Official: Tyne Daly to Star in MASTER CLASS at MTC May 2011

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) and Barry Grove (Executive Producer) announced that Tony and Emmy Award winner Tyne Daly will return to Manhattan Theatre Club as Maria Callas in a new Broadway production of Terrence McNally's award-winning play MASTER CLASS directed by Stephen Wadsworth.

The limited engagement of MASTER CLASS will play MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) with previews starting Tuesday, May 24 with an opening night set for Tuesday, June 21. This production, which is offered as part of MTC's 2010-2011 subscription series, will be the first show to open as part of the 2011-2012 Broadway season.

Daly returns to MTC after appearing in the world premiere production of David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole which garnered her a Tony nomination. She received a Tony Award for her performance in the 1989 revival of Gypsy. Daly is best known for her portrayal of ‘Detective Mary Beth Lacey' in "Cagney and Lacey," for which she received four Emmy Awards. In addition, she received Emmys for "Christy," and "Judging Amy."

Daly previously portrayed the role of Maria Callas in an acclaimed production at The Kennedy Center last spring.

Manhattan Theatre Club and playwright Terrence McNally have enjoyed a collaboration that has produced some of the most successful plays of the past 25 years including McNally's breakout hit Frankie and Johnnie in the Clair de Lune (1987); The Lisbon Traviata (1989); Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), which became one of the longest-running hits in MTC's history, and Love, Valour, Compassion! (1994), which transferred to Broadway and received the Tony Award for Best Play.

Terrence McNally's award-winning play about Maria Callas takes us to one of her famous master classes where, late in her own career, she challenges the next generation to make the same sacrifices and dare to rise to the same heights she did, making her the most celebrated, the most reviled and the most controversial singer of her times.

Additional casting, creative team, and other listings information will be announced in the coming weeks.

Tickets will be available beginning Friday, December 17 by calling Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or online by visiting www.Telecharge.com. Tickets will be available at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre Box Office (261 West 47th Street) beginning Monday, January 3. Ticket prices will be $57 - $116.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, MTC has become one of the country's most prominent and prestigious theatre companies. Over the past three decades, MTC productions have earned a total of 17 Tony Awards and six Pulitzer Prizes, an accomplishment unparalleled by a New York theatrical institution. MTC has a Broadway home at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and an Off-Broadway theatre at New York City Center - Stage I (131 West 55th Street). Renowned MTC productions include Time Stands Still; The Royal Family; Ruined; The American Plan; Come Back, Little Sheba; Blackbird; Translations; Shining City; Rabbit Hole; Doubt; Proof; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; Love! Valour! Compassion!; A Small Family Business; Sylvia; Putting It Together; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Crimes of the Heart; and Ain't Misbehavin.'

For more information on MTC, please visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

BIOGRAPHIES
Terrence McNally (Playwright). Terrence McNally has won four Tony Awards for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! (as well as the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and the Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Best Play) and Master Class and his musical books for Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Ragtime. Recent Broadway credits include the revivals of his plays The Ritz and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. His other plays include A Perfect Ganesh, Corpus Christi, Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams, The Stendal Syndrome, Lips Together, Teeth Apart (Drama Desk Award Best New Play) and Its Only a Play. Earlier stage works include Bad Habits (Obie Award Best Play), Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?, ...And Things That Go Bump In the Night and Next. He also wrote the books for the musicals The Full Monty, The Rink, and A Man of No Importance. The San Francisco Opera presented Dead Man Walking with McNally's libretto and music by Jake Heggie. McNally has written a number of TV scripts, including "Andre's Mother" for which he won an Emmy Award. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, a Lucille Lortel Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and is a three time recipient of the Hull-Warriner Award for Best Play.

The Kennedy Center recently produced three of his plays under the title Terrence McNally's Nights at the Opera: Master Class, The Lisbon Traviata and the world premiere of Golden Age. Other recent work includes his musical adaptation of The Visit at Arlington's Signature Theatre, his play Deuce on Broadway and his play Some Men at Philadelphia Theatre Company and off-Broadway's Second Stage.

Upcoming Broadway productions include his book for the new musical Catch Me if You Can with a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and the revival of Master Class at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Stephen Wadsworth (Director). Stephen Wadsworth's productions of Aeschylus' Oresteia, Wagner's Ring cycle, a series of Marivaux comedies, and plays and operas by Shakespeare, Molière, Handel, Goldoni, Mozart, Shaw, Wilde, and Coward, have established him as a master of the classical repertoire and one of the most influential directors in the American theater. He has directed plays by John Guare (Dallas Theatre Centre), Beth Henley (Roundabout), Terrence McNally (Kennedy Center) and Anna Deavere Smith (Long Wharf) and during the 1990s reintroduced the work of Marivaux to the U.S. in a series of translations and productions of three plays (published by Smith and Kraus as Marivaux: Three Plays). His new translation of Molière's Don Juan (Shakespeare Theatre, Old Globe, Seattle Rep, McCarter) reimagined a lost text and excited great interest in the French academy, and the French government named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. He has also translated and adapted theater works by Monteverdi, Goldoni and Handel, and worked as writer and Dramaturg on many new operas and plays, including A Quiet Place, just produced at New York City Opera, which he wrote with Leonard Bernstein. This season he directs a new Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan Opera, stages The Bartered Bride in a Met-Juilliard collaboration, revives Iphigénie en Tauride at the Met, and brings his production of McNally's Master Class to the Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway, starring Tyne Daly. He also worked with Ms. Daly, and Delroy Lindo, on the Aeschylus Agamemnon at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. Wadsworth has directed opera for the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper, the Edinburgh Festival, and in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Santa Fe and Seattle, where his famous Ring will be revived in 2013. Wadsworth is The James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he leads the advanced training program for singers, and Head of Dramatic Studies at the Metropolitan Opera.

Tyne Daly (Maria Callas). Television Series: "Judging Amy" Emmy and Golden Globe winner for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a drama; "Christy" Emmy winner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a drama; "Cagney and Lacey" Emmy winner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a drama; Total of 16 Emmy Award nominations.

Television Movies: "Georgia O'Keefe" (with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen); "The Perfect Mother"; "Bye, Bye, Birdie (with Jason Alexander); "Kids Like There"; The Entertainer" (starring Jack Lemmon and Ray Bolger); "Larry" (with Fred Forrest); "The Man Who Could Talk to Kids" (with Peter Boyle); "Intimate Strangers" (Emmy nominee for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama,)

Television Episodic Guest Starring (Partial List): "The Nanny"; "Columbo"; "Magnum P.I."; "Medical Center" (starring James Daly/Maureen Stapleton); "Streets of San Francisco" (with Michael Douglas); "Wings" (Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, starred Tim Daly); "The Rookie" (4 episodes); "The Mod Squad" (2 episodes)

Feature Motion Pictures: Zoot Suit, Telefon, The Enforcer (starring Clint Eastwood); John and Mary (with Dustin Hoffman); Play It As It Lays (with Tuesday Weld)

Theatre: Broadway: Master Class - Upcoming 2011 Manhattan Theatre Club (Kennedy Center, 2010); Gypsy (Revival -Mama Rose) Tony Award Best Leading Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award and Outer Circle Critics' Award; The Seagull (Mme. Arkadina); Rabbit Hole (Nominated - Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play). Off-Broadway and Regional: Ashes, The Three Sisters, and Gethesmane, The Mark Taper Forum; Me Myself and I (Edward Albee) World Premiere McCarter Theatre, Princeton; Call Me Madam - City Center Encores; Come Back, Little Sheba - LA Theatre Center; Agammenon - The Getty Villa, Malibu; Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, Long Beach Civic Opera,

Cabaret: Feinstein's, Regency Hotel NY; Upcoming: Concert with Michael Feinstein, Palm Desert, CA,

Recordings: On the Town, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas with The London Symphony; "The World According To MR. Rogers" (Grammy Nomination); Call Me Madam; Anything Goes, for the BBC; Gypsy, Broadway Revival.

For more information on MTC, please visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.