Sarah Ruhl, Rebecca Taichman to Chat 'A HAPPY MARRIAGE' as Part of LCT's Platform Series

Lincoln Center Theater Platform Series, a forum for public discussion between Lincoln Center Theater artists and theatergoers, continues on Wednesday, March 8, with How to Transcend a Happy Marriage author Sarah Ruhl and director Rebecca Taichman. They will be interviewed by LCT Dramaturg Anne Cattaneo.

Platform Series events take place in the lobby of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at 150 West 65th Street. Admission is free and open to all, and seating begins a half hour before the talk on a first-come, first-served basis.

LCT's production of How to Transcend a Happy Marriage begins performances on February 23rd at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65th Street). At a dinner party in the wilds of New Jersey, two married couples discuss a younger acquaintance - a polyamorous woman who also hunts her own meat. Fascinated, they invite this mysterious woman and her two live-in boyfriends to a New Year's Eve party, which alters the course of their lives. How to Transcend a Happy Marriage asks: how much love can a twosome contain? What are the limits of friendship, and what happens when parents who have forgotten their own wildness have a wild rumpus all their own?

Sarah Ruhl returns to Lincoln Center Theater where her plays The Oldest Boy; In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist); and The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize) were produced. Other plays include For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday; Stage Kiss; Dear Elizabeth; Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award, The Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center); Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award); Melancholy Play; Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have been produced around the country and internationally, translated into fourteen languages. Her book of essays, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, was published by Faber and Faber. Awards: Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, Whiting Writers' Award, MacArthur Fellowship, Lily Award, PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright. Education: M.F.A., Brown University (with Paula Vogel). She is an alumna of New Dramatists and 13P, and teaches at the Yale School of Drama.

Rebecca Taichman directed Sarah Ruhl's The Oldest Boy at Lincoln Center Theater, as well as the LCT3 production of The Luck of the Irish. She is directing the upcoming Broadway production of Indecent by Paula Vogel, which she also directed Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. Other Off-Broadway credits include Familiar, Stage Kiss, Milk Like Sugar (Playwrights Horizons); Orlando (CSC); Orpheus (New York City Opera); Dark Sisters (Music Theatre Group, Gotham Opera); Rappaccini's Daughter (Gotham Chamber Opera); The Scene (Second Stage, Humana); and Menopausal Gentleman (Ohio Theatre). Regionally, Rebecca's work has been seen at Yale Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Old Globe, ART, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter, and Woolly Mammoth, among others. She is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Speakers and schedules are subject to change. Call 212-501-3100 to confirm on the day of the event. Lincoln Center Theater's Platform series was introduced in the summer of 1998. Transcripts of the previous talks are available on-line at www.lct.org.

Photo Credit: Jessica Fallon Gordon