Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is proud to announce four additional productions for its 2010/2011 40th Anniversary Season. The three World Premieres and one New York premiere join the previously-announced New York premiere of Edward Albee's ME, MYSELF & I. Presented at the theater company's home at 416 West 42nd Street, the productions will be (in Season order):
Edward Albee's ME, MYSELF & I - the New York Premiere of a new play by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and three-time Tony Award winner Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance; Seascape; Three Tall Women; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?) in his Playwrights Horizons debut. Directed by Tony Award nominee, Obie Award winner and McCarter Theatre Artistic Director Emily Mann (Miss Witherspoon at Playwrights Horizons, Having Our Say, Mr. Albee's All Over), the production was originally presented at McCarter Theatre in January 2008. The New York premiere will star Tony Award winner Elizabeth Ashley (for Take Her, She's Mine; plus Barefoot in the Park, the recent August: Osage County) and three-time Tony Award nominee Brian Murray (for The Crucible, The Little Foxes and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; The Butterfly Collection and Mud, River, Stone at PH; Obie Award for Mr. Albee's The Play About the Baby). Mr. Murray will reprise his acclaimed performance from the McCarter production.
Edward Albee's ME, MYSELF & I will be the first production of the season, beginning performances in August 2010.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION - the New York premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog (Missed Connections, 508 at Ars Nova, Hungry at EST), directed by Carolyn Cantor (Essential Self-Defense at PH, Pumpgirl, Orange Water Flower).
A SMALL FIRE - the World Premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Adam Bock (The Drunken City at PH, The Receptionist, The Thugs, Swimming in the Shallows), directed by Trip Cullman (Adam Bock's The Drunken City at PH and Swimming in the Shallows, plus Some Men, Dog Sees God, The Last Sunday in June).
KIN - the World Premiere of a new play by Bathsheba Doran (Living Room in Africa, her adaptation of Great Expectations at The Lortel), directed by Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation at PH, Jollyship the Whiz-bang, Rag and Bone, the upcoming The Aliens).
GO BACK TO WHERE YOU ARE - the World Premiere of a new play by four-time Obie Award-winning playwright, director and performer David Greenspan (author/performer of She Stoops to Comedy, performer in The Wax and director of Kate's Diary, all at PH; Coraline; The Argument; The Myopia; The Boys in the Band), directed by Leigh Silverman (Blue Door and The Retributionists at PH, Well on Broadway, Coraline, Drama Desk nomination for From Up Here) and featuring Mr. Greenspan.
Bios and production details for the first five productions of the 2010/2011 Season can be found starting on page 3 of this release. A sixth and final production, as well as all casting information and dates for all six shows, will be announced in the coming months.
Subscriptions to Playwrights Horizons' 2010/2011 season will be available shortly, in 6-show (four Mainstage productions and two productions in The Peter Jay Sharp Theater) or 4-show (four Mainstage productions) packages. Packages (with renewal prices) include "Platinum Patron" (two 6-show packages with exclusive benefits, $1250), "Silver Pass" (6-show with additional benefits, $310), "Anytime" (6-show $270, 4-show $200), "PreviewsPlus" (6-show $250, 4-show $180), "FlexPass" (6 tickets $275, 4 tickets $205), "30&Under Membership" ($20 membership fee + one $20 ticket for each show, as desired) and "Student Membership" ($10 membership fee + one $10 ticket for each show, as desired). In addition to discounts on all Mainstage season attractions, subscribers receive priority booking and seating, ticket exchange privileges, parking and dining discounts, and exclusive mailings of Playwrights Horizons Bulletins.
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, including 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 Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park and The Pain and the Itch, Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, Melissa James Gibson's This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist), 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.
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 the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation and Time Warner Inc.
Playwrights Horizons' 2010/2011 SEASON
Edward Albee's ME, MYSELF & I
New York Premiere of a new play by Edward Albee
Directed by Emily Mann
Featuring Elizabeth Ashley & Brian Murray
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
"Confusion is its own master! It brings itself with it."
Mother can't tell her identical twins apart. But when Otto announces his brother doesn't exist, the household descends into chaos. Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee is in rare form with his newest play, turning "the most fundamental questions of identity into verbal soft-shoes." (Ben Brantley, New York Times)
Edward Albee (Playwright) was born on March 12, 1928, and began writing plays 30 years later. His plays include The Zoo Story (1958); The Death of Bessie Smith (1959); The Sandbox (1959); The American Dream (1960); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award); Tiny Alice (1964); A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize; 1996, Tony Award, Best Revival); All Over (1971); Seascape (1974, Pulitzer Prize); Listening (1975); Counting the Ways (1975); The Lady From Dubuque (1977-78); The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981); Finding the Sun (1982); Marriage Play (1986-87); Three Tall Women (1991, Pulitzer Prize); Fragments (1993); The Play About the Baby (1997); The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? (2000, 2002 Tony Award); Occupant (2001); At Home at the Zoo (Act 1, Homelife. Act 2, The Zoo Story.) (2004); and Me, Myself & I (2007). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980. In 1996 he received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005, he was awarded a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Emily Mann (Director). Multi-award-winning director and playwright Emily Mann is celebrating her 20th season as Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre. Under Ms. Mann's leadership, McCarter was honored with the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater. Directing credits include Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics (also on Broadway); the world premiere of Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon (also Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons); Uncle Vanya (also adapted); Edward Albee's All Over (also Off-Broadway; 2003 Obie Award for Directing); The Cherry Orchard (also adapted); Three Sisters; A Doll House; and The Glass Menagerie. Her plays include Execution of Justice; Still Life (six Obie Awards); Greensboro (A Requiem); and Annulla, An Autobiography. Ms. Mann wrote and directed Having Our Say (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations; NAACP Award; Joseph Jefferson Award; Peabody and Christopher Awards and WGA nomination for her screenplay). A winner of the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its Council. Her latest play, Mrs. Packard, was the recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award. Most recently, Ms. Mann directed her latest adaptation, A Seagull in the Hamptons, a free adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull; Mrs. Warren's Profession; and the world premiere of Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I. In 2002, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University.
Elizabeth Ashley (Mother) previously appeared at Playwrights Horizons in When She Danced in 1990. She most recently appeared on stage in the Broadway production of August: Osage County. She won a Tony Award and Theatre World Award for Take Her, She's Mine and was also Tony-nominated for Barefoot in the Park and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other Broadway credits include Dividing the Estate (also Off-Broadway, Drama Desk nomination), Enchanted April, The Best Man, The Skin of Our Teeth, Caesar and Cleopatra, Legend and Agnes of God. Film includes The Carpetbaggers, Ship of Fools (Golden Globe nomination) and Happiness (Independent Spirit Award). A few of her many Television credits include "Evening Shade" (Emmy nomination), "The Rope" (Cable ACE nomination) and "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles." Recording: Lou Reed's The Raven. She's a founding member and on the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute. Author: Actress: Postcards From the Road.
Brian Murray (Doctor) previously appeared at Playwrights Horizons in The Butterfly Collection in 2000 and Mud, River, Stone in 1997. He most recently appeared on stage in the Broadway production of Mary Stuart. He's been nominated for three Tony Awards for The Crucible, The Little Foxes and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and other Broadway credits include The Rivals, Uncle Vanya, Twelfth Night, Racing Demon, Noises Off, Black Comedy, Sleuth, King Lear and Da. A leading Edward Albee interpreter, he has appeared Off-Broadway in Albee's The Play About the Baby (Obie) and Beckett/Albee. Other Off-Broadway: Scattergood, The Entertainer, Travels with My Aunt, Ashes (Obie), Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Gaslight, Entertaining Mr. Sloan. Film/Television credits include Bob Roberts, Treasure Planet, "Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night." Also a distinguished director, his Broadway directing credits include Hay Fever, Arsenic and Old Lace, Blithe Spirit and The Circle.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION
New York premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog
Directed by Carolyn Cantor
Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
"You can look back and say we did this wrong, or we did that wrong, but the point is it was for something."
The brilliant, promising Emma Joseph proudly carries the torch of her family's Marxist tradition, devoting her life to the memory of her blacklisted grandfather. But when history reveals a shocking truth about the man himself, the entire family is forced to confront questions of honesty and allegiance they thought had been resolved. After the Revolution is a bold and moving portrait of an American family, thrown into an intergenerational tailspin, forced to reconcile a thorny and delicate legacy.
Amy Herzog (Playwright) received the 2008 Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights. She recently completed commissions for the Yale Repertory Theatre and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and her play After the Revolution will be produced at Williamstown this summer 2010. Her other plays have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theater, American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, The Williamstown Theater Festival, The Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Yale School of Drama; she has had readings and workshops at Manhattan Theater Club, New York Stage and Film, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., The Black Dahlia in Los Angeles, The Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and the Juilliard School, among others. She will perform her solo play, Love Song in Two Voices, at the Huntington Theater/A.R.T.'s "Emerging America" Festival in May. Her short works, 508 and Christmas Present will be included in forthcoming anthologies published by Applause Books and Vintage. Amy is an alumna of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater, a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a Fellow at The Playwrights' Realm, and the Playwright in Residence at Ars Nova. She teaches Playwriting at Bryn Mawr College. MFA in Playwriting, Yale School of Drama.
Carolyn Cantor (Director) directed Adam Rapp's Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons. Other New York: Pumpgirl (Manhattan Theatre Club); In A Dark Dark House (MCC Theater); Something You Did (Primary Stages); Orange Flower Water (Time Out-NY 10 Best of the Year), Now That's What I Call A Storm, Living Room in Africa, Stone Cold Dead Serious (New York Times 10 Best of the Year) and Life is a Dream (Edge Theater); EVE-olution (Cherry Lane); and Kitty Kitty Kitty (SPF). Regional: The Violet Hour (Old Globe), Rabbit Hole (Geffen Garland Award), Diary of Anne Frank (Paper Mill), Not Waving and King Stag (both Williamstown Theatre Festival), Vera Laughed and Get What You Need (both NYS&F), After Ashley and Finer Noble Gases (both Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference) and Nocturne (Ojai Playwrights Conference). Film/TV: The Green Room (Bravo) and Bravo Profiles: Roger Ebert. Carolyn has received the Garson Kanin-Marion Seldes Award from the American Theatre Wing, both the Boris Sagal and Bill Foeller Fellowships from the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a Drama League Directing Fellowship. She is the founding artistic director of the Obie Award-winning Edge Theater and a graduate of Dartmouth College.
A SMALL FIRE
World Premiere of a new play by Adam Bock
Directed by Trip Cullman
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
"Love isn't what you get from someone. It's what you give them."
When a tough-as-nails contractor finds her senses disappearing one at a time, the impact on the lives around her is nothing less than seismic. In Bock's spare, altogether human parable, a seemingly catastrophic loss leads to unlikely self-discoveries of the "small fires" within.
Adam Bock's (Playwright) The Drunken City was produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2008. His play The Receptionist received its World Premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in the fall of 2007 to a sold-out extended run. The play has had many stock and amateur productions around the country, including the most recent one this past fall, starring Megan Mullally at The Odyssey Theatre in LA. His other works include The Thugs (Obie Award), Swimming in the Shallows (3 BATCC Awards, Clauder Award), Five Flights (Glickman Award), The Typographer's Dream, The Shaker Chair and Three Guys and a Brenda (Heideman Award). His plays have been commissioned, developed and produced in NYC by MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, The Vineyard, Rattlestick, Clubbed Thumb, and regionally at Yale, Trinity Rep, the O'Neill, the Humana Festival, UCross/Sundance, in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, Salt Lake, Montreal, Toronto, London, and Edinburgh, among others. He is the resident playwright at Encore Theater, a Shotgun Players artistic associate, and a New Dramatist member playwright. He is currently writing a screenplay for Scott Rudin/Miramax and a musical adaptation for Yale Repertory Theatre.
Trip Cullman (Director) previously directed Adam Bock's The Drunken City and Sarah Schulman's Manic Flight Reaction at Playwrights Horizons. Other New York credits include Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap (The Play Company), Terrence McNally's Some Men (Second Stage), Robert Farquhar's Bad Jazz (Play Company), Gina Gionfriddo's US Drag (stageFARM), Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's Dark Matters (Rattlestick Theater), Roland Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night (The Play Company), Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (The Century Center), Glen Berger's The Wooden Breeks (MCC Theater), Adam Bock's Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage), Paul Weitz's Roulette (EST), Jonathan Tolin's The Last Sunday in June (Century Center and Rattlestick Theater), Brooke Berman's Smashing (The Play Company), Rinne Groff's Of a White Christmas (Clubbed Thumb), Gary Sunshine's Sweetness and Brooke Berman's Sam and Lucy (both at Summer Play Festival '04) and The Wau Wau Sisters (Ars Nova). Regional credits include the World Premiere of Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap (Magic Theatre), Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe) the World Premiere of Richard Greenberg's The Injured Party at South Coast Rep, Keith Huff's A Steady Rain and The Petersons Project (both at New York Stage and Film), Lauren Weedman's Rash (The Empty Space, Seattle), John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (The Old Globe, San Diego). Training: Yale School of Drama.
KIN
World Premiere of a new play by Bathsheba Doran
Directed by Sam Gold
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
"It's awful, isn't it? Getting to know someone."
Anna, a Texan Ivy League poetry scholar, and Sean, an Irish personal trainer, hardly seem destined for one another. But as their web of disparate family and friends crosses great distances - both psychologically and geographically - an unlikely new family is forged. Bathsheba Doran's play sheds a sharp light on the changing face of kinship in the expansive landscape of the modern world.
Bathsheba Doran's (Playwright) plays include Living Room in Africa (Off-Broadway for Edge Theater), Nest (commissioned and produced by Signature Theater DC), Until Morning (BBC Radio 4) and adaptations of Dickens' Great Expectations, The Blind and Peer Gynt. Her play Parents' Evening will receive its world premiere at The Flea Theater in April 2010, directed by Jim Simpson, and her play for young audiences, Ben and The Magic Paintbrush, will receive its world premiere at South Coast Repertory Theater in June 2010. She is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, three Lecomte du Nouy Lincoln Center playwriting awards, a Cherry Lane Mentor Project Fellow as and a Susan Blackburn Award finalist. Her work has been developed by MTC, the O'Neill Theatre Center, Lincoln Center, Sundance Theater Lab, and Playwrights Horizons. Ms. Doran studied at Cambridge and Oxford universities before working as a television comedy writer with the BBC. She moved to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000, and received her M.F.A from Columbia University and went on to become a playwriting fellow of The Juilliard School. She is currently under commission from Atlantic Theater and Playwrights Horizons, and Schtanhaus in London. Her work is available from Samuel French and Playscripts Inc.
Sam Gold (Director) most recently directed the critically-acclaimed production of Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons. He directed Nick Jones's Jollyship the Whiz-bang, which played 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's The Joke (Studio Dante), Betty Shamieh's The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop), Colin McKenna's The Secret Agenda of Trees (Cherry Lane), Rogelio Martinez's Fizz (The Ohio Theatre), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (The Hangar Theatre), Joanna Laurens's 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, Suddenly Last Summer, Willimon's Farragut North, Suzan-Lori Parks's 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 former Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award and a graduate of The Juilliard Directing Program.
GO BACK TO WHERE YOU ARE
World Premiere of a new play by and featuring David Greenspan
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
"Error not evil, correction not catastrophe."
A forgotten chorus boy (David Greenspan) from the theater of Ancient Greece, stuck in a lonely purgatory these past 2000 years, is sent back to earth on a mission from God. He now finds himself among a vacationing family in the Hamptons, caught off-guard by his re-discovered ability to feel love. Go Back To Where You Are is a melancholy comic romance, told with Greenspan's unique brand of theatrical wit and exquisite lyricism.
David Greenspan's (Playwright/Performer) work at Playwrights Horizons includes acting in and directing his play She Stoops to Comedy (Obie Award), acting in Kathleen Tolan's The Wax and directing Ms. Tolan's Kate's Diary. Other playwriting credits include Principia, Jack, The Home Show Pieces and 2 Samuel 11, Etc. (HOME), Dead Mother, or Shirley Not All in Vain (The Public), The Argument (Obie) and Old Comedy (Target Margin) and The Myopia, an epic burlesque of tragic proportion (The Foundry). He has collaborated with songwriter Stephin Merritt on The Orphan of Zhao (Lincoln Center Theater) and Coraline with director Leigh Silverman (MCC). He has received two performance Obies: one in 1997 for Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band and another in 2007 for both Terrence McNally's Some Men (Second Stage) and Goethe's Faust (Target Margin). Other credits include The Royal Family (MTC), Cornbury (Theatre Askew), The Beebo Brinker Chronicles with director Leigh Silverman (Hourglass), Saved Or Destroyed (Rattlestick) Lipstick Traces (The Foundry), High Life and Second-hand Smoke (Primary Stages). An alumnus of New Dramatists, he has received Rockefeller, McKnight, Guggenheim, Lortel, NYFA and NYSCA fellowships and an Alpert Award.
Leigh Silverman (Director). Broadway: Lisa Kron's Well. Recent New York (World Premieres): From Up Here (Manhattan Theatre Club, Drama Desk nomination); Coraline (MCC/True Love); Creature (New Georges/P73); The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons); Yellow Face (Center Theater Group/The Public Theater); Beebo Brinker Chronicles (Hourglass Group/ 37 Arts); Hunting and Gathering (Primary Stages); Well (The Public Theater, The Huntington Theater and ACT, San Francisco); Blue Door (Playwrights Horizons and Seattle Repertory Theatre); Oedipus At Palm Springs (New York Theatre Workshop); The Treatment (The Culture Project); Jump/Cut (Woolly Mammoth Theatre/Theater J and Women's Project); Big Times (W.E.T.) and Finder's Fee (Rattlestick). Also: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Second Stage Theatre). West End: Wit (Vaudeville Theatre). Recent regional: Of Equal Measure (world premiere, CTG); The Road to Mecca (Seattle Repertory Theatre). Upcoming: Lisa Kron's In The Wake (CTG/Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater) and David Henry Hwang's Chinglish.
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
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