Amanda Quaid, Frank Wood and More Join Larry Pine in Lucas Hnath's Disney Play at Soho Rep; Full Cast Announced!

Soho Rep has announced casting and an official opening date for the world premiere of Lucas Hnath's play A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney.

Soho Rep Artistic Director Sarah Benson will direct an ensemble including Larry Pine (The Royal Family, The Seagull, Wes Anderson's films and "House of Cards") as Walt Disney, Amanda Quaid (C-ck, Luck of the Irish) as Daughter, Brian Sgambati (Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino, The Coasts of Utopia) as Ron Miller, and Frank Wood (Clybourne Park, Angels in America) as Roy Disney.

Produced in association with John Adrian Selzer, the production, which concludes Soho Rep's highly successful 2012-13 season, will run April 30 - May 26 at Soho Rep (46 Walker Street). Critics are welcome as of Tuesday, May 7 for an opening on Thursday, May 9.

Hnath's adrenaline-charged odyssey centers around the reading of a screenplay he imagines Walt Disney, the man who forever changed the American Dream, to have written about his last days on earth. The movie's script is about a city Disney is going to build that is going to change the world. It's about Walt's brother, Roy. It's about everyone who loves Walt so much and how sad they're going to be when he's gone.

Performances of A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney will take place Tuesdays through Sundays at 7:30 P.M., and Saturdays at 3:00 P.M. Tickets, $30-40, are on sale now at www.sohorep.org or 212.352.3101. Tickets for select Sunday performances (May 12 and 19) will be 99¢, available first come, first served at the box office.

The creative team for A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney is Mimi Lien (set), Kaye Voyce (costume), Matt Frey (lighting), Matt Tierney (sound) and Jon Knust (props), with Annie-B Parson (movement) and Steve Cuiffo (special effects). Heather Arnson is the Production Stage Manager.

A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney was first presented as a reading at the 2012 PRELUDE Festival. The production follows the critically acclaimed premiere of Hnath's play Isaac's Eye, which opened at Ensemble Studio Theater last month.

Through its FEED program, which offers post-performance events aimed at enriching the audience's experience of the work on stage, Soho Rep will offer several events during the run of A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney. After the May 4 matinee, FEED will offer "Lucas Hnath and Sarah Benson in Conversation," in which the playwright and the director will speak about the production, moderated by Soho Rep's Literary & Humanities Manager, Raphael Martin.

The May 11 matinee will be followed by "Andrew Ross on Celebration, FL," in which noted professor Andrew Ross (Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU) will delve into his year of living in the planned Disney community Celebration, FL. Professor Ross will also explore the town of Celebration and how it relates to Disney's original vision for the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow (EPCOT).

Also in May (date TBA), FEED will present "Screenwriting and History." Kent Jones, Director of Programming for the New York Film Festival, will muse on history and film, asking, "How have movies taken famous and important real-life people and turned them into stories for the silver screen?"

ABOUT THE CAST

Larry Pine (Walt Disney) Broadway: The Royal Family, The Seagull, End of the World, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Bus Stop. Off-Broadway credits include: Top Secret, Beast, Secret Order, The Shanghai Gesture, Stuff Happens, Enemy of the People, The Women of Lockerbie, Saved or Destroyed, The Designated Mourner, The Chemistry of Change, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Uncle Vanya, The Disputation. Film: Moonrise Kingdom, Arbitrage, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Outsourced, TransBeMan, Sweet Flame, Empire Falls, Door in the Floor, Particles of Truth, Maid in Manhattan, The Royal Tenenbaums, A Foreign Affair, The Shipping News, Melinda and Melinda, Small Time Crooks, Celebrity, Sunday (Sundance Grand Prize winner), Vanya on 42nd Street, Dead Man Walking, and many others. Television: House of Cards, Homeland, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Person of Interest.

Amanda Quaid (Daughter) Broadway: Equus. Off-Broadway: Luck of the Irish (Lincoln Center/LCT3); C-ck (The Duke); Galileo (CSC); The Illusion (Signature); Happy Hour (Atlantic); The Witch of Edmonton (Red Bull); Banished Children of Eve, The Yeats Project (Irish Rep). Regional: Mrs. Warren's Profession (Shakespeare Theatre); As You Like It (Folger); Romeo and Juliet (HVSF). Film/TV: Non-Stop, Law & Order SVU, Education: Vassar.

Brian Sgambati (Ron) Broadway: The Merchant of Venice, The Coast of Utopia, and King Lear. National Tour: Frost/Nixon. Off-Broadway credits include: Man and Superman (The Irish Repertory Theatre); Smudge (Women's Project); Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb); The Hasty Heart (Keen Company); Landscape of the Body (Signature Theatre Company). Regional: Prelude to a Kiss (Huntington Theatre Company); Passion Play (The Goodman); Antony and Cleopatra (The Old Globe). As an Associate Artist with The Civilians: Gone Missing, In the Footprint, Paris Commune (BAM's NextWave 2012). Television: Law and Order, Blue Bloods. BA: Wagner College. MFA: UCSD.

Frank Wood (Roy) Broadway: Clybourne Park, August: Osage County, Born Yesterday, Hollywood Arms, Sideman (TONY Award, Drama League Award, London and Australia). Off-Broadway: Spring Awakening(Atlantic Theatre); Stories Left to Tell (The Minetta Lane); The God of Hell; Angels in America (Signature Theatre Company). Regional Theatre: The Three Sisters (Cincinnati Playhouse); Peter and Jerry (Hartford Stage); Waiting For Godot (ACT); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Long Wharf Theatre); Light Up The Sky (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Our Town (Bay Street Theatre); Hamlet (The McCarter); The Rainmaker (Arena Stage); The Three Sisters (American Repertory Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland). Film: Changeling, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The Missing Person, Dan in Real Life, Thirteen Days, In America, People I Know, Pollock, Down To You, The Royal Tenenbaums, Flakes, The Favor, Small Time Crooks, and Michael Clayton. Television: Newsroom, Flight of the Conchords, Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, The Good Wife, Elementary, Third Watch, The Sopranos, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Intent and Lights Out. Education: BA, Wesleyan University. MFA, New York University Graduate Acting Program, Zelda Fichandler, chair.

Lucas Hnath's recent plays include A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney, Red Speedo, Hillary and Clinton, Sake Tasting with a Séance to Follow, The Courtship of Anna Nicole Smith, Odile's Ordeal, Tonguetied, and Three Attempts at Corrective Eye Surgery. He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. Most recently his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Hnath is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine, and the Apple and Still Life. He is also a recipient of an EST/Sloan Project commission for Isaac's Eye. Most recently, his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2012. In addition, he is currently working on two commissions for Actors Theatre of Louisville, including a collaboration with Rinne Groff and Anne Washburn called Sleep Rock Thy Brain, which will premiere at the Humana Festival in 2013.

Sarah Benson is the Artistic Director of Soho Rep (since 2007). For Soho Rep, she has directed David Adjmi's site-specific Elective Affinities with Zoe Caldwell (Top Ten of 2011 in The New Yorker & Time Out New York); Sarah Kane's Blasted (OBIE Award, Drama Desk nomination); Gregory Moss' Orange, Hat & Grace. Other recent credits include: Futurity a musical by The Lisps (A.R.T. & Walker Arts Center), Polly Stenham's That Face (MTC), Gregory Moss' House of Gold (Woolly Mammoth) and Sophocles' Ajax (A.R.T.). Upcoming projects are Basetrack (2014), The Lisps' Futurity in New York and Richard Maxwell's Samara .

At Soho Rep, Benson has commissioned/produced work by artists including Jackie Sibblies Drury, Annie Baker, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Dan LeFranc, Thomas Bradshaw, Debbie Tucker Green, Cynthia Hopkins, Jomama Jones, Young Jean Lee, John Jesurun and Anne Washburn. This work has been recognized with seven OBIE awards, four Drama Desk nominations and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award.

Benson moved to New York from London on a Fulbright Award. She is editing the upcoming anthology: The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays (Summer 2013). She has served as a mentor in the directing programs at NYU and Yale. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theatre, serving as a vital center for Contemporary Theatre artists.

Soho Rep is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays. They perform to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over three-quarters aged 18-40.

Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered 13 OBIE Awards; six Drama Desk nominations, Two Kesselring Awards for Melissa James Gibson and Mark Schultz and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as Annie Baker, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Daniel Alexander Jones, Debbie Tucker Green, Mac Wellman, Young Jean Lee and Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

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