Dusk Rings a Bell, directed by Sam Gold and starring Paul Sparks and Kate Walsh.

In the 2008-2009 season, Atlantic and Druid's critically acclaimed production of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by Tony Award® winner Garry Hynes, was extended three times and received four 2009 Lucille Lortel Award nominations including Outstanding Revival, three Outer Critics Circle Award nominations including Outstanding Revival, a Drama League Award nomination for Distinguished Revival, and was awarded a 2009 Lortel for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Since its inception, Atlantic has produced over 125 productions including the Tony Award® winning play The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the world premieres of Academy Award® winner Ethan Coen's comedies Almost an Evening and Offices, Annie Baker's Body Awareness, Woody Allen's A Second Hand Memory and Writer's Block, David Mamet's Romance and his adaptations of The Voysey Inheritance and Dangerous Corner, the musicals Spring Awakening and 10 Million Miles with music by Patty Griffin and book by Keith Bunin, Conor McPherson's Port Authority, Peter Parnell's Trumpery, Jez Butterworth's Parlour Song, Craig Lucas' Missing Persons and This Thing of Darkness, Lucy Thurber's Scarcity, Howard Korder's Boys Life, The Lights and Sea of Tranquility, Beau Willimon's Farragut North, Bekah Brunstetter's Oohrah!, David Pittu's What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling, Tina Howe's translations of Ionesco's Bald Soprano and The Lesson, Kevin Heelan's Distant Fires, Leslie Ayvazian's Make Me, Tom Donaghy's Minutes From The Blue Route, Edwin Sanchez's Trafficking in Broken Hearts and Clean, the American premieres of Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol, Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron, the New York premieres of Jez Butterworth's Mojo, Rolin Jones' The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and Peter Parnell's The Cider House Rules as well as revivals of David Mamet's American Buffalo and Edmond, Harold Pinter's The Hothouse and the double bill of Celebration and The Room and Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice.

Tickets for main stage productions are $65.00 and available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 (ticketcentral.com).

ATLANTIC STAGE 2 is located at 330 West 16th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues). Tickets for Atlantic Stage 2 production are $45 and available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 (ticketcentral.com).

Classic Stage Company is located at 136 East 13th Street (between Third and Fourth Avenues).

THE Lucille Lortel THEATRE is located at 121 Christopher Street (between Seventh Avenue South and Hudson Street).

St. Ann's Warehouse is located in DU­MBO, Brooklyn between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges at 38 Water Street­ at the corner of Water Street and Dock Street.

BECOME A MEMBER OF Atlantic Theater Company AND GET $35 TICKETS

CALL TICKET CENTRAL at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com to sign up

Purchase an "All -In-One Membership" and see every main stage and Atlantic Stage 2 production for $195 (plus an $8 service charge).

For general inquiries and/or group sales for both theaters call 212-645-1242. www.atlantictheater.org.