Primary Stages Announces Full Casting For 'SHIPWRECKED'

Primary Stages (Casey Childs, Executive Producer; Andrew Leynse, Artistic Director; Elliot Fox, Managing Director) has announced complete casting for the New York premiere of Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) by Donald Margulies.

Lisa Peterson (The Model Apartment) returns to Primary Stages to direct the three-member cast that features Jeremy Bobb (Is He Dead?) as Player 2, Michael Countryman (Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams) as Louis de Rougemont, and Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Well) as Player 1.

Performances begin Tuesday, January 27, 2009 for a limited run through Saturday, March 7, 2009, at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). Opening night is set for Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Primary Stages is currently represented on Broadway with Horton Foote's Dividing The Estate (produced by Lincoln Center Theater, by special arrangement with Primary Stages), which made its New York premiere last season.

From the author of Sight Unseen, Collected Stories and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner with Friends, Donald Margulies returns to Primary Stages where his play The Model Apartment won him an Obie Award for Playwriting.
A tale of adventure that left England spellbound in the 19th century is the center of attention in Donald Margulies' play Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself). Louis de Rougemont, a would-be explorer, invites you to hear his amazing story of bravery, survival and celebrity. Dare to be whisked away in a story of exotic islanders, rustic vessels and the high seas. Shipwrecked! An Entertainment examines how far we're willing to blur the line between fact and fiction in order to leave our mark on the world.

The creative team includes Neil Patel (Set), Michael Krass (Costumes), Stephen Strawbridge (Lights), and John Gromada (Sound). The Production Stage Manager is Matthew Melchiorre.
Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) will play the following performance schedule:
Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m., Wednesdays through Fridays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 2:00 p.m.& 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. on February 1 and 15, 2009 and a Wednesday matinee at 2:00 p.m. on February 18, 2009.

Single tickets for Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures
of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) are priced at $60 each with a specially priced $20 ticket available to patrons 35 and under. Tickets may be purchased by calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200, online at www.ticketcentral.com, or in person at the 59E59 Theaters Box Office. Group

Tickets (10+) are $45.00 each, and are available by calling (212) 840-9705, ext. 204.
Please visit the website at www.primarystages.org, or call (212) 840-9705 for more information.

Primary Stages has instituted a Pay What You Can special ticket offer available for the first two previews of all productions in their 24th season. Pay What You Can will be available for performances on January 27, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. and January 28, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets go on sale two hours prior to curtain and are limited to one ticket per person, cash only, no change given, must provide mailing address and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, only at the 59E59 Theater Box Office.

Primary Stages concludes the 2008-2009 season with the world premiere of a comedy Chasing Manet by Tina Howe (March 24, 2009 - May 2, 2009), featuring Tony Award-Winner Jane Alexander and Lynn Cohen.

A special 2-play subscription package priced at $86 (plus $8 handling fee) is available by calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com.
For additional information about Primary Stages, please visit the website at
www.primarystages.org.

Primary Stages opened the first half of the 2008-2009 with the New York premieres of Buffalo Gal by A.R. Gurney, A Body of Water by Lee Blessing, and the special added production of Love Child by Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton.

BIOGRAPHIES

Jeremy Bobb (Player 2) Broadway: Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, Translations (MTC). Other NY Credits: Beast (NYTW), The Calamity of Kat Kat and Willie, Love: A Tragic Etude, Hell and Back, Murder in the First. Regional: Theatreworks (Palo Alto, CA), Weston Playhouse, Barrington Stage, The Hangar Theatre, and seasons at The O'Neill. TV/Film: The Campaign (dir. Dan Poliner), August (dir. Austin Chick), White Lies Black Sheep (dir. James Spooner), "Law & Order". BFA Otterbein College.
Michael Countryman (Louis de Rougemont) has appeared on Broadway in Night Must Fall, Holiday, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, A Few Good Men and Face Value. Numerous off-Broadway credits include Trumpery, The Butcher Of Baraboo, Mary Rose, Dedication, The Bald Soprano, The Stendhal Syndrome, House And Garden, The Clearing, Nine Armenians, All in the Timing, a Drama Desk nomination for both The Common Pursuit and Out. Regional credits include world and American premieres at Hartford Stage, McCarter, the Guthrie and Long Wharf Theatre. Mr. Countryman has appeared in the films Burn After Reading, PS I Love You, Guerilla, The Namesake, Black Knight, You Can Count on Me, Ransom, Deceived and Once Again, and on television in "John Adams," "The Sopranos," "NYPD Blue," "Law & Order," "Third Watch," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Notes for My Daughter" and "Kate and Allie" among others. Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Player 1) Broadway: Well. Regional Theatre: No Child (Hartford Theatre Works), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (Baltimore Center Stage), Raisin in the Sun, The Royal Family (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Well (Arena Stage), Twelfth Night (Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Co.), Much Ado About Nothing (Charleston Shakespeare Co.) and Well (Huntington Theatre Co.). Film: The Wrestler. Television: "The Sopranos," "Law & Order: CI," "Law & Order: SVU." BA: College of Charleston. MFA: University of California - Irvine. Managing director of the New York based Coyote Rep founded in 2005.

David Margulies's (Playwright) plays include Brooklyn Boy, Dinner with Friends,
Sight Unseen, Collected Stories, The Loman Family Picnic, God of Vengeance and The Model Apartment. He has won a Lucille Lortel Award, an American Theatre Critics Award, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two OBIE Awards, two Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Awards, five Drama Desk Award nominations, two Pulitzer Prize nominations and one Pulitzer Prize. His works have been performed at major theatres across the United States and around the world. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature, and was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre. Mr. Margulies is an alumnus of New Dramatists and serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild of America. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University.

Lisa Peterson (Director) Upcoming projects include Midsummer at Hartford Stage, and Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked at Primary Stages. Recent credits include Othello at OSF, The Poor Itch at The Public Theater; King Lear at CalShakes; Major Barbara at the Guthrie; Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner at Hartford Stage; Mother Courage at La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Water and Power at the Mark Taper Forum; Ridiculous Fraud at the McCarter Theatre; The Rainmaker at Arena Stage; Tight Embrace at Intar; Carol Mulroney at Huntington Theatre Co; Oedipus at the Guthrie; Electricidad at Mark Taper Forum; Casino Paradise at the Prince Music Theatre; Candida at the McCarter Theatre; Birdy at the Women's Project; The Fourth Sister at the Vineyard Theatre. She won an Obie Award for her direction of Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire at New York Theater Workshop, where her other productions include Bexley Oh!, The Trestle at Pope Luck Creek, Slavs, Traps, and The Waves, which she adapted from the Virginia Woolf novel with composer David Bucknam. Other New York credits include The Batting Cage (Vineyard); Collected Stories (Manhattan Theater Club); Sueno (MCC); The Model Apartment (Primary Stages); Tongue of a Bird and The Square (Public); The Scarlet Letter (CSC); Birdy (Women's Project); The Chemistry of Change (Playwrights Horizons/WPP). For ten years she was Resident Director at the Mark Taper Forum, where her other productions include House of Bernarda Alba, Chavez Ravine, The Body of Bourne, Tongue of a Bird, and Mules. Prior to that, Lisa was Associate Director at La Jolla Playhouse, where her productions included The Country, Be Aggressive, Good Person of Szechuan, Triumph of Love, The Swan, and Arms and the Man. She has directed world premieres by many major American writers including Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Donald Margulies, Jose Rivera, Ellen McLaughlin, Mac Wellman, Polly Pen, Stephen Belber, Naomi Wallace, David Henry Huang, Luis Alfaro, Chay Yew, Bridget Carpenter, Annie Weisman, Alice Tuan, Culture Clash, and many others. She regularly works at Actors Theater of Louisville, Berkeley Rep, California Shakespeare Theater, Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, Intiman, South Coast Rep, O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Midwest Playlabs, Ojai Playwrights Conference and Sundance Theater Lab. Ms. Peterson is a graduate of Yale College and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Drama Department.

Primary Stages (Producer) was founded in 1984 as a New York State non-profit theater company with the mission of producing new plays and nurturing the development of playwrights. In our 23 seasons we have produced over 90 productions of new plays by such playwrights as Brooke Berman, Lee Blessing, Charles Busch, Constance Congdon, A.R. Gurney, Michael Hollinger, Willy Holtzman, David Ives, Julia Jordan, Romulus Linney, Michele Lowe, Donald Margulies, Melissa Manchester, Terrence McNally, Connor McPherson, John Henry Redwood, Lanie Robertson, John Patrick Shanley and Mac Wellman. We seek to provide a supportive environment where writers are encouraged to explore the scope of their creative vision. Our productions and our artists have received considerable critical acclaim including Obie, AUDELCO, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel (Outstanding Body of Work), Drama League, Drama Desk, Helen Hayes (Washington, DC), L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation, and Joseph Jefferson (Chicago) awards and nominations. Many of our productions have been world premieres and all of them have been New York premieres. Lincoln Center Theater, by special arrangement with Primary Stages, is currently producing Horton Foote's Dividing The Estate on Broadway at the Booth Theatre. Primary Stages continues to nurture playwrights through commissions, our weekly PrimeTime Reading Series and our emerging playwrights development program, The Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, now in its 13th year. We offer a wide array of classes and workshops at Primary Stages School of Theater, host free matinee performances for NYC public high school students, and enhance student appreciation of the theater through in-school programming with our Primary Voices program.

To learn more about Primary Stages please visit our website at www.primarystages.org

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