Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave Star in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's THE REVISIONIST, Feb 6-March 31

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Artistic Director David Van Asselt and Managing Director Brian Long have announced that Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave will star in the world premiere of Eisenberg's The Revisionist, directed by Kip Fagan, which begins its limited run on Wednesday, February 6 and opens Thursday, February 21 at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street. The Revisionist is scheduled to run through March 31, 2013.

In The Revisionist David (Eisenberg) arrives in Poland with a crippling case of writer's block and a desire to be left alone. His 75-year-old second cousin Maria (Redgrave) welcomes him with a fervent need to connect with her distant American family. As their tenuous relationship develops, she reveals details about her complicated post-war past that tests their ideas of what it means to be a family.

Jesse Eisenberg most recently wrote and starred in Rattlestick's Asuncion at the Cherry Lane Theatre, for which he was nominated for a Drama League Award. He has appeared in the films The Social Network (Oscar nomination), Zombieland, Adventureland (BAFTA nomination), The Squid and the Whale, and Roger Dodger. He is also a contributing writer for McSweeney's and his humor essays have appeared in Harper's and The New York Times.

Vanessa Redgrave was Guest Director of the Brighton Festival 2012. During the Festival she directed and narrated with Nadim Sawalha & Najla Said, a play with music and a girls' choir, devised by Vanessa and Mariam C. Said, based on the memoir of Mariam's mother Wadad Makdisi Cortas, a devoted teacher and principal of a girls' school in Beirut, Lebanon. This was presented at the Theatre Royal, Brighton in May, 2012. In June 2012 in Dublin, Vanessa recited the Seamus Heaney poem "The Republic of Conscience" for the Amnesty International Concert for Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the Ambassador of Conscience Award from Bono. Ms. Redgrave was last on Broadway in the 2010-2011 season with James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines in Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy, directed by David Esbjornson. In the 2007 season she was seen in Joan Didion's play The Year of Magical Thinking, directed by Sir David Hare. She appears in a new film with Terence Stamp, Song for Marion, screened at the TIFF Festival in Toronto September 2012, and also on October 19, 2012 at the London Film Festival. Coriolanus, the film starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes, in which Vanessa plays Volumnia, the mother of Shakespeare's warrior, was also screened at these festivals in 2011. One of Vanessa's favorite roles is in "Letters to Juliet" directed by Gary Winnick, filmed in Italy in 2009, and also in The Whistleblower with Rachel Weisz, released 2011. Ms. Redgrave's television movies include "Playing for Time," "Second Serve," "If These Walls Could Talk 2," and "The Gathering Storm," and her numerous film credits include Morgan; A Man for All Seasons; Isadora; Mary, Queen of Scots; Murder on the Orient Express; The Bostonians; Prick Up Your Ears; Howards End; Mission: Impossible; and Julia for which she received the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Los Angeles Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. In September 2012 Ms. Redgrave received UNICEF Germany's Award for Children's Rights in Frankfurt. She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1995, and was UNICEF-UK Special Representative 1993-1995.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theateris a multi-award-winning company which has produced over sixty world premieres in the past seventeen seasons and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for developing new and innovative work. Previous plays include Two Boys in a Bed, Message to Michael, Carpool, Volunteer Man, A Trip to the Beach, Ascendancy, Stuck, Vick's Boy, The Messenger, Saved or Destroyed, Neil's Garden, My Special Friend, Faster, Bliss, St. Crispin's Day, Where We're Born, Five Flights, Boise, Finer Noble Gases, God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, Miss Julie, Acts of Mercy: passion-play, Cagelove, It Goes Without Saying, Dark Matters, Stay, American Sligo, Rag and Bone, War, Geometry of Fire, That Pretty Pretty or The Rape Play, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, Little Doc, underneathmybed, There Are No More Big Secrets, The Hallway Trilogy, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, The Wood, Asuncion, Horsedreams, Yosemite, Massacre (Sing to Your Children), 3C, the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June, Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee - Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee – Outstanding Play of 2008), as well as The Aliens by Annie Baker (2010 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play).

The Revisionist will play Tuesday-Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, Sunday at 3pm at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, two blocks below Bleecker Street. Tickets are available now and may be purchased at www.TheRevisionistPlay.com or by phoning OvationTix at 866.811.4111. Individual tickets are $85, and discounts are available for groups by calling Rattlestick at 212.627.2556. Season memberships are available at www.Rattlestick.org and include tickets to The Revisionist. Rattlestick also has specially priced memberships available for students, patrons under 30 years old, and theater artists. Handicapped accessible seating is available at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.