Robert Beitzel, Halley Feiffer, Susan Pourfar and Deborah Rush to Star in Ethan Coen's WOMEN OR NOTHING, Directed by David Cromer

Atlantic Theater Company has just announced that Robert Beitzel, Halley Feiffer, Susan Pourfar and Tony Award nominee Deborah Rush will star in the world premiere production of Academy Award winner Ethan Coen's first full length play WOMEN OR NOTHING, staged by acclaimed director David Cromer.

WOMEN OR NOTHING will begin previews Wednesday, August 28; officially open Monday, September 16; and play a limited engagement through Sunday, October 6 Off Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (336 West 20th Street).

WOMEN OR NOTHING is a play about two women so desperate to have a child that one of them will even sleep with a man. Who the man is, what he thinks is going on, what the women think about what he thinks, and what the mother of one of the women reveals about her own colorful past-it all defies belief. Why then does it all make sense?

Academy Award winning filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) returns to Atlantic to open the season with his fourth world premiere, and first full length play, following his acclaimed productions of Almost an Evening, Offices and Happy Hour. He has made fifteen movies with his brother Joel, including the Academy Award winning films No Country for Old Men and Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Raising Arizona; Barton Fink; The Hudsucker Proxy; The Big Lebowski; Burn After Reading and True Grit.

Director David Cromer recently staged the Off Broadway productions ofNikolai and the Others, Really Really and Tribes. He was honored with both the Lucille Lortel and Obie Award for his staging of the unanimously acclaimed Off-Broadway production of Our Town, in which he also starred as the Stage Manager. Broadway credits include the revivals of Brighton Beach Memoirs and The House of the Blue Leaves. His hit production of Adding Machine: A Chamber Musical, transferred Off Broadway from his native Chicago, garnering him an Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction.

Robert Beitzel most recently appeared Off Broadway in In Masks Outrageous and Austere and David Cromer's production of Our Town.Halley Feiffer received a Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut performance in The House of the Blue Leaves. Susan Pourfar starred Off Broadway in Tribes, for which she received Obie and Theatre World Awards, and can currently be seen on the hit ABC series "Scandal." Tony Awardnominee Deborah Rush most recently appeared in the Encores! production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, on Broadway in Blithe Spirit and on television in the new hit series "Orange is the New Black."

The design team for WOMEN OR NOTHING will feature scenic design byMichele Spadaro, costume design by Sarah Laux, lighting design byBradley King and original music and sound design by Daniel Kluger.

BIOGRAPHIES

Robert Beitzel (Chuck). Off-Broadway: Our Town, Barrow Street Theater (Directed by David Cromer). Billy Foxworth in In Masks Outrageous and Austere. Rattlestick Playwrights' Theater: Hallway Trillogy, Finer Noble Gases, Faster. NYTW: Light Raise the Roof. Urban Stages: Bulrusher. Regional: The Shakespeare Theater, D.C.: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Finer Noble Gases @ Actors' Theater Louisville, The Bush Theater (London), and The Edinburgh Fringe. Film and T.V.: Winter Passing, Art Machine, Blackbird, Side Effects(short). "True Detective" (HBO), "Turn" (AMC), "Inside Amy Schumer," "Law & Order," "ER."Robert creates music with his bands Less the Band, and Corporal.BFA: The Juilliard School.

Halley Feiffer (Gretchen). Broadway: The House of Blue Leaves, directed by David Cromer (Theatre World Award). Off-Broadway: Medieval Play (Signature), Tigers Be Still(Roundabout; Drama League Nomination), Still Life (MCC), Some Americans Abroad, Election Day, subUrbia (2ST), None of the Above (Lion Theatre) and Urgent Fury (Cherry Lane). Regional: Huntington, Seattle Rep, Vineyard Playhouse, NY Stage & Film. Film: You Can Count on Me, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Gentlemen Broncos, The Messenger, Twelve Thirty, Stephanie Daley, Free Samples, He's Way More Famous Than You (which she also co-wrote) and the upcoming films Clutter and All Was Bright. TV: "Law & Order," "Torchwood," "Ugly Betty," "The Good Wife," "Royal Pains," and HBO's "MildrEd Pierce," "Flight of the Conchords" and "Bored to Death." Halley is also a playwright whose play "How To Make Friends and Then Kill Them" will premiere at the Rattlestick Theatre in October (dir. Kip Fagan); she is a playwright-in-residence at Stella Adler Studio, where her play A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit... will premiere in September, (dir. Jaime Castaneda). She is a graduate of Wesleyan University.

Susan Pourfar (Laura). New York credits include: Tribes (Barrow Street Theatre and Mark Taper Forum, David Cromer, director, Obie Award, Theatre World Award); When The Rain Stops Falling (Lincoln Center Theater, David Cromer, director); In the Wake, The Singing Forest, The Poor Itch (Public Theater); Sasha in Ivanov (Lake Lucille); Swimming In The Shallows, The Dear Boy (Second Stage Uptown); Iron (Manhattan Theatre Club); The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center for the Performing Arts). Regional: Passion Play (Yale Rep), Proof (ALLIANCE THEATRE and Rep Theatre of St. Louis), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Black Dahlia), as well as Long Wharf, Denver Center, Bay Street Theatre, Sundance Institute, and three seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. TV: Becky Flynn on ABC's "Scandal," "Elementary," "The Good Wife," "Nurse Jackie," "Numbers," "The Sopranos," "Third Watch," "Law & Order." Upcoming Film: Untitled Chris Messina Project. 2012 Clarence Derwent Award.

Deborah Rush (Dorene). Broadway: Blithe Spirit, Absurd Person Singular, Hay Fever,Noises Off (Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk Award), Dance With Me. Encores!:Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Off Broadway: Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong (Public Theater); The Misanthrope, Alice. Shakespeare in The Park: All's Well That Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona. Regional: Powerhouse Theatre, Williamstown, Goodspeed Opera House. Films include The Box, American Wedding, Strangers with Candy, Half Nelson,The Visitor, Julie & Julia for directors Woody Allen, John Schlesinger, Frank Oz, Frank Perry. Recent television "Orange is the New Black," "Girls", "The Good Wife", "Law & Order(s)."

Ethan Coen's (Playwright) three previous plays are Happy Hour, Almost an Evening and Offices, all of them evenings of one-acts produced by the Atlantic Theater Company and directed by Neil Pepe. Ethan Coen 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, he has made fifteen 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, Burn after Reading, A Serious Man, and adaptations of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Charles Portis's True Grit.

David Cromer (Director). Recent productions include Nikolai and the Others at Lincoln Center, Really Really at MCC in NYC (starring Zosia Mamet), Sweet Bird of Youth (starring Diane Lane) at the Goodman Theater (Chicago), Tribes at Barrow Street Theatre in NYC and now running at The Taper in LA, House of Blue Leaves on Broadway (starring Ben Stiller),Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway, When the Rain Stops Falling (2010 Lortel Award) at Lincoln Center Theater and A Streetcar Named Desire at Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Writers Theatre in Chicago. His critically acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, ran for over a year at the Barrow Street Theatre and he received the 2009 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Revival, as well as a 2009 Obie Award for Best Director. He recently revived his production at Huntington Theater in Boston. His NYC production of Adding Machine: A Chamber Musical (based on the play by Elmer Rice), garnered him an Obie Award for Best Director, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction, and ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre. In his former home town, Chicago, David directed many award winning productions including Picnic, Our Town, and the World Premiere of Orson's Shadow at Steppenwolf Theatre. He was Artistic Director of Big Game Theatre from 1991-93. His productions in Chicago have won a total of 16 Joseph Jefferson Awards including Best Production and Best Director for The Cider House Rules, The Price, andAngels in America. His regional credits include The Grapes of Wrath at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC, The Clean House, Farnsworth Invention and Santaland Diaries at the Alley Theatre. David is a 2010 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) is the award winning Off-Broadway theater that produces great plays simply and truthfully, utilizing an artistic ensemble. Atlantic believes that the story of a play and the intent of its playwright are at the core of the creative process. The plays in the Atlantic repertory, from both new and established playwrights, are boldly interpreted by today's finest theater artists and resonate with contemporary audiences. Since its inception over 27 years ago, Atlantic has produced more than 150 plays including Tony Award-winning productions ofSpring Awakening and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Martin McDonagh); world premieres ofAlmost an Evening, Offices and Happy Hour (Ethan Coen); The Lieutenant of Inishmore andThe Cripple of Inishmaan (Martin McDonagh); Body Awareness (Annie Baker); Romance(David Mamet); Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, adapted by Jenny Worton); Farragut North(Beau Willimon); Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling (Adam Rapp); Bluebird and Harper Regan (Simon Stephens); What Rhymes With America (Melissa James Gibson); The Lying Lesson (Craig Lucas); 3 Kinds of Exile (John Guare); Storefront Church (John Patrick Shanley); Blue/Orange (Joe Penhall); Port Authority and Dublin Carol (Conor McPherson);Writer's Block (Woody Allen); American Buffalo and Edmond (David Mamet); The Cider House Rules (adapted by Peter Parnell); Good Television (Rod McLachlan); Celebration &The Room, The Collection & A Kind of Alaska and The Hothouse (Harold Pinter); Gabriel(Moira Buffini); Oohrah! (Bekah Brunstetter); Mojo, Parlour Song (Jez Butterworth); Boys' Lifeand The Lights (Howard Korder); Distant Fires (Kevin Heelan); Missing Persons (Craig Lucas).

Atlantic has garnered 12 Tony Awards, 12 Lucille Lortel Awards, 15 Obie Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards, five Outer Critics Circle Awards and three Drama League Awards. Atlantic also operates The Atlantic Theater Company Acting School, which has an undergraduate program in conjunction with NYU, as well as a two-year professional acting program and a six-week intensive workshop every summer. Atlantic for Kids and the Educational Outreach Program partners with schools and teachers throughout the greater metropolitan area coordinating in-school visits of teaching artists and post-theater talkbacks.

Atlantic Theater Company AT THE LINDA GROSS THEATER is located at 336 West 20th Street (between 8th & 9th Avenues).

SCHEDULE: Wednesday-Saturday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm, Sunday at 3pm, Tuesday andSunday at 7pm. No Sunday at 7pm on September 22, September 29, or October 6. AddedWednesday at 2pm on September 18 and September 25. No 2pm performance on Saturday, August 31, no performance on Tuesday, September 17.

TICKETS: All tickets are $65.00 and available by calling OvationTix (866.811.4111), visiting the Atlantic Stage 2 box office at 330 West 16th Street, or going online to atlantictheater.org.

Atlantic Members pay $35 per ticket for all Mainstage and Stage 2 productions. Members may book by contacting OvationTix, visiting the Atlantic Stage 2 box office, or going online toatlantictheater.org. For information on Atlantic Theater Company membership, group sales or other inquiries, please contact the Membership Department: 212-645-1242 ormembership@atlantictheater.org

BACK20 TICKETS
For every preview performance of Atlantic Theater Company Mainstage productions, Atlantic offers $20 tickets to the public. They are limited to two rows in the back of the theater, and availability may vary per performance. Back20 tickets may be purchased online, by phone or at the box office. No code necessary.