MCC Theater Rounds Out 2015-16 Season with Halley Feiffer's 'A FUNNY THING...'

MCC THEATER has announced the final production of its four-show 2015-16 Main Stage Season, which runs August 2015 through June 2016. Playwright Halley Feiffer (I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard) will make her MCC Theater debut with her play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City. Trip Cullman returns to direct after helming this season's critically acclaimed hit Punk Rock. This also marks the reunion of Feiffer and Cullman following their hit production of I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard at the Atlantic Theater Company in early 2015.

A Funny Thing... will be the fourth and final production of MCC's 2015-16 Season which also includes the previously announced New York premieres of: The Legend of Georgia McBride by Matthew Lopez, which premiered last summer at Denver Theater Center; Lost Girls, John Pollono's follow-up to hit MCC production Small Engine Repair which debuted at LA's Rogue Machine Theatre; and Smokefall by Noah Haidle, which received a hit run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago last fall. All productions will be staged at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).

MCC is currently in the midst of its acclaimed 2014-15 Season, with Jennifer Haley's prize-winning The Nether having its New York premiere, directed by Anne Kauffman and starring Emmy winner Merritt Wever, Tony winner Frank Wood, and Tony nominee Peter Friedman plus stunning newcomers Ben Rosenfield and Sophia Anne Caruso. For more information on MCC Theater, please visit www.mcctheater.org.

Halley Feiffer (Playwright, A Funny Thing...) is a writer and actress. Full-length plays include I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic Theater Company, directed by Trip Cullman), How To Make Friends and then Kill Them (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, directed by Kip Fagan), Sidney and Laura, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City and Valerie Sweet. Her plays have been developed by Second Stage Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, LAByrinth Theater Company, the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, and elsewhere. She is currently working on commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, MTC / Sloan and Jen Hoguet Productions. She co-wrote and starred in the 2013 film He's Way More Famous Than You and the upcoming webseries "What's Your Emergency," both directed by Michael Urie. She won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Broadway revival of The House of Blue Leaves and was recently seen in the revival of Jon Robin Baitz' The Substance of Fire at Second Stage, directed by Trip Cullman. She is thrilled to be back at the Atlantic, where she appeared last fall in Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing, directed by David Cromer. She currently writes for the upcoming Starz series "The One Percent."

Trip Cullman (Director, A Funny Thing...). Select NYC: Halley Feiffer's I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic Theater Company), SimonStephens's Punk Rock (MCC), Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire (Second Stage), Tarrell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy (Manhattan Theater Club), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (Manhattan Theater Club and Union Square Theater), Paul Weitz's Lonely, I'm Not (Second Stage), Leslye Headland's Assistance(Playwrights Horizons), Adam Bock's A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nom.), Adam Rapp's The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick), Headland's Bachelorette (Second Stage), Terrence McNally's Some Men(Second Stage), Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (Century Center), Bock's The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Weitz's Roulette (EST), Jonathan Tolins'sThe Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center), Bock's Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage), Gina Gionfriddo's US Drag (stageFARM), and several productions with The Play Company. London: Bock's The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, PA (Tricycle). Select regional: McCraney's Choir Boy (Geffen and Alliance), John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), Richard Greenberg's The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), McNally'sUnusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation (Bay Street), Bess Wohl's Touched (Williamstown Theater Festival).

Matthew Lopez (Playwright, The Legend of Georgia McBride) is the author of The Whipping Man, one of the most widely-produced American plays of the last several years. The play premiered at Luna Stage Company and was produced in New York by Manhattan Theatre Club. Lopez was the recipient of the John Gassner New Play Award from the New York Outer Critics Circle for this production. Lopez's play Somewhere premiered at the Old Globe and was subsequently presented at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA and at Hartford Stage Company, where he recently served as their AETNA New Voices Fellow. His play Reverberation will receive its world premiere at Hartford Stage this month, running Feb. 19 through March 15. The Legend of Georgia McBride was initially developed and then premiered at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Matthew's 9/11-themed play The Sentinels premiered in London at Headlong Theatre Company as part of their "Decade" project. Lopez is currently serving as the Denver Center Theatre's inaugural Playwriting Fellow. Lopez has written for the HBO series "The Newsroom" and is currently adapting Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow trilogy for the screen for Brad Pitt's Plan B film company. Lopez holds new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep, and Hartford Stage.

John Pollono (Playwright, Lost Girls), an actor and playwright from New England, wrote and co-stared in the hit thriller Small Engine Repair during the 2014/2014 Season at MCC Theater. He won the LA Ovation and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle (LADCC) Awards for Best Play the 2011 LA production of Small Engine Repair, for which he also received the LADCC Award for Best Writing. As an actor, Pollono has appeared in "Grey's Anatomy," "How I Met Your Mother," "Major Crimes" and Showtime's upcoming "Masters of Sex." Last winter, he appeared in the series "Mob City," written and directed by Frank Darabont. He is a founding member of Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles, which produced Lost Girls and Small Engine Repair as well as his plays Lost and Found and Razorback.

Noah Haidle's (Playwright, Smokefall) plays have premiered at the Goodman, Lincoln Center Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Huntington Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Summer Play Festival in New York City, HERE Arts Center, as well as many others around the United States and abroad. He is a graduate of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Lecompte Du Nouy awards, the 2005 Helen Merrill Award for emerging playwrights, the 2007 Claire Tow Award and an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Grant. He is published by Methuen in London, Suhrkamp in Berlin, and through Dramatists Play Service in New York City. His original screenplay Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, produced by Lionsgate and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, opened in February 2013. He is currently working on commissions from Lincoln Center Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and is set to direct his screenplay The Rodeo Clown, produced by Olive Productions and Mosaic. Haidle is a proud resident of Detroit.

Photo by Jennifer Broski