FAR FROM HEAVEN Musical to Play Williamstown Theater Festival This Summer; Opens Off-Broadway in 2013

Playwrights Horizons will present FAR FROM HEAVEN, a new musical with book by Tony Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain), music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel (Grey Gardens) and lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie (Grey Gardens, The Grapes of Wrath), in Spring 2013.  The show will also play Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer.

The musical was adapted from the acclaimed, award-winning 2002 Focus Features/Vulcan Productions motion picture Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes.   Casting has not yet been announced.

FAR FROM HEAVEN tells the story of Cathy Whitaker, a 1950s housewife living in suburban Hartford who watches as her seemingly perfect life begin to fall apart.  The film echoes "women's films" of the 1950s (especially those of Douglas Sirk, director of All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life) to tell a story that deals with complex contemporary issues including sexual and racial prejudice.
  
The original 2002 film, which stars Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert and Patricia Clarkson, has earned over 100 awards, honors and nominations.  It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Actress (Julianne Moore), Best Original Screenplay (Todd Haynes), Best Cinematography (Edward Lachman) and Best Original Score (Elmer Bernstein), and was named one of the 10 Best Movies of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly.  It was also named Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice, among many others.  Far From Heaven also earned 4 Golden Globe nominations including Best Screenplay, a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a bevy of additional awards for leading actress Julianne Moore, including one from the National Board of Review Award and nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes.
    
The full season is as follows:

DETROIT – the New York premiere of a new play by Lisa D’Amour (2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2011 Steinberg Playwright Award winner for this play, Obie Award winner for Nita and Zita), directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman (Maple and Vine at Playwrights Horizons, The Thugs, Stunning, Naked Angels’ This Wide Night), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater. DETROIT will be the first production of the season, beginning performances in August 2012.

THE WHALE – the New York premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Samuel D. Hunter (A Bright New Boise), directed by Davis McCallum (A Bright New Boise, Queens Boulevard, Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue) presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.

THE GREAT GOD PAN – the World Premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog (After the Revolution at PH, 4000 Miles), directed by Carolyn Cantor (After the Revolution and Essential Self-Defense at PH, Pumpgirl, Orange Water Flower), the play will be presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.

THE FLICK – the World Premiere of a new play commissioned by Playwrights Horizons with funds from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, by Obie Award winner Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation at PH, The Aliens, Body Awareness), directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin and the upcoming The Big Meal at PH; Seminar on Broadway, The Aliens, The Coward), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.

THE CALL – the World Premiere of a new play by Tanya Barfield (Blue Door at PH), directed by Obie Award winner Leigh Silverman (Go Back to Where You Are and Blue Door for PH; Chinglish, Well, In the Wake), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.

FAR FROM HEAVEN – the World Premiere of a new musical commissioned by Playwrights Horizons under the auspices of the Playwrights Horizons Musicals in Partnership Initiative with leadership funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Through this initiative, FAR FROM HEAVEN will have a Preview Production run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer. The musical features a book by Tony Award winner & two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain), music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel (Grey Gardens at PH), lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie (Grey Gardens at PH, The Grapes of Wrath) and directed by three-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif (Grey Gardens at PH, Rent, Next to Normal, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…).

Three subscription packages to Playwrights Horizons’ 2012/2013 season will be available shortly: a 6-show Subscription package ($230, four Mainstage and two Peter Jay Sharp Theater productions); FlexPass (4+ tickets, $45-50 per ticket); and Membership ($55 membership fee + one ticket at $40 or less for each show, as desired). In addition, the company will continue to offer 30&Under Membership ($20 membership fee + one $20 ticket for each show, as desired); and Student Membership ($10 membership fee + one $10 ticket for each show, as desired). In addition to discounts on all Mainstage season attractions, subscribers receive priority booking and seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins. Packages will be available at www.TicketCentral.com shortly.

Playwrights Horizons is a writer’s theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work. Under the leadership of artistic director Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, the theater company continues to encourage the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. In its 41 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, including a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.” Notable productions include five Pulitzer Prize winners: Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2011 winner), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George – as well as Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (three 2010 Obie Awards including Best New American Play), Bathsheba Doran’s Kin, Adam Bock’s A Small Fire, Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I, Melissa James Gibson’s This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist), Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie’s Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas’s Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp’s Kindness, Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, David Greenspan’s She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins, William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room, A.R. Gurney’s Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet.

Playwrights Horizons’ season productions are generously supported in part by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Time Warner Inc., the Charina Endowment Fund and the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.