SUBMISSIONS ONLY's Kate Wetherhead to Star in THE HEIDI CHRONICLES at the Guthrie This Fall

The Guthrie Theater today announced casting for the first production on the Wurtele Thrust Stage in the 2014-2015 season, Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Heidi Chronicles. Under the direction of 2014 Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman (Broadway's Violet, Chinglish, Well), The Heidi Chronicles will feature the talents of Kate Wetherhead, Ben Graney, Tracey Maloney and Zach Shaffer, as well as Sam Bardwell, Eleonore Dendy, Mo Perry and Stacia Rice.

Performances begin on the Wurtele Thrust Stage on Saturday, September 13. Single tickets start at $15 and are now on sale through the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224, toll-free 877.44.STAGE, 612.225.6244 (Group Sales) and online at www.guthrietheater.org.

Wasserstein's celebrated play traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland from high school in the radical '60s to her career as an art historian in the heartless '80s. As Heidi determines her place in society and how to juggle success and failures in work, friendship, romance and motherhood, The Heidi Chronicles asks the ever-present question: Can women have it all? Variety raved "not many plays manage Heidi's feat of inducing almost continuous laughter while forcing the audience to examine its preconceptions," while the New York Daily News called it "not just a funny play, but a wise one." Leigh Silverman will make her Guthrie debut at the helm of this Pulitzer Prize-winning gem. The Guthrie previously staged Wasserstein's Third.

The cast of The Heidi Chronicles features Kate Wetherhead (Heidi Holland), Tracey Maloney (Susan Johnston), Ben Graney (Scoop Rosenbaum) and Zach Shaffer (Peter Patrone), as well as ensemble members Sam Bardwell, Eleonore Dendy, Mo Perry and Stacia Rice.

Kate Wetherhead (Heidi Holland) is the co-creator, director, writer and star of "Submissions Only," a critically acclaimed web series which aired its third season this spring on BroadwayWorld.com. Kate most recently reprised her role as Jane in Clever Little Lies at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, a role she originated in the play's premiere at the George Street Playhouse. Her Broadway credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Legally Blonde: the Musical. Off-Broadway she appeared in The Other Josh Cohen (Drama Desk nomination), Ordinary Days, Tatjana in Color and Sarah, Plain and Tall and regionally in The Other Josh Cohen, Steel Magnolias (Paper Mill Playhouse); Cabaret, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! (Dallas Theater Center); I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (Engeman Theater); Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas, James and the Giant Peach (Goodspeed Opera House); The Spitfire Grill (Skylight Opera Theatre); and Almost, Maine (St. Michael's Playhouse). The Heidi Chronicles marks her Guthrie debut.

Tracey Maloney (Susan Johnston) has appeared in more than a dozen productions at the Guthrie, including Othello, A Christmas Carol, Tribes, God of Carnage, The Master Butchers Singing Club, Circle Mirror Transformation, Peer Gynt, Private Lives and The Glass Menagerie. Her theater credits in the Twin Cities include roles with Ten Thousand Things Theater, Torch Theater, Children's Theatre Company, Pillsbury House Theatre and Park Square Theatre.

Ben Graney (Scoop Rosenbaum) was a 2007 participant in A Guthrie Experience for Actors in Training. Graney made his Broadway debut in War Horse and has appeared in productions of When the Rain Stops Falling (Lincoln Center Theater), Be a Good Little Widow (The Old Globe), Game Play, The Netflix Plays (Ars Nova), Twelfth Night (McCarter Theater), and The Cherry Orchard and Twelfth Night (Chautauqua Theater Co.). This marks his Guthrie mainstage debut.

Zach Shaffer (Peter Patrone) makes his Guthrie debut in The Heidi Chronicles. His Broadway credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Man Who Came to Dinner and A View from the Bridge. On screen Shaffer appeared in the film Salt, and in the television series "Black Box" and "Smash." His additional theater credits include Taking Care of Baby (Manhattan Theatre Club) and regional work at Hartford Stage and Portland Center Stage.

Rounding out the cast are Sam Bardwell, Eleonore Dendy, Mo Perry and Stacia Rice. Sam Bardwell (Ensemble) is a graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program. His Guthrie credits include Crimes of the Heart, A Christmas Carol (four productions), Macbeth and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and his additional Twin Cities credits include roles at the Children's Theatre, History Theatre, Jungle Theater and Park Square Theatre. Eleonore Dendy (Ensemble) is a graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program. Her Guthrie credits include the 2013 production of A Christmas Carol, and Eleonore was an understudy in last summer's production of Pride and Prejudice. Mo Perry (Ensemble) is an established actress who has appeared on numerous stages throughout the Twin Cities in productions by Park Square Theatre, Torch Theater, Old Log Theater, Children's Theatre Company, Ten Thousand Things, Mixed Blood Theatre, Gremlin Theatre and Walking Shadow Theatre Company, among others. This marks her Guthrie debut. Stacia Rice (Ensemble) has appeared at the Guthrie in A Streetcar Named Desire (Ivey Award), After a Hundred Years, Jane Eyre, Hamlet, The Constant Wife, Pygmalion and Othello. Rice is the founder and artistic director of Torch Theater and has also performed with Park Square Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Children's Theatre Company, Penumbra Theater, and Ten Thousand Things.

WENDY WASSERSTEIN (Playwright) Wendy Wasserstein's play The Heidi Chronicles won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; the New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards; and earned her a grant from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. For The Sisters Rosensweig she received the 1993 Outer Critics Circle Award, a Tony Award nomination, and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre. Other plays include Old Money; An American Daughter; Third; Uncommon Women and Others; Isn't it Romantic; a musical, Miami (with Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman); Waiting for Philip Glass, included in Love's Fire - which played at the Guthrie Lab in 1998 in a production by The Acting Company. Wasserstein's screenplays include The Object of My Affection, produced as a major motion picture starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. For PBS Great Performances she wrote Kiss, Kiss Darling; Drive, She Said; and adaptations of John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin and her own Uncommon Women and Others. She adapted The Heidi Chronicles for TNT (1996 Emmy Award nomination for Best Television Movie) and An American Daughter for Lifetime Television. Her adaptation of The Nutcracker was performed at The American Ballet Theatre at The Met, and her adaptation of The Merry Widow premiered at San Francisco Opera. She was the librettist for the original opera Festival of Regrets: Central Park, which had runs at Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera. She wrote Pamela's First Musical, a children's book, which was adapted with Cy Coleman into a musical which premiered in Spring 2006. Her other books include the essay collections Shiksa Goddess and Bachelor Girls. She contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Woman, and Harper's Bazaar, among many other publications. She was the recipient of an NEA Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She taught at Columbia University, New York University, Juilliard School, and Princeton University, and held an Honorary Doctorate from Mount Holyoke College. Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan. She was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the Yale School of Drama.

LEIGH SILVERMAN (Director) was the seventh woman to direct a play on Broadway, and was recently nominated for a Tony Award as Best Director for her work on the Broadway musical Violet. Her other Broadway credit includes Chinglish; Well. Off-Broadway: American Hero (2ST); Kung Fu (Signature Theatre); The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons); The Call (Playwrights Horizons); The Madrid (MTC); Golden Child (Signature Theatre); No Place to Go (Public Theater; Two River Theatre); In the Wake (Center Theatre Group/Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater, Obie Award, Lortel nomination); Go Back to Where You Are (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award); From Up Here (MTC, Drama Desk nomination); Yellow Face (Center Theatre Group/The Public Theater); Coraline (MCC/True Love); Blue Door (Playwrights Horizons); Well (The Public Theater; Huntington Theatre; ACT); Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Second Stage Theatre). Recent regional: American Hero (WTF); Chinglish (Goodman Theater, Jeff nomination; West Coast/Hong Kong tour). The Heidi Chronicles marks her Guthrie debut.

The artistic team includes Clint Ramos (Set and Costume Designer), Eric Southern (Lighting Designer), Scott W. Edwards (Sound Designer), Tree O'Halloran (Stage Manager), Michele Hossle (Assistant Stage Manager), Jo Holcomb (Dramaturgy) and Lucinda Holshue (Voice and Dialect Coach).

The Heidi Chronicles begins preview performances on September 13, opens September 19 and continues through October 26 on the Wurtele Thrust Stage at the Guthrie Theater. Single tickets start at $15 and are now on sale through the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224, toll-free 877.44.STAGE, 612.225.6244 (Group Sales) and online at www.guthrietheater.org.

The GUTHRIE THEATER (Joe Dowling, Director) was founded by Sir Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 and is an American center for theater performance, production, education and professional training. The Tony Award-winning Guthrie Theater is dedicated to producing the great works of dramatic literature, developing the work of contemporary playwrights and cultivating the next generation of theater artists. With annual attendance of nearly 500,000 people, the Guthrie Theater presents a mix of classic plays and contemporary work on its three stages. Under the artistic leadership of Joe Dowling since 1995, the Guthrie continues to set a national standard for excellence in theatrical production and performance. In 2006, the Guthrie opened its new home on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, the Guthrie Theater houses three state-of-the-art stages, production facilities, classrooms and dramatic public lobbies. www.guthrietheater.org

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