New Shows from Oscar Winners Coen and McDonagh Lead Atlantic Theater's Upcoming Season

Atlantic Theater Company has just announced its exciting 2008-2009 season. The main stage season at the Linda Gross Theater will mark premieres from Academy Award® winning filmmakers Ethan Coen and Martin McDonagh, who return to the Atlantic stage, and the debut of young playwright and screenwriter Beau Willimon.

Willimon bows with the world premiere of FARRAGUT NORTH following his play Lower Ninth being produced Off Broadway this season. Tony Award® winner Doug Hughes (Doubt) directs. THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN reunites Academy Award® winner and Tony Award® nominee Martin McDonagh (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) and Tony Award® winning director Garry Hynes who were represented with The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Atlantic in 1998. Academy Award® winning filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) returns with the world premiere of OFFICES following last season's sold out engagement of Almost an Evening, which marked his debut as a playwright. Atlantic artistic director Neil Pepe reteams with Coen to direct the new work.

Atlantic Stage 2, the company's state-of-the-art Second Stage, will feature the world premiere limited engagement of What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling, written and performed by Tony Award® nominee and Atlantic Company Member David Pittu (Is He Dead?) with additional casting to be announced. A second new play will also be announced for Atlantic Stage 2.
 
In addition to the 2008-2009 Atlantic main stage Linda Gross Theater and Stage 2 productions, Atlantic subscribers will have exclusive access to the 20th Anniversary Broadway revival of Atlantic co-founder David Mamet's play SPEED-THE-PLOW, which marks Atlantic artistic director Neil Pepe's Broadway directing debut. Starring Golden Globe Award® winner Jeremy Piven (HBO's "Entourage"), Speed-the-Plow will be produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, and Steve Traxler in association with Atlantic Theater Company.
 
2008-2009 Atlantic Theater Company MAIN STAGE SEASON
WORLD PREMIERE
FARRAGUT NORTH

By Beau Willimon, Directed by Doug Hughes

Atlantic welcomes young playwright Beau Willimon and Tony Award® winning director Doug Hughes with the World Premiere production of FARRAGUT NORTH. Stephen is a wunderkind press secretary who has built a career that men twice his age would envy.  During a tight presidential primary race, however, Stephen's meteoric rise falls prey to the backroom politics of more seasoned operatives, and his one night stand with a teenage staffer proves to be more complicated than casual.  Farragut North is a classic tale of hubris set against a contemporary landscape – about the lust for power and the costs one will endure to achieve it. 

THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN
By Martin McDonagh, Directed by Garry Hynes

Atlantic is thrilled to co-produce THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN with Druid, Galway, with whom the company collaborated on 1998's Tony Award® winning production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Set in 1934 on an island off the  west coast of Ireland, Hollywood filmmaker Robert Flaherty arrives on the neighboring island of Inishmore to film his movie "The Man of Aran" and excitement ripples through the sleepy community of Inishmaan.  For orphaned Billy Craven, who has been relentlessly scorned by the island's inhabitants, the film represents an escape from the poverty of his existence.  He vies for a part in the film, and to everyone's surprise, it is the cripple who gets his chance.

WORLD PREMIERE
OFFICES
By Ethan Coen, Directed by Neil Pepe

Following the success of last season's Almost an Evening, Oscar winner Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo) returns to the Atlantic stage with the world premiere of three brand new one acts. Hiring and firing are antisocial acts.  Workplace pressures make for nasty competition.  And the work itself can be meaningless and alienating.  Accordingly, the three short plays that make up OFFICES are comedies.

2008-2009 ATLANTIC STAGE 2 SEASON
WORLD PREMIERE
What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling
Written and performed by David Pittu, Music by Randy Redd

Written and performed by Tony Award® nominee David Pittu (Is He Dead?, LoveMusik),  WHAT'S THAT SMELL: THE MUSIC OF JACOB STERLING is an absurd musical satire that charts the career of eternally up-and-coming (and fictitious) musical theater composer Jacob Sterling.  A rare, up close and personal visit with an artist of questionable gifts who performs from his songbook and shares his human struggle to keep musical theater alive and well in the 21st century.

ATLANTIC ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Neil Pepe DIRECTS
ATLANTIC FOUNDER MAMET'S SPEED-THE-PLOW ON BROADWAY THIS FALL

The 20th Anniversary revival of Atlantic co-founder David Mamet's Tony Award® nominated play Speed-the-Plow opens on Broadway this fall under the direction of Atlantic Artistic Director Neil Pepe and starring television and film actor Jeremy Piven ("Entourage").  Piven plays Hollywood producer Bobby Gould in Mamet's hilarious and scathing portrait of the film industry and the eternal battle of art vs. commerce. Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, and Steve Traxler (August: Osage County, Glengarry Glen Ross) produce in association with Atlantic Theater Company. Previews begin October 3rd, 2008.

BIOGRAPHIES

Ethan Coen (Playwright) made his Off-Broadway debut as a playwright with the sold out world premiere production of Almost an Evening at Atlantic Stage 2 last season. He has written a collection of stories, Gates of Eden and a collection of poems, The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way. With his brother, Joel, Ethan Coen has made thirteen movies including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and the Academy Award® winning film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.  His upcoming feature film will be a comedy entitled Burn after Reading.

Martin McDonagh (Playwright) returns to Atlantic following the company's critically acclaimed American premiere production which moved to the Lyceum Theatre, where it was nominated for five 2006 Tony Awards® including Best Play. He received the 2005 Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short for his film, Six Shooter, which he also directed.  He received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Play, and won Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for The Lieutenant of Inishmore.  His play, The Pillowman, won the Olivier Award for Best Play and an Evening Standard Award nomination for The National Theatre production, while the Broadway production won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play (Foreign) and Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Tony Award® nominations for Best Play. His first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, received a Best Play Tony Award® nomination in 1998 and was the first in his Leenane Trilogy, which also includes A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West, for which he received his second Tony Award® nomination for Best Play. The Cripple of Inishmaan, the first of his trilogy of Aran Island plays (which also includes The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer), opened at Britain's National Theatre and transferred to The Public Theater. Other works include Suicide on Sixth Street, Shit On Illinois, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges.

David Pittu (Writer/Performer).  As an Atlantic Company Member David Pittu has written, directed, and acted in countless Atlantic productions, most recently Pinter's Celebration and The Room (Drama Desk and Lortel nominations).  This season he received his second Tony Award® nomination for his performance in the Mark Twain comedy Is He Dead? as well as an Outer Critics Circle nomination. Broadway:  LoveMusik (Tony Award® and Drama Desk nomination; Outer Critics Circle Award), The Coast of Utopia, Never Gonna Dance. Off-Broadway: Stuff Happens (Drama Desk Award: Outstanding Ensemble), Of Thee I Sing (Encores!), The Fourth Wall, Sympathetic Magic, The Lights, Hot Keys, The Butter and Egg Man (as director), and, as co-author, The Audience (Drama Desk nom.: Outstanding Musical). Regional/National tour: Parade (National Broadway Award: Best Actor in a Musical), Titanic, Company (Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration).  Recent film:  This Side of the Truth (Ricky Gervais), King Kong (Peter Jackson).  TV:  "Rescue Me," "Sex and the City," "Third Watch," "The Sopranos," all of the "Law & Order" series.

Beau Willimon (Playwright) has written eight full-length plays as well as numerous one-acts.  His work has been developed or performed at MCC, Cherry Lane, HERE Arts Center, New Dramatists, Daryl Roth 2, the Dayton Playhouse (Ohio), The Donmar Warehouse (London) and the Battersea Arts Center (London).  Willimon is the recipient of the the Lila Acheson Wallace Juilliard Playwriting Fellowship, a Donmar Warehouse playwriting residency, the Seymour Brick Memorial Playwriting Prize, the Yale/Norfolk Arts Fellowship, the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, winner of the 2005 Dayton Playhouse FutureFest, and two-time winner of the Lincoln Center Le Compte du Nouy Award.  His play, Lower Ninth, received its world premiere production at The Flea Theater earlier this year after initially being staged as part of Arielle Tepper's 2007 Summer Play Festival.  He is currently working on a commission for MTC Theatre.  In addition to his work for the stage, Willimon is working on two films for Warner Brothers: the feature film adaptation of his play Farragut North and an adaptation of Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities.  He is also writing film adaptation of Peter Morgan's mini-series The Jury for Fox 2000.  Willimon holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from Columbia University's School of the Arts.  He lives in Brooklyn.

Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Andrew D. Hamingson, Managing Director) is the award winning Off-Broadway theater dedicated to producing great plays simply and truthfully utilizing an artistic ensemble. Atlantic believes that the story of the play and the intent of the playwright are at the core of the creative process. Atlantic's acclaimed world premiere production of its first musical Spring Awakening, with music by Duncan Sheik, book and lyrics by Steven Sater and direction by Michael Mayer, won 8 Tony Awards®, including Best Musical. In 2006, Atlantic was awarded the Lucille Lortel Prize for Outstanding Body of Work and its lauded production of Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, directed by Wilson Milam, transferred to the Lyceum Theatre, where it was nominated for five 2006 Tony Awards® including Best Play.

Atlantic has produced five world premiere productions this season, Academy Award® winning film maker Ethan Coen's comedy Almost an Evening, directed by Neil Pepe and featuring Academy Award® winner F. Murray Abraham and Mark Linn-Baker; Peter Parnell's Trumpery, directed by David Esbjornson and featuring Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award® winner Michael Cristofer and Tony Award® nominee Manoel Felciano; Lucy Thurber's Scarcity, directed by Jackson Gay and featuring Emmy Award® winner Kristen Johnston, Jesse Eisenberg and Michael T. Weiss, Jez Butterworth's Parlour Song, directed by Neil Pepe and featuring Chris Bauer, Jonathan Cake and Emily Mortimer and Annie Baker's Body Awareness, directed by Karen Kohlhaas and featuring Academy Award® nominee JoBeth Williams, Peter Friedman and Mary McCann.

The critically acclaimed New York premiere production of Oliver Award® winning and Tony Award® nominated playwright Conor McPherson's play Port Authority, directed by Henry Wishcamper and featuring Tony Award® nominee Brian d'Arcy James (Sweet Smell of Success), Tony Award® winner John Gallagher, Jr. (Spring Awakening) and Tony Award® winner Jim Norton (The Seafarer) is now playing an extended engagement through June 22nd, 2008.

Last season, founder David Mamet's smash hit adaptation of The Voysey Inheritance, directed by David Warren and starring Michael Stuhlbarg and Fritz Weaver, was extended an unprecedented three times, the first time in Atlantic's history. The world premiere production of Atlantic's second musical 10 Million Miles, featuring music and lyrics by Grammy Award® nominated singer/songwriter Patty Griffin, a book by Keith Bunin and direction by Tony Award® winner Michael Mayer also played an extended limited engagement.

Since it's inception in 1985, Atlantic has produced more than 100 plays including the Tony Award® winning production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the world premieres of Woody Allen's A Second Hand Memory and Writer's Block, the acclaimed world premiere of David Mamet's Romance, Jez Butterworth's Mojo, Tom Donaghy's Minutes From The Blue Route, Edwin Sanchez' Trafficking in Broken Hearts and the American premieres of Blue/Orange, Dublin Carol and The Night Heron, the New York premieres of The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and The Cider House Rules, the revivals of American Buffalo, Edmond, The Hothouse and Hobson's Choice.  Atlantic maintains an ensemble of acclaimed actors, writers and directors including David Mamet (playwright and director) and William H. Macy (Academy Award® nominee for Fargo), who founded Atlantic over twenty years ago in 1985.

Atlantic Theater Company MAIN STAGE AT THE LINDA GROSS THEATER is located at 336 West 20th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues).  Tickets for main stage productions are $55.00 and available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 (ticketcentral.com).

ATLANTIC STAGE 2 is located at 330 West 16th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues).  Tickets are $35 and available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 (ticketcentral.com).