Karen Allen Set to Lead Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's A SUMMER DAY; Opens 10/25

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Artistic Director David Van Asselt and Managing Director Brian Long have announced that Karen Allen will star in the American premiere of Jon Fosse's A Summer Day, translated and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde, which begins performances Wednesday, October 10 and opens Thursday, October 25 at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

A visit to an old friend sparks the memory of a visit years earlier and the mysterious disappearance of a loved one. Set in two time periods in the same idyllic house, A Summer Day evokes the nostalgia of the end of an affair, capturing love both in the moment and as a distant memory. Acclaimed Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, widely considered to be one of the world's greatest living playwrights, receives an American premiere with this deep meditation on the nature of loss.

Jon Fosse has truly become a Norwegian cultural export-of all his country's dramatists, only Ibsen has been staged more often. Fosse's writing has been translated into more than 40 languages, and his plays have been performed more than 750 times around the world. His plays include And never we'll be parted, Someone is going to come, A Summer Day, Autumn Dream, and I am the wind. Fosse won the International Ibsen Award in 2012.

Karen Allen was inspired to become an actor after seeing Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Theatre Laboratory in a performance of Apolcalypsis Cum Figuris in 1972. She attended George Washington University and studied and performed with the Washington Theatre Laboratory in Washington DC and co-produced performances at the Washington Project for the Arts for four years before moving to New York City to work in the theatre.

Ms. Allen portrayed Helen Keller in William Gibson's The Monday After the Miracle, directed by Arthur Penn at the Actor's Studio, the Spoleto Festival, the Kennedy Center, and on Broadway for which she won a Theatre World Award. She played Marjorie in William Mastrisimone's Extremities at the Westside Arts Theatre, and also appeared in productions of Miss Julie at the Actor's Studio, directed by Peter Stormare; The Country Girl, The Miracle Worker, and Speaking in Tongues at the Roundabout Theatre; The Glass Menagerie at the Longwharf directed by Nikos Psachoropolis, Beautiful Bodies at the Whole Theatre and has worked with the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Tennessee Williams: A Celebration, The Royal Family and The Glass Menagerie), Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Company (Rosalind in As You Like It), and Westport Country Playhouse (Temporary Help).

For the past several years she has been directing for theatre and has done two productions of Michael Weller's Moonchildren as well as Joan Ackerman's The Batting Cage. Ms Allen is on the faculty of the theatre department at Bard College and is a member of the Actor's Studio.

Her films include Animal House, The Wanderers, A Small Circle of Friends, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Shoot the Moon, Cruising, Until September, Starman, Animal Behavior, The Glass Menagerie (starring JoAnne Woodward; directed by Paul Newman), Backfire, Scrooged, The Sandlot, King of the Hill, Falling Sky, The Perfect Storm, In the Bedroom, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,and, most recently, White Irish Drinkers.

On television she has been seen as Abra in "East of Eden," as Christa Macauliffe in "The Challenger," and in "Secret Weapon," "Voyage," "All the Winters That Have Been," "November Christmas" and "Law & Order."

Ms. Allen studied textile and clothing design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2010 for her design work with her company Karen Allen Fiber Arts.

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).

Individual tickets to A Summer Day and memberships for Rattlestick's 2012-2013 season are now available and can be purchased at www.rattlestick.org or by phoning OvationTix at 866-811-4111. This season Rattlestick has specially priced memberships available for students, patrons under 30 years old, and theater artists.Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is located at 224 Waverly Place (off Seventh Avenue South – between West 11th & Perry Streets); Cherry Lane Theatre is located at 38 Commerce Street, two blocks below Bleecker Street.