Blake, Coleman, Ellis & More Cast In JOE TURNER Opens 4/16

Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, and Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer) has announced that Marsha Stephanie Blake, Chad L. Coleman, Michael Cummings, Aunjanue Ellis, Danai Gurira, Andre Holland, Arliss howard, Ernie Hudson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Amari Rose Leigh and Roger Robinson will be featured in the cast of its upcoming production of August Wilson's Joe Turner'S COME AND GONE, to be directed by Bartlett Sher. The production, which will be presented on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre (111 West 44 Street) while LCT's award winning production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific continues its run at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, begins performances Thursday, March 19 at 8pm and opens on Thursday, April 16 at 6:45pm.

Joe Turner'S COME AND GONE, part of Mr. Wilson's ten-play Century Cycle, which depicts the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century, originally opened on Broadway in 1988, receiving
a Tony Award nomination for Best Play and winning that year's New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Set in 1911, it tells the story of Herald Loomis who, after serving seven years hard labor, has journeyed North with his young daughter and arrives at a Pittsburgh boarding house filled with memorable characters who aid him in his search for his inner freedom. Constanza Romero, Mr. Wilson's wife, has said that of all of August Wilson's plays, Joe Turner's Come and Gone" was his favorite.

Joe Turner'S COME AND GONE will have sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Brian MacDevitt and sound by Scott Lehrer and Leon Rothenberg.

In addition to Joe Turner'S COME AND GONE, August Wilson (1945 - 2005) is the author of the plays Gem of the Ocean, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II and Radio Golf. His plays have been produced at regional theatres across the country and all over the world, as well as on Broadway, and have garnered many awards including two Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), a Tony Award for Best Play for Fences, London's Olivier Award for Jitmey and eight New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. The cast recording of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom received a 1985 Grammy Award and Mr. Wilson received a 1995 Emmy nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson.

Bartlett Sher, resident director of Lincoln Center Theater and Artistic Director of Seattle's Intiman Theater, directed LCT's hit production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, for which he won a Tony Award, as well as LCT's Tony Award winning productions of Clifford Odets' Awake & Sing! and the Craig Lucas-Adam Guettel musical The Light in the Piazza. His other New York credits include the Metropolitan Opera's production if Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the opera Mourning Becomes Electra at the NY
City Opera (which he originally directed for the Seattle Opera) and the Theatre for A New Audience productions of Cymbeline, which was also the first American Shakespeare presented at the Royal Shakespeare Company (2001 Callaway Award - Best Director), Waste, Don Juan, and Craig Lucas' PRAYER FOR MY Enemy. His upcoming productions include The Tales of Hoffman next season at the Metropolitan Opera and Othello at the Intiman Theatre.

This spring, in addition to Joe Turner's Come and Gone and Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, Lincoln Center Theater is also presenting Happiness, a new musical with a book by John Weidman, music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie and direction and choreography by Susan
Stroman, beginning performances Friday, February 27, in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. In June, Lincoln Center Theater's new programming initiative, LCT3, will present its second production Stunning, a new play by David Adjmi, directed by Anne Kauffman, at The Duke on 42nd StreetSM from June 1 - 27.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone will be performed Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8pm, with matinees Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2pm and Sundays at 3pm (PLEASE NOTE: There will be no Saturday matinee on March 21). Tickets priced from $51.50 to $96.50 are available at the Belasco
Theatre box office, at telecharge.com, or, by visiting www.lct.org

Photo by T Charles Erickson