Larry Pine to Lead A PUBLIC READING OF AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY ABOUT THE DEATH OF WALT DISNEY at Soho Rep, 4/30-5/26

Soho Rep has announced that the celebrated stage and screen actor Larry Pine will star in the world premiere production of Lucas Hnath's adrenaline-charged odyssey A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney. Directed by Soho Rep Artistic Director Sarah Benson, Pine will play the title character - the man who forever changed the American Dream. Hnath's fictional play centers around the reading of a screenplay Walt Disney has written about his last days on earth. The script is about a city he is going to build that is going to change the world; about his brother; about everyone who loves Disney and how sad they are going to be when he is gone.

Produced in association with John Adrian Selzer, the show, which concludes Soho Rep's highly successful 2012-13 season, will run April 30 - May 26 at Soho Rep (46 Walker Street). Performances will take place Tuesdays through Sundays at 7:30 P.M., plus Saturdays at 3:00 P.M. Tickets, $30-40, are on sale now at www.sohorep.org or 212.352.3101. Tickets for select Sunday performances (May 12 and 19) will be 99¢, available first come, first served at the box office.

Larry Pine has played a wide variety of roles on Broadway and off, in films and on television, His Broadway credits include The Royal Family, The Seagull, End of the World, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Bus Stop. Off-Broadway credits include Top Secret, Beast, Secret Order, The Shanghai Gesture, Stuff Happens, Enemy of the People, The Women of Lockerbie, Saved or Destroyed, The Designated Mourner, The Chemistry of Change, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Uncle Vanya, The Disputation. His film credits include Moonrise Kingdom, Arbitrage, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Outsourced, TransBeMan, Sweet Flame, Empire Falls, Door in the Floor, Particles of Truth, Maid in Manhattan, The Royal Tenenbaums, A Foreign Affair, The Shipping News, Melinda and Melinda, Small Time Crooks, Celebrity, Sunday (Sundance Grand Prize winner), Vanya on 42nd Street, Dead Man Walking and many others. On television, he has appeared in "House of Cards," "Homeland," "Blue Bloods," "The Good Wife," and "Person of Interest."

Additional casting is to be announced.

The creative team for A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney is Mimi Lien (set), Kaye Voyce (costume), Matt Frey (lighting), Matt Tierney (sound) and Jon Knust (props), with Annie-B Parson (movement) and Steve Cuiffo (special effects).

A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney was first presented as a reading at the 2012 PRELUDE Festival. The production follows the critically acclaimed premiere of Hnath's play Isaac's Eye, which opened at Ensemble Studio Theater last month.

Lucas Hnath's recent plays include A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney, Red Speedo, Hillary and Clinton, Sake Tasting with a Séance to Follow, The Courtship of Anna Nicole Smith, Odile's Ordeal, Tonguetied, and Three Attempts at Corrective Eye Surgery. He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. Most recently his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Hnath is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine, and the Apple and Still Life. He is also a recipient of an EST/Sloan Project commission for Isaac's Eye. Most recently, his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2012. In addition, he is currently working on two commissions for Actors Theatre of Louisville, including a collaboration with Rinne Groff and Anne Washburn called Sleep Rock Thy Brain, which will premiere at the Humana Festival in 2013.

Sarah Benson is the Artistic Director of Soho Rep (since 2007). For Soho Rep, she has directed David Adjmi's site-specific Elective Affinities with Zoe Caldwell (Top Ten of 2011 in The New Yorker & Time Out New York); Sarah Kane's Blasted (OBIE Award, Drama Desk nomination); Gregory Moss' Orange, Hat & Grace. Other recent credits include: Futurity a musical by The Lisps (A.R.T. & Walker Arts Center), Polly Stenham's That Face (MTC), Gregory Moss' House of Gold (Woolly Mammoth) and Sophocles' Ajax (A.R.T.). Upcoming projects are Basetrack (2014), The Lisps' Futurity in New York and Richard Maxwell's Samara.

At Soho Rep, Benson has commissioned/produced work by artists including Jackie Sibblies Drury, Annie Baker, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Dan LeFranc, Thomas Bradshaw, Debbie Tucker Green, Cynthia Hopkins, Jomama Jones, Young Jean Lee, John Jesurun and Anne Washburn. This work has been recognized with seven OBIE awards, four Drama Desk nominations and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award.

Benson moved to New York from London on a Fulbright Award. She is editing the upcoming anthology: The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays (Summer 2013). She has served as a mentor in the directing programs at NYU and Yale. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theatre, serving as a vital center for Contemporary Theatre artists.

Soho Rep is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays. They perform to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over three-quarters aged 18-40.

Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered 13 OBIE Awards; six Drama Desk nominations, Two Kesselring Awards for Melissa James Gibson and Mark Schultz and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as Annie Baker, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Daniel Alexander Jones, Debbie Tucker Green, Mac Wellman, Young Jean Lee and Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

Photo Credit: Ben Strothmann

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