Mann Helms Albee's ME, MYSELF & I 2010 NY Premiere

Playwrights Horizons announced today that the New York premiere of ME, MYSELF & I, a new play by three-time Pulitzer Prize and three-time Tony Award winner Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance; Seascape; Three Tall Women; Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf?; The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?) will open the theater company's 2010/2011 40th Anniversary Season. Mr. Albee will be making his Playwrights Horizons debut.

Directed by Tony Award nominee, Obie Award winner and McCarter Theatre Artistic Director Emily Mann (Miss Witherspoon at Playwrights Horizons, Having Our Say, Mr. Albee's All Over), the production was originally presented at McCarter Theatre in January 2008. The New York premiere will star Tony Award winner Elizabeth Ashley (for Take Her, She's Mine; plus Barefoot in the Park, the recent August: Osage County) and three-time Tony Award nominee Brian Murray (for The Crucible, The Little Foxes and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Obie Award for Mr. Albee's The Play About the Baby). Mr. Murray will reprise his acclaimed performance from the McCarter production.

Ms. Mann previously worked with Playwrights Horizons directing Miss Witherspoon (2005). Both Ms. Ashley and Mr. Murray are also returning to the theater company, where she appeared in When She Danced (1990) and he appeared in The Butterfly Collection (2000) and Mud, River, Stone (1997).

ME, MYSELF & I will begin performances in August 2010 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street). Complete casting and details will be announced in the coming months.

"Next year is our 40th Anniversary," said Artistic Director Tim Sanford. "As a writers' theater, it feels unspeakably lucky and fitting to launch our season with this giddily entertaining and challenging play by arguably our pre-eminent living playwright."

When identical twin brothers are both named Otto, how's a mother supposed to keep them straight? Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee returns with this dark, funny and moving play that takes sibling rivalry to existential heights.

ME, MYSELF & I had its World Premiere at McCarter Theatre, opening on January 18, 2008 and playing a limited engagement through February 17, 2008. Ben Brantley in The New York Times hailed the play as, "A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD LITTLE FARCE in which the meanings of everyday words split and multiply like amoebas on steroids. Directed by Emily Mann and engagingly acted by a cast that includes the invaluable Albee veteran Brian Murray, it's in the tradition of Mr. Albee's mid- and late- career works like The Marriage Play and The Play About the Baby: fragmented philosophical vaudevilles that turn the most fundamental questions of identity into verbal soft-shoes. It also harks back to his early exercises in absurdism (including the one-acters The Sandbox and The American Dream), coal-black comedies from a time when brash young writers reveled in toppling theatrical traditions."

The announcement of ME, MYSELF & I comes on the heels of two back-to-back acclaimed hits for Playwrights Horizons. Annie Baker's sold out play CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION, which was extended twice at the theater company's Peter Jay Sharp Theater, returns for a limited engagement starting Tuesday, December 15 with tickets on sale through January 17, 2010. Melissa James Gibson's just-opened new play THIS has announced a three-week extension through January 3, 2010 at the theater company's Mainstage Theater.

Playwrights Horizons' season productions are generously supported by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charina Endowment Fund, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation and Time Warner Inc.

For subscription and ticket information to all Playwrights Horizons productions, call TICKET CENTRAL at (212) 279-4200, Noon to 8 pm daily, or purchase online at the Playwrights Horizons website at www.playwrightshorizons.org.

Edward Albee (Playwright) was born on March 12, 1928, and began writing plays 30 years later. His plays include The Zoo Story (1958); The Death of Bessie Smith (1959); The Sandbox (1959); The American Dream (1960); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award); Tiny Alice (1964); A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize; 1996, Tony Award, Best Revival); All Over (1971); Seascape (1974, Pulitzer Prize); Listening (1975); Counting the Ways (1975); The Lady From Dubuque (1977-78); The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981); Finding the Sun (1982); Marriage Play (1986-87); Three Tall Women (1991, Pulitzer Prize); Fragments (1993); The Play About the Baby (1997); The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? (2000, 2002 Tony Award); Occupant (2001); At Home at the Zoo (Act 1, Homelife. Act 2, The Zoo Story.) (2004); and Me, Myself & I (2007). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980. In 1996 he received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005, he was awarded a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Emily Mann (Director). Multi-award-winning director and playwright Emily Mann is celebrating her 20th season as Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre. Under Ms. Mann's leadership, McCarter was honored with the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater. Directing credits include Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics (also on Broadway); the world premiere of Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon (also Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons); Uncle Vanya (also adapted); Edward Albee's All Over (also Off-Broadway; 2003 Obie Award for Directing); The Cherry Orchard (also adapted); Three Sisters; A Doll House; and The Glass Menagerie. Her plays include Execution of Justice; Still Life (six Obie Awards); Greensboro (A Requiem); and Annulla, An Autobiography. Ms. Mann wrote and directed Having Our Say (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations; NAACP Award; Joseph Jefferson Award; Peabody and Christopher Awards and WGA nomination for her screenplay). A winner of the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its Council. Her latest play, Mrs. Packard, was the recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award. Most recently, Ms. Mann directed her latest adaptation, A Seagull in the Hamptons, a free adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull; Mrs. Warren's Profession; and the world premiere of Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I. In 2002, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University.

Elizabeth Ashley (Mother) previously appeared at Playwrights Horizons in When She Danced in 1990. She most recently appeared on stage in the Broadway production of August: Osage County. She won a Tony Award and Theatre World Award for Take Her, She's Mine and was also Tony-nominated for Barefoot in the Park and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other Broadway credits include Dividing the Estate (also Off-Broadway, Drama Desk nomination), Enchanted April, The Best Man, The Skin of Our Teeth, Caesar and Cleopatra, Legend and Agnes of God. Film includes The Carpetbaggers, Ship of Fools (Golden Globe nomination) and Happiness (Independent Spirit Award). A few of her many Television credits include "Evening Shade" (Emmy nomination), "The Rope" (Cable ACE nomination) and "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles." Recording: Lou Reed's The Raven. She's a founding member and on the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute. Author: Actress: Postcards From the Road.

Brian Murray (Doctor) previously appeared at Playwrights Horizons in The Butterfly Collection in 2000 and Mud, River, Stone in 1997. He most recently appeared on stage in the Broadway production of Mary Stuart. He's been nominated for three Tony Awards for The Crucible, The Little Foxes and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and other Broadway credits include The Rivals, Uncle Vanya, Twelfth Night, Racing Demon, Noises Off, Black Comedy, Sleuth, King Lear and Da. A leading Edward Albee interpreter, he has appeared Off-Broadway in Albee's The Play About the Baby (Obie) and Beckett/Albee. Other Off-Broadway: Scattergood, The Entertainer, Travels with My Aunt, Ashes (Obie), Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Gaslight, Entertaining Mr. Sloan. Film/Television credits include Bob Roberts, Treasure Planet, "Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night." Also a distinguished director, his Broadway directing credits include Hay Fever, Arsenic and Old Lace, Blithe Spirit and The Circle.

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is a writer's theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American Playwrights, composers and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. In its 39 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, most recently being honored with a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for "ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work." Notable productions include four Pulitzer Prize winners: Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, as well as Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie's Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas's Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp's Kindness, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, Bruce Norris's The Pain and the Itch, Lynn Nottage's Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, David Greenspan's She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey's James Joyce's The Dead, William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson's Goodnight Children Everywhere and Franny's Way, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room, A.R. Gurney's Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's Violet.