NYTW Announces 2008-09 Season Including Works By Weller, Brook and Wallace

Russo have announced plans for NYTW's 2008-09 season.  One of New York's leading non-profit theatre companies, NYTW will present a 26th season that includes work by Michael Weller, Peter Brook, and Naomi Wallace.

NYTW will also present the inaugural season of its Off Again musical series, concert versions of notable off-Broadway musicals that will be presented for short, limited runs.

Shows under consideration for the series' first season include Promenade (1969), written by Maria Irene Fornes and composed by Al Carmines; Iphigenia in Concert by Peter Link, which will be directed by Annie Dorsen (Passing Strange); and The Waves, written by Lisa Peterson (based on Virginia Woolf's The Waves) and composed by David Bucknam.  (Exact titles and dates are still to be determined.)

NYTW will also host a special series of events leading up to November's presidential election: a return of Mark Crispin Miller, with his penetrating observations of the present political landscape; Gore Vidal's Weekend, a play from 1968 by one of America's most significant living writers, which paints a portrait of the Republican Party as it struggles to reinvent itself after Barry Goldwater's catastrophic loss of the 1964 election; and Year One of the Empire, a collage of actual words written and/or spoken around the time of the Spanish-American War, eerily revealing parallels to other American military misadventures like Vietnam and Iraq.

The 2008-2009 Season (listed by date of first performance):

BEAST
Written by Michael Weller
Directed by Jo Bonney
First preview: August 29, 2008
Closes: October 12, 2008

An acclaimed writer for both stage and screen, Academy Award-nominee Michael Weller (Moonchildren, Spoils of War, Loose Ends, the screenplay for Ragtime) has written a new comedy that is a blood-red road adventure directed by Jo Bonney (The Seven, Fat Pig).  In Beast, two Iraqi War veterans—badly mutilated but as fiercely patriotic as ever—make their way home from a military hospital in Germany.  Their marauding adventure across America takes them to Crawford, Texas, where they meet up with their Commander-in-Chief and offer a surefire solution to all his problems.

C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord's
THE GRAND INQUISITOR
From Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Adapted by Marie-Hélène Estienne
Featuring Bruce Myers
Directed by Peter Brook
First preview: October 22, 2008
Closes: November 23, 2008

Renowned director Peter Brook (Marat/Sade, The Mahabharata) continues his long time collaboration with the renowned actor Bruce Myers (The Mahabharata, The Unbearable Lightness of Being) in Marie-Hélène Estienne's (French version of Far Away) adaptation of the Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov. Together, they bring Dostoyevsky's chilling parable about the perversion of religious faith in life.

The Grand Inquisitor is a co-presentation with Theatre for a New Audience. As it is a strictly limited engagement, single tickets will be in short supply and a membership with New York Theatre Workshop or subscription with Theatre for a New Audience guarantees seats to this truly unique theatrical event.

THINGS OF DRY HOURS
Written by Naomi Wallace
Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Spring 2009

Recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and an OBIE Award, playwright and poet Naomi Wallace (The Fever Chart, One Flea Spare) follows up the NYTW production of Trestle at Pope Lick Creek with a powerful and poetic examination of the unintended conflict between race and ideology.  In Depression-era Alabama, black Sunday school teacher and Communist Party member Tice Hogan lives on The Edge of trouble.  When a white factory worker on the run demands sanctuary, Tice and his daughter may be pushed over that edge.  Tony Award-winning actor/writer/producer Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues and Seven Guitars) directs.

Things of Dry Hours is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Of the 2008-2009 season, Artistic Director James C. Nicola says "For New York Theatre Workshop's 2008-2009 season, we will be producing the work of three artists, each with a distinctive voice and point of view, that when viewed collectively, show how one individual's experience is determined by the society around her or him, and conversely, how the society around an individual is impacted by that one being.  Michael Weller, making his long overdue NYTW debut, chronicles the unfolding history of the disastrous consequences of our current government's failed policies; Peter Brook, also making his NYTW debut, presents us his view of a timeless novel about a man whose life and teachings transformed the world; and finally, Naomi Wallace animates a forgotten moment in American history—Depression-era Alabama, when a black man's belief in the possibility of change and social justice is tested.  These three remarkable artists' visions make up one of our most cohesive and thoughtful seasons ever.

Michael Weller wrote Beast, in just a few days, from a burning need to voice a concern over the unforeseen outcomes of the war in Iraq.  Jo Bonney directs this searing play about two returning Iraqi war vets.  We will team up with Theatre for a New Audience to bring Peter Brook's newest production, The Grand Inquisitor, to New York, which is sure to be a highlight of the entire New York theatrical year.  And finally, we will be producing Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours, a play that I have deeply loved for years and is now more relevant than ever.  Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs."

Nicola continues, "2008-2009 will also mark the inaugural year for the Off Again series, which will become an annual series.  Stemming from our mission to produce work by artists whose visions provoke and challenge all of us, Off Again will examine the history of off-Broadway musicals as a body of work and their impact over time."

Lead support for the 2008-2009 Season is provided in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.  Additional support for the production of new plays is from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the Jerome Foundation.

Founded by Stephen Graham and now in its 26th year, New York Theatre Workshop is a leading voice in the theatre community throughout New York, across the country, and around the world.  NYTW provokes, produces, and cultivates the work of artists whose visions inspire and challenge.  Over the course of its history, NYTW has emerged as a premiere incubator of important new theatre and an innovative adapter of classic repertory, honoring its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape our lives.  Highlights include Jonathan Larson's Rent, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul, Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde, John Guare's Lydie Breeze, David Rabe's A Question of Mercy, Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Owners/Traps, Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla, and Will Power's The Seven.  NYTW's productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, four Tony Awards, and assorted OBIE, Drama Desk, and Lucille Lortel Awards.  In 1991, NYTW received an OBIE Award for Sustained Achievement, and in 2000, it was chosen to be part of the Leading National Theaters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Memberships for NYTW's 2008-2009 season are available by calling the NYTW Box Office at 212-460-5475, Monday through Friday, 11:00am to 5:00pm, or online at www.nytw.org.  For more information on membership, please visit www.nytw.org.

Maintaining its commitment to making theatre accessible to all theatergoers, NYTW continues its CheapTix program in which all tickets for all Sunday evening performances will cost $20. Tickets may be purchased in advance, payable in cash only, and are available in person only at the NYTW Box Office. And for all performances, student tickets cost $20, based on availability, and can be purchased in advance from the NYTW Box Office with valid student identification.

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