Zachary Quinto Will Lead Noah Haidle's SMOKEFALL at MCC; Opens in February

MCC THEATER (Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, Artistic Directors; Blake West, Executive Director) has announced that Emmy® Award nominee Zachary Quinto will lead the cast of the New York premiere of Smokefall, by Noah Haidle and directed by Anne Kauffman, who directed The Nether for MCC last season to great acclaim. Smokefall continues MCC Theater's season at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street) with previews beginning February 4, 2016 and an opening night set for February 22. It is scheduled through March 13. Single tickets will go on sale January 5, 2016, but advanced tickets are currently available via subscription packages at www.mcctheater.org.

Quinto is best known for his film work in the blockbuster Star Trek reboots as well as his Emmy®-nominated work on the "American Horror Story" anthology, for which he also won a Television Critics' Choice Award for Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. As a film producer, he has championed the work of Oscar®-nominated filmmaker J.C. Chandor notably the critically-acclaimed indies All is Lost and Margin Call, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. On Broadway, Quinto most recently appeared in the much-raved revival of The Glass Menagerie, and Off-Broadway in the acclaimed reimagining of Angels in America. Full biography below.

Smokefall had its world premiere, smash-hit run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Magical realism collides with manic vaudeville in a family drama unlike any you've ever seen. The Twins swap philosophy while awaiting their birth, Beauty eats dirt and doesn't speak, Father is about to drive away and never return, and a man named Footnote acts as our guide. Whipping from astonishing tenderness to profound humor and back again, this wholly original play uncovers the extraordinary family connections we all stretch and warp across the years but can never quite break. Smokefall marks the MCC debut of playwright Haidle. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

The design team for Smokefall includes scenic design by 2015 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" recipient Mimi Lien (An Octoroon; Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812); lighting by David Weiner (The Normal Heart, Break of Noon), costumes by Asta Hostetter(You Got Older), and sound by Lindsay Jones (The Brothers Size). Casting by Telsey + Co.

MCC's 2015-16 Season continues with: Lost Girls, John Pollono's follow-up to the hit MCC production Small Engine Repair, starring Piper Perabo; and playwright Halley Feiffer (I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard) will make her MCC Theater playwriting debut with her play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City. All productions will be staged at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).

Zachary Quinto Broadway: The Glass Menagerie directed by John Tiffany (Drama League Award nominee.) Off Broadway: Angels in America, Signature Theatre Company (Theatre World Award, Drama Desk nomination.) Theatre: Side Man, Gross Indecency, City Theatre Company; The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, Old Globe; Endgame, Odyssey Theatre Company, Los Angeles; The Bear, Tintreach Company, Galway, Ireland. Television: "American Horror Story," "American Horror Story: Asylum" (Critic's Choice Award, Emmy Award nomination), "The Slap." "Heroes," "24," "Six Feet Under." Film: Spock in Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, and the upcoming Star Trek Beyond; I Am Michael, the upcoming Snowden directed by Oliver Stone; Produced and starred inMargin Call; Produced All is Lost starring Robert Redford; Will executive produce the film adaptation of Vicky Ward's novel "The Liar's Ball"; Will produce and star in the upcoming independent film Aardvark opposite Jenny Slate. BFA, Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.

Noah Haidle's plays have premiered at the Goodman, Lincoln Center Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Huntington Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Summer Play Festival in New York City, HERE Arts Center, as well as many others around the United States and abroad. He is a graduate of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Lecompte Du Nouy awards, the 2005 Helen Merrill Award for emerging playwrights, the 2007 Claire Tow Award and an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Grant. He is published by Methuen in London, Suhrkamp in Berlin, and through Dramatists Play Service in New York City. His original screenplay Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, produced by Lionsgate and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, opened in February 2013. He is currently working on commissions from Lincoln Center Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and is set to direct his screenplay The Rodeo Clown, produced by Olive Productions and Mosaic. Haidle is a proud resident of Detroit.

Anne Kauffman is an Obie Award-winning director whose production highlights includeYou Got Older (Page 73 Producitons), Buzzer at the Public Theater, The Nether at MCC Theater, Smokefall at the Goodman Theatre, Somewhere Fun at Vineyard Theatre; Your Mother's Copy of the Karma Sutra, Maple and Vine and Detroit at Playwrights Horizons; Belleville at New York Theatre Workshop, Yale Repertory Theatre and Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Tales from My Parents' Divorce at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Flea Theater; This Wide Night at Naked Angels; Becky Shaw and Body Awareness at The Wilma Theater; Slowgirl and Stunning at LCT3; Sixty Miles to Silver Lake with Page 73 Productions at Soho Rep; God's Ear at Vineyard Theatre and New Georges; The Thugs at Soho Rep; the musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle at Yale Repertory Theatre; Cherokee at the Wilma Theater and 100 Days at Z Space. Ms. Kauffman is a recipient of the 2015 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction, Joan and Joseph F. Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity, a Lilly Award, the Alan Schneider Director Award and several Barrymore awards. She is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, a member of Soho Rep's Artistic Council, on the New Georges' Kitchen Cabinet, an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the Drama League, a founding member of The Civilians and an associate artist with Clubbed Thumb.

MCC Theater - founded in 1986 as Manhattan Class Company - is driven by a mission to provoke conversations that have never happened and otherwise never would. Led by Artistic Directors Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, and Executive Director Blake West, MCC fulfills its mission by producing new work that challenges artists and rewards audiences, and by nurturing the development of playwrights and students through a variety of literary and education programs that enable nearly 1,200 New York City high school students to find - and use - their own unique voice each year through the creation and performance of original theater pieces. MCC currently produces its annual season at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street) and will open its own two-theater complex on West 52nd Street and 10th Avenue in 2017. Notable productions include the recent hit Hand to God, which is currently having a celebrated run on Broadway; The Nether; the Obie-winning Punk Rock; Small Engine Repair; The Village Bike; The Other Place; Really Really; The Submission, winner of the inaugural Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for new American plays; The Pride; Fifty Words; Nixon's Nixon; The Grey Zone; the Tony Award-winning Frozen; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit; the re-imagined production of the musical Carrie; and ten plays by Playwright-in-Residence Neil LaBute, including Fat Pig, Reasons to Be Pretty and Reasons to Be Happy.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos