Works & Process at the Guggenheim Presents MCC Theater: SEARED by Theresa Rebeck

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents MCC Theater: Seared by Theresa Rebeck on Monday, September 9, 2019 at 7:30pm.

Prior to its New York premiere at MCC Theater, playwright Theresa Rebeck and director Moritz von Stuelpnagel take audiences into the kitchen of their fit-for-foodies comedy as cast members perform highlights.

Harry, a brilliant and hot-headed chef, scores a mention in a food magazine, and his business partner sees profits finally within reach.The only problem is Harry refuses to serve his masterpiece for the masses. Mix in a shrewd restaurant consultant and a waiter with dreams of his own and it all goes to hell in this hilarious and insightful new play that asks us to consider where art ends and commerce begins.

Seared begins performances on Thursday, October 3, 2019 in the Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space (511 West 52nd Street). The cast will star W. Tré Davis ("Valor"), four-time Tony Award® nominee Raúl Esparza (Company), David Mason (Trick or Treat), and Krysta Rodriguez (Spring Awakening). Tickets are now on sale and available at mcctheater.org/seared.

Theresa Rebeck (Playwright) is a prolific and widely produced playwright, whose work can be seen and read throughout the United States and abroad. Last season, her fourth Broadway play premiered, making Rebeck the most Broadway-produced female playwright of our time. Other Broadway works include Dead Accounts; Seminar and Mauritius. Other notable NY and regional plays include: Downstairs (Primary Stages), The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels (Second Stage), Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection and Our House (Playwrights Horizons), The Understudy (Roundabout), View of the Dome (NYTW), What We're Up Against(Women's Project), Omnium Gatherum (Pulitzer Prize finalist). As a director, her work has been seen at The Alley Theatre (Houston), the REP Company (Delaware), Dorset Theatre Festival, the Orchard Project and the Folger Theatre. Major film and television projects include Trouble, starring Anjelica Huston, Bill Pullman and David Morse (writer and director), "NYPD Blue," the NBC series "Smash" (creator), and the upcoming female spy thriller

355 (for Jessica Chastain's production company). As a novelist, Rebeck's books include Three Girls and Their Brother and I'm Glad About You. Rebeck is the recipient of the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, a Lilly Award and more.

Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Director) Broadway: Theresa Rebeck'sBernhardt/Hamlet starring Janet McTeer (Roundabout), Noël Coward's Present Laughter starring Kevin Kline (three Tony Award nominations including Best Revival), Robert Askins' Hand to God (five Tony Award nominations including Best Play and Best Director). West End: Hand to God (Olivier Award nomination). Off-Broadway: Larissa Fasthorse's The Thanksgiving Play(Playwrights Horizons), Mike Lew's Teenage Dick (Ma-Yi/Public Theater), Nick Jones' Important Hats of the Twentieth Century (Manhattan Theatre Club), Nick Jones' Verité (Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3), Mike Lew's Bike America(Ma-Yi), Nick Jones' Trevor (Lesser America), Robert Askins' Love Song of the Albanian Sous Chef (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Mel & El (Ars Nova), Michael Mitnick's Spacebar (Studio 42), and Adam Szymkowicz's My Base and Scurvy Heart (Studio 42). Regional: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and more. Moritz is the former artistic director of Studio 42, NYC's producer of "unproducible" plays. moritzvs.com

MCC Theater is one of New York's leading nonprofit Off-Broadway companies, driven by a mission to provoke conversations that have never happened and otherwise never would. Founded in 1986 as a collective of artists leading peer-based classes to support their own development as actors, writers and directors, the tenets of collaboration, education, and community are at the core of MCC Theater's programming. One of the only theaters in the country led continuously by its founders, Artistic Directors Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, and William Cantler, MCC fulfills its mission through the production of world, American, and New York premiere plays and musicals that challenge artists and audiences to confront contemporary personal and social issues, and robust playwright development and education initiatives that foster the next generation of theater artists and students.

MCC Theater's celebrated productions include Jocelyn Bioh's School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play; Penelope Skinner's The Village Bike; Robert Askins' Hand to God (Broadway transfer; five 2015 Tony Award® nominations including Best Play); John Pollono's Small Engine Repair; Paul Downs Colaizzo's Really Really; Sharr White's The Other Place (Broadway transfer); Jeff Talbott's The Submission (Laurents/Hatcher Award); Neil LaBute'sReasons to Be Happy, reasons to be pretty (Broadway transfer, three 2009 Tony Award® nominations, including Best Play), Some Girl(s), Fat Pig, The Mercy Seat, and All The Ways To Say I Love You; Michael Weller's Fifty Words; Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride; Bryony Lavery's Frozen (Broadway transfer; four 2004 Tony Award® nominations including Best Play, Tony Award® for Best Featured Actor); Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone; Rebecca Gilman's The Glory of Living (2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist); Margaret Edson's Wit (1999 Pulitzer Prize); and the musicals Coraline, Carrie,and Ride the Cyclone. Many plays developed and produced by MCC have gone on to productions throughout the country and around the world.

Blake West joined the company in 2006 as Executive Director. MCC opened the doors to its new home in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, on January 9, 2019, unifying the company's activities under one roof for the first time and expanding its producing, artist development, and education programming.

TICKETS & VENUE

$45, $40 Guggenheim Members and Friends of Works & Process

Box Office (212) 423-3575 or worksandprocess.org

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

Lead funding for Works & Process is provided by The Christian Humann Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Evelyn Sharp Foundation, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Described by The New York Times as "an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process," for 35 years, New Yorkers have been able to see, hear, and meet the most acclaimed artists in the world, in an intimate setting unlike any other. Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, has championed new works and offered audiences unprecedented access to generations of leading creators and performers. Most performances take place in the Guggenheim's intimate Frank Lloyd Wright-designed 273-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. In 2017, Works & Process established a new residency and commissioning program, inviting artists to create new works, made in and for the iconic Guggenheim rotunda. worksandprocess.org.

Photo Credit: Daniel Rader