Plays by Sarah Ruhl, Bryna Turner Join Lincoln Center Theater's 2016-17 Season

Lincoln Center Theater has announced two new productions for its 2016-2017 season: HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE, a new play by Sarah Ruhl, to be directed by Rebecca Taichman, beginning performances Thursday, February 23 and opening Monday, March 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street); and the LCT3 production of BULL IN A CHINA SHOP, a new play by Bryna Turner, to be directed by Lee Sunday Evans, which will begin performances Saturday, February 11, open on Monday, February 27, and run through Sunday, March 26 at the Claire Tow Theater (150 West 65 Street).

HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE

At a dinner party in the wilds of New Jersey, two married couples discuss a younger acquaintance--a polyamorous woman who also hunts her own meat. Fascinated, they invite this mysterious woman and her two live-in boyfriends to a New Year's Eve party, which alters the course of their lives. HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE asks: how much love can a twosome contain? What are the limits of friendship, and what happens when parents who have forgotten their own wildness have a wild rumpus all their own?

Sarah Ruhl returns to Lincoln Center Theater where her plays The Oldest Boy; The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); and In The Next Room, or the vibrator play (Tony Award nominee for Best Play, Pulitzer Prize finalist) had their New York premieres. Her other plays include Stage Kiss; Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award); Dead Man's Cell Phone; Melancholy Play; Orlando; Dear Elizabeth; and Late: a cowboy song (Piven Theatre Workshop). Her plays have been produced across the country as well as internationally, and have been translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, German, French, Swedish, and Arabic.

Rebecca Taichman directed LCT's production of Sarah Ruhl's The Oldest Boy and the LCT3 production of Kirsten Greenidge's Luck of the Irish. She directed the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and productions of her plays The Clean House, Orlando and, most recently at Playwrights Horizons, Stage Kiss. Her other Off-Broadway credits include Indecent, Familiar, Marie Antoinette, Milk Like Sugar, The Scene, and Menopausal Gentleman (Special Citation Obie Award/world premiere). She directed the operas Dark Sisters, music by Nico Muhly, libretto by Stephen Karam (world premiere) and Orpheus by Telemann at New York City Opera.

HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE will have sets by David Zinn, costumes by Susan Hilferty, lights by Peter Kaczorowski, sound by Matt Hubbs, and original music by Todd Almond.

HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. Thanks to The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting new American plays at LCT. The Mitzi E. Newhouse season is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

BULL IN A CHINA SHOP

Galloping through forty years in a New England seminary, BULL IN A CHINA SHOP follows Mary Woolley and her partner Jeannette Marks as they reform and revolutionize women's education at the height of the suffrage movement. As evolving ambitions and desires strain the couple's relationship, this fast-paced comedy explores how we change the world, how the world changes us, and how we try to grow old together.

Evan Cabnet is the Artistic Director of LCT3.

BRYNA TURNER is a Brooklyn-based playwright who will be making her professional debut with this production. Her play How to Separate Your Soul from Your Body (in ten easy steps!) received readings at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, at Rutgers University, and at The Rainbow Theatre Project in Washington, D.C. Her plays The Stand-In and Lights Over Philo have been produced as part of the Playwrights Festival of New Plays at Rutgers University, directed by Knud Adams and Lee Sunday Evans, respectively. She is a member of Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writer's Group and holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Rutgers University, where she studied with Kathleen Tolan, Christina Anderson, David Adjmi, Madeleine George, and Anne Washburn.

Lee Sunday EVANS, a director and choreographer, won a 2015 Obie Award for her production of A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes and The Vineyard Theatre's 2016 Susan Stroman Award. Most recently, she created a production of Macbeth for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival which was performed by three women, and directed the world premiere of Wellesley Girl by Brendan Pelsue at the Humana Festival. Her work has been presented and developed at Clubbed Thumb, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Sundance Theatre Festival, CATCH, 59E59, The New Ohio, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, The Culture Project, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, Dixon Place, and LaMama.

BULL IN A CHINA SHOP will have sets by Arnulfo Maldonado, costumes by Oana Botez, lights by Eric Southern, and sound by Broken Chord.

The LCT3 season program is supported by generous grants from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Ford Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, Time Warner Foundation, the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, the Tony Randall Theatrical Fund, the J & AR Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Endowment support is generously provided by Daryl Roth.

Casting for both productions will be announced at a later date.

This season, Lincoln Center Theater is also producing a new production of William Finn and James Lapine's Tony Award-winning musical Falsettos on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre; The Babylon Line, a new play by Richard Greenberg, directed by Terry Kinney at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater; and the LCT3 production of The Harvest, a new play by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by David McCallum in the Claire Tow Theater. Later this season, LCT will remount its critically acclaimed production of J.T. Rogers' Oslo, directed by Bartlett Sher, for a return engagement this spring at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and co-produce the new Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, directed by Sam Gold and starring Sally Field, at the Golden Theatre.