Elizabeth Olsen to Star in Classic Stage Company's ROMEO & JULIET

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, announced today that they will kick off their 2013/2014 season with a new production of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet next fall starring rising actress Elizabeth Olsen. Additional casting and creative team will be announced in the coming weeks.

Elizabeth Olsen had two films premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival: "Liberal Arts" in which she stars as 'Zibby' opposite Josh Radnor, John Magaro, Zac Efron and Richard Jenkins and "Red Lights, in which she stars opposite Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver. In spring of 2012 Olsen starred in the independent film "Silent House" from Open Road Films. Olsen also began production on two films; "Therese Raquin" opposite Glenn Close and "Very Good Girls," opposite Dakota Fanning directed by Naomi Foner.

In 2011 Olsen received a Gotham Award, Critics Choice, and Independent Spirit Award nomination for Lead Actress for her performance in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" from Fox Searchlight opposite Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, and Brady Corbet. "Martha Marcy May Marlene "was also selected in the Un Certain Regard as part of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. She has been nominated for her performance from the following critic associations: St. Louis, Las Vegas, Houston, FIND Spirit, San Diego, IPA, and Detroit. She won Best Actress from the Indiana Critics Association.

Currently Olsen is filming the Spike Lee-directed film, "Old Boy "opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Brolin. The film centers on an everyday man that has only five days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 15 years without any explanation. The film is set to release in October of 2013. Olsen currently resides in New York, where she is a student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Romeo & Juliet continues CSC's ongoing exploration of the works of William Shakespeare which has included critically acclaimed productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Bebe Neuwirth and Taylor Mac, The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin and Hamlet with Michael Cumpsty (for which he received an Obie Award for his performance).

CSC is currently featuring the critically-acclaimed production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's PASSION, directed by John Doyle, and featuring Melissa Errico, Judy Kuhn and Ryan Silver, through April 14. CSC began its current season with Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, starring Ethan Hawke, Joely Richardson and Juliet Rylance, directed by Austin Pendleton. Following Passion, CSC's Mainstage season wraps up in May with Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle starring Christopher Lloyd and featuring a new score by Tony Award-winning singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening). Directed by Brian Kulick (who directed this past season's sold-out production of Brecht's Galileo starring F. Murray Abraham at CSC), Brecht's playful parable calls into question our basic assumptions of right in a world that has gone wrong.

Classic Stage Company is the award-winning theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience. Founded in 1967, CSC uses works of the past as a way to engage in the issues of today. Highly respected and widely regarded as a major force in American theatre, it has become the home to New York's finest established and emerging artists, the place where they gather to grapple with the great works of the world's repertory from Sophocles to Sondheim. CSC has been cited repeatedly by all the major Off-Broadway theater awards: Obies, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and the 1999 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work.

Last season, CSC presented critically-acclaimed productions of The Cherry Orchard with John Turturro and Dianne Wiest, which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival; Bertolt Brecht's Galileo starring Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham, directed by Brian Kulick; and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Bebe Neuwirth and Christina Ricci, directed by Tony Speciale. Past seasons have included critically-acclaimed productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Rylance and Peter Sarsgaard, directed by Austin Pendleton (Obie Award); David Ives' The School for Lies with Hamish Linklater (Obie Award), directed by Walter Bobbie; Unnatural Acts, conceived and directed by Tony Speciale; Ostrovsky's The Forest with Dianne Wiest and John Douglas Thompson, directed by Brian Kulick; David Ives' Venus In Fur with Nina Arianda and Wes Bentley, directed by Walter Bobbie; Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin, directed by Brian Kulick; Chekhov's Uncle Vanya with Denis O'Hare, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, directed by Austin Pendleton; Anne Carson's An Oresteia (International PEN Award for Poetry); Chekhov's The Seagull with Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; David Ives' New Jerusalem with Richard Easton, directed by Walter Bobbie; Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III with Michael Cumpsty (Obie Award as Hamlet), directed by Brian Kulick; and Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play with Zoe Caldwell, directed by John Turturro.

Photo credit: REX USA