Pubilc Theater's APPLE FAMILY PLAYS Begins Previews 10/22

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Patrick Willingham, Executive Director) will begin performances for the return engagement of THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, the first play in the tetralogy, The Apple Family Plays: Scenes from Life in the Country, on Tuesday, October 22. Written and directed by Richard Nelson, the acclaimed plays will run in repertory through Sunday, December 15 and culminate in the world premiere of the fourth and final play, REGULAR SINGING, which opens on the day it is set, November 22 - the 50th Anniversary of JFK's assassination that shocked the world.

Single tickets for the return of the award-winning THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, SWEET AND SAD, and SORRY start at $41.50 and are on sale now. Single tickets for the Public Lab production of REGULAR SINGING, starting at $21.50, can be purchased by calling (212) 967-7555,www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at Astor Place at 425 Lafayette Street.

The cast features Maryann Plunkett (Barbara), Jay O. Sanders (Richard), Laila Robins (Marian), Jon Devries (Benjamin), Stephen Kunken (Tim), and Sally Murphy (Jane).

Each year since 2010, Tony Award winner Richard Nelson has premiered a new play about the fictional, liberal Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York. The compelling plays are about family, politics, change, and the way we live today. They resonate with remarkable immediacy and relevance. Each of these plays originally premiered on the night on which it is set. In THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, the Apples reflect on the state of their family and discuss memory, manners and politics as polls close on mid-term election night 2010 and a groundswell of conservative sentiment flips Congress on its head. In SWEET AND SAD, a family brunch stirs up discussions of loss, remembrance and a decade of change. And SORRY, which premiered last fall, finds the Apples sorting through family anxieties and confusion on the day of electing the President.

THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS feature scenic and costume design by Susan Hilferty, lighting design by Jennifer Tipton, and sound design by Scott Lehrer and Will Pickens.

Richard Nelson (Playwright, Director) returns to The Public with Regular Singing, the fourth and final play in the tetralogy for The Apple Family Plays: Scenes from Life in the Country. His additional credits for The Public include Conversations in Tusculum. His other plays include Nikolai and the Others, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Two Shakespearean Actors, Some American Abroad, Madame Melville, New England, Frank's Home, Rodney's Wife, Franny's Way, The General from America, The Vienna Notes, and others. His musicals include James Joyce's The Dead, for which he won a Tony Award; and My Life with Albertine. His films include Hyde Park on Hudson, Ethan Frome, and Sensibility and Sense. He is a recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which has produced ten of his plays.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos