Juilliard's Drama Division Announces Complete Schedule of Plays for the 2012-2013 Season

Juilliard's Drama Division announces the complete schedule for its 2012-2013 season of fully-staged productions featuring students in their fourth and final year of acting training in the drama program at Juilliard. This season's plays include Juilliard's Lila Wallace Acheson Playwrights Program alumnus Stephen Belber's McReele, directed by Sam Buntrock, October 17-21, 2012; Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House, directed byMarcela Lorca, November 8-12, 2012; and Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, which won four Tony Awards and one Academy Award for original screenplay and will be directed by Pam Berlin, December 6-10, 2012. All performances take place in the Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater at Juilliard (155 West 65^th Street, 4^th Floor).

Juilliard's Drama Division also presents 4^th year repertory in February 2013, which includes Williams in Transit, short plays by Tennessee Williams, 1943-1973, directed by Jonathan Rosenberg; Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog, which won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 after the play premiered at Lincoln Center Theater, directed by Erica Schmidt; and William Shakespeare'sPericles, directed by Orlando Pabotoy. (The complete schedule with synopses follows at the end of this press release.)

Juilliard fourth-year actors (Group 42) appearing in these productions are: Helen Cespedes, Fiona Cheung, Tom Datnow, Phoebe Dunn, Adam Farabee, Danny Hernandez, Jenny Leona, Katharine Luray, Michael James Shaw, Ali Sohaili, Andrea Syglowski, Jeremy Tardy, Natasha Warner, Kerry Warren, Noah Witke, and Katherine Ella Wood.

While Juilliard Drama Division performances aren't open for review, we invite you to enjoy these productions featuring the next generation of American actors. FREE tickets will be available to the public for each production, two weeks prior to the opening date of each show, and a wait list for each performance will begin one hour prior to the start of the show. For more information, call the Janet and Leonard Kramer Box Office at Juilliard at (212) 769-7406 or visit the Web site at www.juilliard.edu.

Juilliard's Drama Division, co-founded in 1968 by John Houseman and Michel St. Denis, offers a four-year BFA in Drama, an undergraduate Diploma, and beginning this fall, a new MFA in Drama program. In its 40-plus year history, the Drama Division has developed the talents of some of our most distinguished artists of stage and screen; they work across the country and internationally, acting, directing, writing, and teaching. Under the current leadership of Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division, James Houghton, the Juilliard Drama Division continues to uphold the best traditions of classical training and repertory while making the creation of new work one of the cornerstones of the program.

The Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, created in 1993, has been led by Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang since 1994. Other esteemed playwrights who have led Juilliard's up-and-coming writers include John Guare and Terrence McNally, who co-created the program with Drama Division Director Michael Kahn, as well as Jon Robin Baitz and Romulus Linney. The program is now in its 19^th season and offers one-year, tuition-free, graduate level fellowships to four to five new writers each year. Alumni of the program include: David Lindsay-Abaire, who received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole in 2007 and David Auburn, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Proof in 2001. Other notable alumni recognition includes Guggenheim Fellow, Steinberg Playwright and Whiting Writers' Award winner, Bathsheba Doran; Olivier Award and Susan Smith Blackburn Award recipient, Katori Hall; Obie Award winner Sam Hunter; Helen Merrill and Lilly Awards winner, Deborah Zoe Laufer; and Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of the Benjamin H. Danks Award in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Adam Rapp.