Parker Posey Withdraws From Playwrights Horizons' THIS Due To Lyme Disease

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) announced today that Parker Posey has had to withdraw from the cast of THIS, a new play by Obie Award winner Melissa James Gibson (Suitcase, [sic]), due to developing a case of Lyme Disease. A replacement actress for the lead role of Jane will be announced shortly.

Directed by Daniel Aukin ([sic], eight seasons as Artistic Director of Soho Rep), the World Premiere production is still expected to begin previews Friday, November 6, 2009 in advance of an Opening Night on Sunday, December 2 at the theater company's Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street). The cast continues to feature Obie Award winner Eisa Davis (Passing Strange, seen last in her own play Angela's Mix Tape as part of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival), Glenn Fitzgerald (Lortel nomination for Lobby Hero at Playwrights Horizons, Brian Darling on ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money") and Louis Cancelmi (The Singing Forest, Blasted) in a limited engagement through Sunday, December 13.

In THIS, Jane is not okay. She's a promising poet without a muse, a single mother without lessons to pass along. Her dating life's a shambles, and her helpful friends are only helping make things more complicated. This bright, witty, un-romantic comedy captures the uncertain steps of a circle of friends backing their way into middle age.

Subscriptions to Playwrights Horizons' 2009/2010 season are now available in 6-show (four Mainstage productions and two productions in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater) or 4-show (four Mainstage productions) packages. Packages include "Silver Pass" (6-show with additional benefits, $335), "Anytime" (6-show $265, 4-show $200), "Matinees" (6-show $245, 4-show $180), "Previews and Sunday Nights" (6-show $230, 4-show $165), "Patron" (two 6-show packages with exclusive benefits, $1250), "FlexPass" (6 tickets $275, 4 tickets $205), "30&Under FlexPass" (6 tickets $120, 4 tickets $80) and "Student FlexPass" (6 tickets, $60, 4 tickets $40). In addition to discounts on all Mainstage season attractions, subscribers receive priority seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins.

Playwrights Horizons' season productions are generously supported by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charina Endowment Fund, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation and Time Warner Inc.

For subscription and ticket information to all Playwrights Horizons productions, call TICKET CENTRAL at (212) 279-4200, Noon to 8 pm daily, or purchase online at the Playwrights Horizons website at www.playwrightshorizons.org.

Melissa James Gibson (Playwright). Plays include [sic] (Obie Award for playwriting, Kesselring Prize, The Best Plays of 2001-02); Suitcase or, those that resemble flies from a distance (NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, Rockefeller Foundation's Multi-Arts Production Fund); Brooklyn Bridge, with a song by Barbara Brousal (AT&T Onstage award); All Is Not (New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Artist Commission); and Current Nobody, a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey (2005 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist; 2006 Sundance Theatre Lab). Gibson's work has been produced at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, and The Children's Theatre Company, as well as many other theaters, regionally and internationally. Currently, Gibson is working on commissions for Center Theatre Group and the Atlantic Theater

Company. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Gibson has been a Jerome and MacDowell Colony Fellow, a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and commissions from Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf Theatre Company,

La Jolla Playhouse and The Children's Theatre Company/New Dramatists Playground program. [sic] and Suitcase are available through Dramatists Play Service. The complete text of Brooklyn Bridge appeared in the July/August

2005 issue of American Theatre. Gibson is a graduate of New Dramatists and the recipient of a 2006 Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights' Fellowship and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Daniel Aukin (Director) most recently directed the New York premiere of Back Back Back by Itamar Moses at Manhattan Theatre Club. Other recent credits include A View from the Bridge at Arena Stage, Melissa James Gibson's Current Nobody at Woolly Mammoth and Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine at La Jolla Playhouse, as well as a workshop of Rachel Axler's new play Smudge at the Eugene O'Neill Conference. As Artistic Director of Soho Rep, Daniel directed Mark Schultz's critically acclaimed Everything Will Be Done (World Premiere), Melissa James Gibson's [sic] (World Premiere, Obie Award for Direction), Quincy Long's The Year of the Baby (World Premiere), Mac Wellman's Cat's-Paw (World Premiere), Marie Irene Fornes' Molly's Dream (World Premiere), and Melissa James Gibson's Suitcase (also at La Jolla Playhouse). For other theaters: Alexandra Cunningham's No. 11 (Blue and White), Melissa James Gibson's Brooklyn Bridge at The Children's Theatre of Minneapolis and Mat Smart's The Hopper Collection at the Huntington Theatre. He is also developing a musical adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel The Fortress of Solitude with Michael Friedman (composer/lyricist) and Itamar Moses (book). During his tenure at Soho Rep., he strengthened the company's commitment to developing iconoclastic new plays. He commissioned over fifty new plays though the Writer/Director Lab and produced sixteen-full-length productions (including new plays by Adam Bock, The Flying Machine, Young Jean Lee, and Richard Maxwell). Accolades for this body of work include eight Obie awards, four Drama Desk Nominations, two Kesselring Prizes, and one Oppenheimer Award.

Louis Cancelmi (Jean-Pierre) appeared this past season in Craig Lucas's The Singing Forest at The Public. Broadway and West End: Vincent in Brixton. Other New York credits: Blasted, Philoktetes, Peninsula, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen (Soho Rep); The Wooden Breeks (MCC); Too Much Memory (FringeNYC); Night Sings Its Songs (Culture Project); The Vortex (Innocent Theatre); Sincerity Forever (The Flea). Regional: A View from the Bridge, Death of a Salesman (Arena Stage); Love-Lies-Bleeding, UntilWeFindEachOther (Steppenwolf); The Drawer Boy (Paper Mill). Film: Kaleidoscope, Me Now You Now, Stay, Pursesnatcher, New Guy, Daughter of Arabia. Television: "Third Watch," "Law & Order."

Eisa Davis (Marell). Broadway: Passing Strange, The Violet Hour. Off-Broadway: Angela's Mix Tape (her own play based in part on the life of her aunt, activist Angela Davis, presented this past season at The Ohio Theatre by New Georges and Hip-Hop Theater Festival), Passing Strange (Obie Award), Belize, June and Jean in Concert. Regional: Passing Strange, Intimate Apparel, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Valley Song, Sundance Theatre Lab, O'Neill. TV: "Damages," "The Wire," "Law & Order," "Soul Food." Film: Spike Lee's upcoming film adaptation of Passing Strange, Welcome to the Riley's opposite James Gandolfini, Robot Stories, The Architect, Confess, Happenstance. MFA: Actors Studio/New School, BA: Harvard. Member playwright of New Dramatists. Her album Something Else is available online and in Japan. Playwright: Bulrusher (2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist).

Glenn Fitzgerald (Alan) returns to Playwrights Horizons, where he starred in Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero (2001), which had a successful commercial transfer to The Houseman Theatre, and for which he was nominated for a Lortel Award. His other Theater credits include Jon Robin Baitz's Mizlansky/Zilinsky opposite Nathan Lane

(Manhattan Theatre Club), Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone (MCC), Blue/Orange (Atlantic Theater Company), Tatjana in Color (Culture Project) and Hedda Gabler (New York Theatre Workshop). Glenn recently starred as Brian Darling in the ABC TV series "Dirty Sexy Money" during the show's two-season run. He got his first acting break in the cult classic film Flirting with Disaster by director David O. Russell. He would go on to appear in Lisa Krueger's Manny and Lo, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, Boaz Yakin's A Price Above Rubies, M. Night Shamalyian's

The Sixth Sense and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forester. Other Film credits include Series 7, The Believer, Tully, 40 Days and 40 Nights , Igby Goes Down, Buffalo Soldiers, Trust the Man and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Other Television includes "Six Feet Under," "Law & Order," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Homicide," "New York Undercover" and "Wonderfalls."

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is a writer's theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American Playwrights, composers and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. In its 39 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, most recently being honored with a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for "ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work." Notable productions include four Pulitzer Prize winners: Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, as well as Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie's Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas's Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp's Kindness, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, Bruce Norris's The Pain and the Itch, Lynn Nottage's Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, David Greenspan's She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey's James Joyce's The Dead, William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson's Goodnight Children Everywhere and Franny's Way, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room, A.R. Gurney's Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's Violet.

Photo Credit: Adam Nemser/PHOTOlink

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