Michael Greif, Beth Henley & More Join New York Stage And Film, Vassar's 30th Anniversary Season

New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, this summer celebrating the 30th year of their Powerhouse Theater collaboration, have announced the four workshops-two musicals, two plays-that will be a part of the upcoming 30th Powerhouse Theater Season, running from June 20 to July 27 at Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, New York). Full programming will be announced at a later date. Subscriptions will be available online on May 7, 2014, and single tickets will go on sale online May 20. Visit http://powerhouse.vassar.edu for more info.

Musical Workshops:

SeaWife
By Seth Moore & The Lobbyists
Directed by and developed with Liz Carlson
Performances June 27-29 in The Susan Stein Shiva Theater

Supernatural characters, romance, tragedy and stirring original music by The Lobbyists combine in this one-of-a-kind event - part play, part concert, and part immersive experience. We follow Percy, a young sailor bred in the golden age of the American whaling boom, as he journeys through port cities and wrestles with ghosts, sea monsters, and the loss of his one true love.

A Walk on the Moon
Music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman
Book and additional lyrics by Pamela Gray
Directed by Michael Greif
Performances July 25-27 in The Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film

It's the summer of 1969 in a Catskill Mountains bungalow colony. While her husband spends each week working in the city, Pearl Kantrowitz finds herself drawn toward a free-spirited traveling salesman. Her personal crisis plays out against one of America's most tumultuous summers, as astronauts walk on the moon, the Vietnam War escalates, and Woodstock takes place right down the road. Michael Greif, the award-winning director of Rent, Grey Gardens and Next To Normal, returns to Powerhouse with this deeply romantic story of awakening, adapted from the hit film.

Play Workshops:

The Light Years
Written by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen
Developed and directed by Oliver Butler
Performances July 11-13 in The Susan Stein Shiva Theater

From The Debate Society, a haunted love story spanning four decades. Chicago 1893: The Zoopraxiscope, cracker jacks and neon lights. The Ferris Wheel, hootchy-kootchy... hell they even had the hamburger! On the eve of a glowing new century, something terrible happens in a humble two-story home. And everything ends. Chicago 1933: When the fair returns 40 years later, so do the unfinished histories of everything that could have been. And so things begin for the hermit upstairs and the mysterious look-a-like below.

Laugh
By Beth Henley
Directed by David Schweizer
Performances July 18-20 in The Susan Stein Shiva Theater

Mabel's had a hard few weeks: A dynamite accident at a gold mine has left her wealthy but orphaned, and she's shipped off to a scheming aunt and a long-lost cousin, who's charged with seducing her to control Mabel's fortune. This hapless courtship reveals a shared love of silent movies and a plan for greater things. A story of mishaps and moxie, the romance of Hollywood and ultimately a Hollywood-caliber romance. A slapstick comedy from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Crimes of the Heart and The Jacksonian.

As previously announced, the three mainstage productions of the 30th Powerhouse Theater Season are: The Babylon Line by Richard Greenberg and directed by Terry Kinney (June 26-July 6); In Your Arms, an unprecedented collaboration with 10 playwrights (Douglas Carter Beane, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Carrie Fisher, David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, & Alfred Uhry) writing wordless vignettes that will culminate in a new dance piece directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, with music by Stephen Flaherty (July 5-13); and The Danish Widow written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (July 16-27).

Celebrating 30 years this summer, 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 The Hamilton Mixtape, the latest work from In the Heights Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda; Bright Star, an original musical from Steve Martin and Edie Brickell; and The Fortress of Solitude, a musical adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jonathan Lethem. 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); Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander's The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater); and Storefront Church, John Patrick Shanley's final installment of his "Church and State" trilogy that began with Doubt (Atlantic Theater 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.

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, Producing Director) 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.