Roundabout Announces New Plays by Cho and Rosentock

Roundabout Theatre Company announced that Julia Cho and Kimberly Rosenstock will be coming to the not-for-profit institution with the announcement of their new plays as part of the fall 2010 season at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street).

Julia Cho's play The Language Archive will be directed by Roundabout Associate Artist Mark Brokaw at the Laura Pels Theatre. Roundabout commissioned The Language Archive, which won the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize awarded to an outstanding new English-language play by a woman.

Kimberly Rosenstock's play Tigers Be Still will be directed by Sam Gold at the Black Box theatre as part of Roundabout Underground. Roundabout Underground is an initiative to showcase new plays that will either allow an experienced director to go back to his/her creative roots or give a debut production to an emerging writer or director.

Roundabout also announces a new subsidiary rights practice for playwrights at the Steinberg Center. The practice involves Roundabout voluntarily foregoing its subsidiary rights participation for its regular runs at the Laura Pels Theatre, that began with Theresa Rebeck's The Understudy, and at the Black Box Theatre, regardless of the length of the run. In announcing this new policy, Todd Haimes stated, "I've always intended for the Steinberg Center primarily to be our home for new plays. I want that home to reflect the needs of the artists, and, for playwrights, we've concluded that this means foregoing our customary participation in subsidiary rights Off-Broadway. Making this change is just one part of how I see us continuing our commitment to new work and, most importantly, to living writers."

THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE at Laura Pels Theatre:
The Language Archive is a poignant and quirky comedy that seems to prove love is the one language that can leave us all at a loss for words. George is a man consumed with preserving and documenting the dying languages of far-flung cultures. Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.

The cast and design team will be announced shortly.

Roundabout Theatre Company commissioned the play, which was made possible by a generous grant from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation's Theatre Visions Fund Award. The play will have its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California from March 25th-April 25th, 2010 before traveling to Roundabout.

Julia Cho (Playwright) is the author of The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories, which have been produced at SCR, The Vineyard Theatre, The Public Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, East West Players and The Theatre @ Boston Court among others. An alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Ms. Cho is a member of New Dramatists.

Mark Brokaw (Director). For the Roundabout: After Miss Julie, Distracted, Suddenly Last Summer, The Constant Wife. Other Broadway: Reckless and the musical Cry-Baby. New York premieres include Mouth to Mouth, This is Our Youth (New Group); The Long Christmas Ride Home, Stranger, The Dying Gaul, How I Learned to Drive, (Vineyard Theatre); The Busy World is Hushed and Lobby Hero (Playwrights Horizons); As Bees in Honey Drown (Drama Dept.); The Good Times are Killing Me (Second Stage); Old Money (Lincoln Center); 2.5 Minute Ride (Public). Other work includes Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, La Jolla, Steppenwolf, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, New York Stage & Film, Sundance and the O'Neill Conference. He has also directed at London's Donmar Warehouse and Dublin's Gate Theatre. Mark is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre.

TIGERS BE STILL at Roundabout Underground:

Tigers Be Still is a comedy that follows the story of Sherry Wickman, a young woman who expects the perfect career and life to fall into place immediately upon earning her masters degree in art therapy. Instead, Sherry finds herself unemployed, overwhelmed and back at home hiding out in her twin-sized childhood bed. But when Sherry gets hired as a substitute art teacher, things begin to brighten up. Now if only her mother would come downstairs, her sister would get off the couch, her very first therapy patient would do just one of his take-home assignments, her new boss would leave his gun at home, and someone would catch the tiger that escaped from the local zoo, everything would be just perfect. The cast and design team will be announced shortly.

Kimberly Rosenstock (Playwright) is currently earning her MFA in playwriting under the mentorship of Paula Vogel at the Yale School of Drama where she is the recipient of the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Scholarship. Her work has been developed and produced by The Kennedy Center, Ars Nova, The Old Vic in association with The Public Theater, Voice and Vision, the NY Fringe Festival, Vital Theatre and New York Stage & Film. Her play 99 Ways To Fuck A Swan was featured in Portland Center Stage's 2009 JAW Playwrights Festival. She was the Artistic Director of the 2009 Yale Summer Cabaret where she produced several shows including Fly-By-Night, a new indie rock musical she co-wrote about star-crossed love and blackouts. From 2005-2007 she was Associate Producer of Ars Nova in New York City where she produced new works of music, comedy and theater. She has her BA from Amherst College where she first began writing plays under the mentorship of Constance Congdon. She is originally from Baldwin, Long Island.

Sam Gold (Director) most recently directed the critically acclaimed production of Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons. He directed Nick Jones' Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, which played to a sold out run at Ars Nova in 2008. Other credits include Threepenny Opera (Juilliard), Anne Carson's translation of Electra (Williams College), Noah Haidle's Rag and Bone (Rattlestick), Sam Marks' The Joke (Studio Dante), Betty Shamieh's The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop), Colin McKenna's The Secret Agenda of Trees (Cherry Lane), Rogelio Martinez's Fizz (The Ohio Theater), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (The Hangar Theater), Joanna Laurens' The Three Birds (Gale Gates), and Betty Shamieh‘s Chocolate in Heat (The Tank). Sam is the Resident Director at the Juilliard School, where his credits include Beau Willimon's War Story, Twelfth Night, Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, Willimon's Farragut North, Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood, and Marlowe's Edward II for the Juilliard Centennial Tour (REDCAT, LA/Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). From 2003 to 2006, Sam served as Dramaturg at The Wooster Group. He is a NYTW Usual Suspect, a Drama League Directing Fellow, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award, and a graduate of The Juilliard Directing Program.

Robyn Goodman (Artistic Consultant to the Roundabout), curates the Roundabout Underground initiative that continues to be a creative breeding ground for nurturing new talent including Stephen Karam (Speech & Debate), Steven Levenson (The Language of Trees) and Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days). The 62-seat Black Box Theatre, below the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, allows Roundabout to take artistic risks that are better suited for a more intimate space.

Support for Roundabout Underground is provided by Jodi and Daniel Glucksman, The Educational Foundation of America, The Shen Family Foundation, Laura S. Rodgers/The Honorable Ann W. Brown & Donald A. Brown, and Stephen and Ruth Hendel. Roundabout Underground is also supported, in part, by funds from the City of New York Theater Subdistrict Council, LDC and the City of New York. Support for new plays provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

TICKET INFORMATION:

Only Roundabout subscribers have first access to tickets! Sign up for Roundabout's email club at www.roundabouttheatre.org to be the first to hear when packages are available. Single Tickets will be available to the general public in the fall of 2010.

All tickets for Roundabout Underground are $20.00 for all seats. Tickets will be issued as General Admission passes for first-come, first-served seating on the show date.

Roundabout Theatre Company is one of the country's leading not-for-profit theatres. The company contributes invaluably to New York's cultural life by staging the highest quality revivals of classic plays and musicals as well as new plays by established writers. Roundabout consistently partners great artists with great works to bring a fresh and exciting interpretation that makes each production relevant and important to today's audiences.

Roundabout Theatre Company currently produces at three permanent homes each of which is designed specifically to enhance the needs of the Roundabout's mission. Off-Broadway, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, which houses the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre, with its simple sophisticated design is perfectly suited to showcasing intimate plays and musicals. The grandeur of its Broadway home on 42nd Street, American Airlines Theatre, sets the ideal stage for the classics. Roundabout's Studio 54 provides an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for its musical and special event productions. Together these three distinctive venues serve to enhance the work on each of its stages. Roundabout also programs the new Henry Miller's Theatre which is the first new Broadway theatre built in over a decade and set new standards for environmentally sustainable design and construction of performing arts venues.

Roundabout Theatre Company's 2009-2010 season also includes Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sondheim on Sondheim starring Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams and Tom Wopat; Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, directed by Gordon Edelstein; Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart, starring Megan Mullally, Patton Oswalt, Lili Taylor and David Wilson Barnes, directed by Joe Mantello. The 2010-2011 season will include Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, starring and directed by Brian Bedford. Roundabout's sold out production of The 39 Steps made its third transfer to the New World Stages after a successful Broadway run at three Broadway theatres.

www.roundabouttheatre.org