Jason Robert Brown to Direct THE LAST FIVE YEARS at Second Stage in Spring 2013

Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) has just announced that Jason Robert Brown's musical THE LAST FIVE YEARS has been added to the company's upcoming 2012-2013 season. The musical, which has not been seen in New York City since its brief off-Broadway run over ten years ago, will be directed by MR. Brown.

Second Stage has already announced two productions for the season: the world premiere of Jon Kern's Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award-winning comedy, MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, directed by Peter DuBois, as well as Quiara Alegría Hudes' 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, WATER BY THE SPOONFUL, directed by Davis McCallum. For subscription or ticket information, please call the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422 or visit the company's website, www.2ST.com. All productions are staged at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street (just west of Eighth Avenue).

THE LAST FIVE YEARS is currently scheduled to play in spring 2013. A fourth mainstage production remains to be announced.

Jason Robert Brown's contemporary musical THE LAST FIVE YEARS tells the emotionally powerful story of two twenty-something New Yorkers who dive head first into a marriage fueled by the optimism that comes with finding "the one." But in a city where professional and personal passions collide and only the strongest relationships survive, navigating the waters of love and matrimony can sometimes prove too much. Funny, honest and intimate, with an exuberantly romantic score, THE LAST FIVE YEARS takes a bold look at one young couple's hope that love endures the test of time.

THE LAST FIVE YEARS premiered off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2002 in a production starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott, directed by Daisy Prince. The musical received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, and was nominated for five additional Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical. THE LAST FIVE YEARS was also nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical.

Jason Robert Brown's four major musicals as composer and lyricist include 13, a musical written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008; The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine's "10 Best of 2001" and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics; Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Musical, as well as garnering Jason the Tony Award for Best Original Score; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world. Parade was also the subject of a major revival directed by Rob Ashford, first at London's Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Upcoming musical projects include Honeymoon in Vegas, a musical adaptation of the 1992 film, written with Andrew Bergman, and The Bridges of Madison County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel. He is also working with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman on a new chamber musical called The Connector. His orchestral adaptation of E.B. White's novel, The Trumpet of the Swan, premiered at the Kennedy Center with John Lithgow and the National Symphony Orchestra. Jason is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. As a soloist or with his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Jason has performed sold-out concerts around the world. His first solo album, "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes," featuring his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, was named one of Amazon.com's Best of 2005, and is available from Sh-K-Boom Records. His collaboration with singer Lauren Kennedy, "Songs of Jason Robert Brown," is available on PS Classics. Jason is also the composer of the incidental music for David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly Akimbo and Fuddy Meers, Marsha Norman's Last Dance, David Marshall Grant's Current Events, Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery, and the Irish Repertory Theater's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Jason will be serving as the musical supervisor and arranger for the upcoming musical, Prince of Broadway, a celebration of the career of Harold Prince. Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel Adler, 

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theatre produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America's best Contemporary Theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by ReGina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman.

The company's more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 14 Lucille Lortel Awards, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched "Second Stage Theatre Uptown" series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

Second Stage Theatre's upcoming world premiere production of DOGFIGHT, featuring music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a book by Peter Duchan and directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, will begin previews on Wednesday, June 27 and officially open on Monday, July 16.

Second Stage Theatre Uptown's first production, Alena Smith's THE BAD GUYS, directed by Hal Brooks and featuring Michael Braun, Roe Hartrampf, James McMenamin, Tobias Segal, and Raviv Ullman, began previews May 22nd and will officially open on June 4th.

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street. With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions. Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway. The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city's Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com