Michael C. Hall, Lena Hall, Finn Wittrock & More Set for New York Stage and Film & Vassar's 31st Powerhouse Season

New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, this summer celebrating the 31st Powerhouse Season, have announced the first round of casting for their summer collaboration, which runs June 26 - August 2 at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.

Stage and screen stars Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Westfeldt, "American Horror Story: Freak Show" breakout Finn Wittrock, Tony winners Lena Hall and Stephen Spinella, Tony nominees Michael Stuhlbarg, Condola Rashad and Elizabeth A. Davis plus New York theater favorites Jason Danieley, Derek Klena, Beth Dixon, Carter Hudson, Michael O'Keefe, Matt Saldivar, and many more will appear in various readings, workshops and main stage productions, detailed below. Powerhouse Season casting by Telsey + Co.

Powerhouse Theater subscriptions and single tickets are on sale now at http://powerhouse.vassar.edu. Subscribers are offered priority reservation access to the Readings Festivals beginning June 19 before the general public. Tickets to the Powerhouse Readings Festivals are free - reservations are available starting June 23.

Mainstage / Workshops

Jennifer Westfeldt will star alongside Carmen Cusack, Jason Danieley, Elizabeth A. Davis, and David Harris in a workshop of the new musical Rain by Tony-nominated Sybille Pearson, with music and lyrics by five-time Tony-nominated composer and lyricist Michael John LaChiusa, based on the short story by Somerset Maugham and directed by Barry Edelstein (July 10 - 12).

Beth Dixon and Carter Hudson star in the mainstage production The Unbuilt City by Keith Bunin and directed by Tony-nominee Sean Mathias (July 1 - July 12).

Reading Festival #1 | June 26 - 28

"Dexter" and Broadway alum Michael C. Hall, Tony Award-winner Lena Hall and Derek Klena will headline a reading of the new musical 15 Minutes by Rick Elice, Hedwig composer Stephen Trask and Peter Yanowitz, directed by Trip Cullman. The remainder of the cast includes Brandon Espinoza, Carla Duren, Lulu Fall, Jahi Kearse. Molly Pope, Condola Rashad, Steve Rosen, and Matt Saldivar.

Finn Wittrock, of "American Horror Story: Freak Show," HBO's The Normal Heart, and Broadway's recent Death of a Salesman revival, will star alongside Samantha Soule in a reading of Stephen Belber's new play The Dizzy Little Dance Of Russell DiFinaldi directed by David Cromer.

The reading of Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar's new play Junk will feature Michael O'Keefe, Armando Riesco, Stephen Spinella, Joey Slotnick, Michael Stuhlbarg, along with Gary Wilmes, Stephen Plunkett, Philip James Brannon, Michael Siberry, Kevin Isola, Hetienne Park, Annika Boras, Demosthenes Chrysan, Ted Koch, Dan Bittner, Ethan Phillips, Jason Kolotouros and AJ Shively. Doug Hughes directs.

The reading of Clare Barron's a boy put this girl in a cage with a dog and the dog killed the girl features Ashley Biel, Dylan Dawson, Susannah Flood, and Vella Lovell. Stella Powell-Jones directs.

The reading of Zayd Dohrn's The Profane features Ramsey Faragallah, Lameece Issaq, Mahira Kakkar, Dariush Kashani, Dina Shihabi, and Sathya Sridharan. Carolyn Cantor directs.

Additional casting for the 2015 Powerhouse Season will be announced shortly including the casts for Desire, six new plays based on stories by Tennessee Williams (July 2 - 6); and Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow's lush and mysterious new musical, Noir, inspired by radio plays and classic film noir, directed by Rachel Chavkin (July 31 - August 2).

Now in its 31st year, Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College 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 50 apprentices in the Powerhouse Training Program live and work together to create new theater works. Recent highlights at Powerhouse include Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway-bound Hamilton; Bright Star, an original musical from Steve Martin and Edie Brickell; The Fortress of Solitude, Itamar Moses, Michael Friedman and Daniel Aukin's musical adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jonathan Lethem; and Richard Greenberg's The Babylon Line. Many additional shows from past seasons have found their way to Broadway, Off-Broadway, and theaters nationwide, including Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet and The Humans (Roundabout Theater); The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar (NYTW), Found by Hunter Bell, Lee Overtree and Eli Bolin (Atlantic Theater Co), Michael Mayer and Peter Lerman's Brooklynite (Vineyard Theater), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (Manhattan Theater Club); and Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander's The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater; Old Globe Theater);. Other projects developed at the Powerhouse include the Tony Award-winning Side Man and Tru; the multi-award-winning Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; the groundbreaking Broadway musical American Idiot, and A Steady Rain, produced on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

New York Stage and Film (Johanna Pfaelzer, Artistic Director; Thomas Pearson, Executive Director; Mark Linn-Baker, Max Mayer, Leslie Urdang, Producing Directors) 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 www.newyorkstageandfilm.org.

Vassar College (Ed Cheetham, Tom Pacio, Producing Directors) 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 sciences, and combine to offer a curriculum of more than 1,000 courses. Vassar College is sited in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, NY. www.vassar.edu