Laura Innes, Linda Lavin, Cotter Smith Join POWERHOUSE'S 2013 Season

Casting highlights for Vassar & New York Stage and Film Powerhouse Theater's second Mainstage production, Mozhan Marnò's When The Lights Went Out, and the Martel Musical workshop of the new Simon Rich/Peter Lerman musical inspired by The Brooklyn Hero Supply Company, have been announced. In addition, casting highlights for the season's Inside Look Workshops, Found and Mother of Invention have also been announced. Tickets are on sale through the Box Office: (845) 437-5599 or PHTBoxOffice@vassar.edu. The Box Office is located at Vassar in the Powerhouse Theater building. For online sales visit http://powerhouse.vassar.edu/boxoffice. For general season information call 845-437-5907 or visit powerhouse@vassar.edu.

Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer has also announced that workshop presentations of Bright Star, the new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, are sold out for all performances.

Among the noted actors and directors joining the Powerhouse season are:

When The Lights Went Out, by Mozhan Marnò and directed by Kate Whoriskey (Ruined, The Miracle Worker, Fabulation)

Laura Innes (TV's ER), Cotter Smith (Next Fall, An American Daughter), Sheila Vand (Argo, Bengal Tiger...), Russell G. Jones (The Power of Duff, Ruined)

A new musical inspired by The Brooklyn Hero Supply Company, book by Simon Rich (Ant Farm, Elliot Allagash, Saturday Night Live), Music & Lyrics by Peter Lerman (The Virginia; To Memphis (with the intention of returning), Modern Family)and directed by Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot, Side Man)

Matt Doyle (Book of Mormon, War Horse, Spring Awakening); Andrew Call (Rock of Ages, American Idiot); Gerard Canonico (Spring Awakening, American Idiot); Gideon Glick(Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, Spring Awakening); Alice Lee (Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, Spring Awakening); Nadia Quinn (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson)

Found, book by Hunter Bell ([title of show], Obie Award) & Lee Overtree (co-founder Story Pirates), Music and Lyrics by Eli Bolin (Sesame Street), directed by Lee Overtree

Nick Blaemire (Godspell, Cry Baby, Dogfight), Sandy Rustin (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change Sarah, Plain and Tall), Daniel Franzese (Mean Girls), Betsy Morgan (Les Miserables, A Little Night Music), Remy Zakin (Spring Awakening)

Mother of Invention, by James Lecesne (Word of Mouth; Trevor - Academy Award; Further Tales of the City), directed by Michael Wilson (The Trip to Bountiful, Talley's Folly, Dividing The Estate)

Tony Award and Golden Globe Award-winning actress Linda Lavin (The Lyons, Collected Stories), Rachel Resheff (Mary Poppins, Billy Elliot, Shrek The Musical), Susan Pourfar(Tribes, In the Wake)

Casting for Readings Festival 2 will be announced soon.

Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between Vassar College and New York Stage and Film dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. The Powerhouse program consists of an eight-week residency on the Vassar campus during which more than 250 professional artists and 40 apprentices live and work together to create new theater works. Many shows from past seasons have found their way to Broadway, Off-Broadway, and theaters nationwide, including Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theater); Seminar by Theresa Rebeck (Golden Theater); Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (Manhattan Theater Club, Union Square Theater); Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander's The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater); and Storefront Church, John Patrick Shanley's final installment to his "Church and State" trilogy that began with Doubt (Atlantic Theatre Company). Other projects developed at the Powerhouse include the Tony Award-winning Side Man and Tru; the multi-award-winning Doubt; the groundbreaking Broadway musical American Idiot, and A Steady Rain, produced on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Each summer Vassar and New York Stage and Film also collaborate on the Powerhouse Theater Training Program, one of the country's leading theater immersion programs for young artists. The program brings together 40-50 participants from across the country to form the Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Company. They are current college and high school students and recent graduates, who over six weeks on the Vassar campus study a discipline (acting, directing, or writing), create their own work, and assist the professional productions of the Powerhouse season.

New York Stage and Film is a not-for-profit company dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development of new works for theater and film. Since 1985 New York Stage and Film has played a significant role in the development of new plays, provided a home for a diverse group of artists free from critical and commercial pressures and established itself as a vital cultural institution for residents of the Hudson Valley and the New York metropolitan region.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861. Consistently ranked as one of the country's best liberal arts colleges, Vassar is renowned for its long history of curricular innovation, and for the natural and architectural beauty of its campus. More than 50 academic departments and degree programs - from Anthropology to Cognitive Sciences to Urban Studies - encompass the arts, foreign languages, natural sciences, and social services, and combine to offer a curriculum of more than 1,000 courses.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos