Atlantic Theatre Company to Feature HAPPY HOUR, CQ/CX, et al. in 2011-12 Season

Atlantic Theater Company just announced its 2011-2012 season productions, featuring world premieres from Academy Award® winner Ethan Coen, Fernanda Coppel, Gabe McKinley, Adam Rapp, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley, as well as a U.S. premiere from Simon Stephens starring Olivier Award winner Simon Russell Beale.

As Atlantic prepares to reveal its newly-renovated home at the Linda Gross Theater with the world premiere of John Patrick Shanley's SLEEPING DEMON as the final main stage production of the 2011-2012 season, the rest of the season's main stage productions will be performed at the off-Broadway stages of Classic Stage Company and Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space.

The 2011-2012 season begins at Atlantic Stage 2, the company's state-of-the-art Second Stage, with the U.S. premiere of BLUEBIRD, by Simon Stephens (On the Shore of the Wide World), making his New York and Atlantic debut. Also making her Atlantic debut is director Gaye Taylor Upchurch, who recently staged Language of Angels at the Lincoln Center Institute and is Associate Director of The Bridge Project. Tony Award nominee Simon Russell Beale leads a cast featuring Michael Countryman, Charlotte Parry, Tobias Segal, John Sharian, and Atlantic company members Kate Blumberg, Mary McCann and Todd Weeks.

Obie Award-winning playwright Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter) makes his Atlantic debut with the world premiere of DREAMS OF FLYING DREAMS OF FALLING, directed by Atlantic Theater Company Artistic Director Neil Pepe. This first main stage production of the season opens at Classic Stage Company this fall.

Academy Award® winning filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) returns to Atlantic with his third world premiere play HAPPY HOUR, directed by Neil Pepe, who also staged Coen's hit comedies Almost an Evening and Offices at Atlantic. HAPPY HOUR will be staged this winter at Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space.

Next up in the Peter Norton Space is Atlantic's main stage production of CQ/CX, a world premiere by Gabe McKinley, whose critically acclaimed play Extinction was recently produced Off-Broadway. McKinley makes his Atlantic debut with CQ/CX.

The 2011-2012 season continues at Atlantic Stage 2 with CHIMICHANGAS AND ZOLOFT by Fernanda Coppel (The Leak), making her Atlantic debut. CHIMICHANGAS AND ZOLOFT will be directed by Jaime Castañeda, who returns to Atlantic after directing new plays by David Mamet and Edwin Sanchez for the 10x25 one-act festival this spring.

Atlantic concludes its 2011-2012 season with a return to its main stage home at the Linda Gross Theater, where Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner John Patrick Shanley's play SLEEPING DEMON will receive its world premiere. Shanley (Doubt) is also making his Atlantic Theater Company debut.

2011 - 2012 Atlantic Theater Company SEASON

At Atlantic Stage 2
U.S. PREMIERE

BLUEBIRD
By Simon Stephens
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch

Jimmy MacNeill (Beale) is a London taxi driver who seems to draw personal stories and confessions from his passengers without even trying. Over the course of Simon Stephens' meticulously observed and deeply compassionate play, the truth of Jimmy's own life and secret burdens unfurls with each new "fare." In this acclaimed early play, the first of several he has since had produced at The Royal Court Theatre, Stephens illuminates big questions about how we transcend our own mistakes, and the value and cost of intimacy. He is an unparalleled observer of the small details that unlock joy and pain for the throngs of people anonymously going about their business in the big city.

At Classic Stage Company
WORLD PREMIERE

DREAMS OF FLYING DREAMS OF FALLING
By Adam Rapp
Directed by Neil Pepe

Something is not right in the world. The sky is a strange color, and there are geese bombarding the Connecticut home of Sandra and Bertram Cabot. In this surreal new play, Adam Rapp lifts the veil on the lives of two wealthy American families, and shows us how even the most polished among us can behave like animals.

At Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space
WORLD PREMIERE

HAPPY HOUR
By Ethan Coen
Directed by Neil Pepe

Ethan Coen returns to Atlantic with this world premiere, following the success of his hit comedies Almost an Evening and Offices. An embittered barfly has a theory-or two-about what the world has become. A lonely young man and lonely young woman can't see how right they are for each other. His motel room is so ugly a business traveler wants to end it all. Your life could be worse-and these three one-act comedies show you how.

At Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space
WORLD PREMIERE

CQ/CX
By Gabe McKinley

Jay, an up and coming black reporter at the New York Times, finds his dreams of becoming a famous journalist come crashing down as he becomes the center of a plagiarism scandal. Drawing on his own experience as a newsman, McKinley weaves a revealing and complex story about the collateral damage of unchecked ambition and compounded lies. In this new play inspired by real events, truth becomes slippery and racial tensions reach a boiling point. CQ/CX raises difficult questions about the state of our media culture, and the meaning and price of journalistic integrity.

At Atlantic Stage 2
WORLD PREMIERE

CHIMICHANGAS AND ZOLOFT
By Fernanda Coppel
Directed by Jaime Castañeda

Suffering from a profound sense of disappointment after her 40th birthday, Sonia flees her family and goes on a binge of prescription Zoloft and greasy chimichangas. Sonia's rebellious daughter Jackie and her best friend Penelope hatch a plan to lure Sonia back home, while their fathers struggle with a secret association of their own. This irreverent story examines the search for happiness and the mysteries of sexuality through the eyes of two brazen teenagers.

At The Linda Gross Theater
WORLD PREMIERE

SLEEPING DEMON
By John Patrick Shanley

SLEEPING DEMON is the final installment of the trilogy called CHURCH AND STATE, which began with Doubt. The story concerns a Bronx Borough President who is forced, by the mortgage crisis, into a confrontation with a local minister. The question they confront is one that faces us all. What is the relationship between spiritual experience and social action?

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 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 2010-2011 season opened with the world premiere of Bottom of the World from Lucy Thurber at Atlantic Stage 2, followed by a return to the work of Tony Award® and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter with a double-bill of plays The Collection and A Kind of Alaska at Classic Stage Company, which was honored with a Drama Desk nomination, a Drama League nomination, and a Lucille Lortel nomination. Pulitzer and Tony Award® winner David Auburn made his Atlantic debut with a world premiere adaptation of Langdon Mitchell's classic comedy The New York Idea at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The U.S. premiere of Jenny Worton's adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award® winning film Through a Glass Darkly opened at New York Theatre Workshop to critical acclaim. Atlantic concluded the season with 10x25, a 25th anniversary one-act festival at Atlantic Stage 2 that reunited a who's who of Atlantic alumni playwrights, directors and actors.

The 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 130 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.

ATLANTIC STAGE 2 is located at 330 West 16th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues). Tickets for Atlantic Stage 2 production are $55 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).

Signature Theatre COMPANY'S PETER NORTON SPACE is located at 555 West 42nd Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues).

Atlantic Memberships start at just $65 and allows you to purchase one $35 ticket to each Atlantic Mainstage production, one $25 ticket to each Atlantic Stage 2 production, discounts to Atlantic for Kids productions and free admission to Atlantic readings.

Call TICKET CENTRAL at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com to become an Atlantic Member.

 

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos