Three World Premieres, Including THE COUNTRY HOUSE with Blythe Danner, Set for MTC's 2014-15 Season

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) and Barry Grove (Executive Producer) have announced three world premiere productions for Manhattan Theatre Club's upcoming 2014-2015 theatrical season.

MTC's Broadway season at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) will begin this fall with THE COUNTRY HOUSE, the new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies, directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan, starring Tony and Emmy Award winner Blythe Danner.

MTC's Off-Broadway season at New York City Center - Stage I (131 West 55th Street) will feature LOST LAKE, by Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn, directed by Daniel Sullivan and THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, directed by Eric Ting.

In addition to THE COUNTRY HOUSE, LOST LAKE, and THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS, MTC will announce five additional productions as part of the 2014-2015 season: two additional productions at the Friedman, one additional production at New York City Center - Stage I, and the two productions as part of The Studio at Stage II - Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Series at New York City Center - Stage II.

ON BROADWAY AT MTC'S SAMUEL J. FRIEDMAN THEATRE

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

World Premiere by DONALD MARGULIES

Directed by DANIEL SULLIVAN

Starring BLYTHE DANNER

A co-production with THE GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE

Previews Begin: Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Opening Night: Thursday, October 2, 2014

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies (Times Stands Still, Sight Unseen) returns to Broadway with his tenth MTC production, a new comedy about a deeply dramatic family.

Tony and Emmy winner Blythe Danner (The Commons of Pensacola, Meet the Parents) stars as Anna Patterson, the matriarch of a brood of famous and longing-to-be-famous creative artists who have gathered at their Berkshires summerhouse during the Williamstown Theatre Festival. But when the weekend takes an unexpected turn, everyone is forced to improvise... inciting a series of simmering jealousies, a flurry of romantic outbursts and a bout of passionate soul-searching.

Inspired by Chekhov's pastoral comedies, this witty and compelling new play provides a piercing look at a family of performers coming to terms with the roles they play in each other's lives. Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (The Columnist, Good People) directs.

THE COUNTRY HOUSE is a co-production with The Geffen Playhouse which will present the Los Angeles run of the production this summer (June 3 - July 13 in the Gil Cates Theater at the Geffen Playhouse) before it comes to MTC. Danner will star in both the Geffen and Manhattan Theatre Club runs of the play.

THE COUNTRY HOUSE was commissioned by MTC through the U.S. Trust New American Play Commissioning Program.

MTC AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER - STAGE I

LOST LAKE

World Premiere by DAVID AUBURN

Directed by DANIEL SULLIVAN

Previews Begin: Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Opening Night: Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The team behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof and The Columnist returns to MTC with LOST LAKE, a riveting and spirited world premiere play by Tony winner David Auburn and directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan.

The lakeside rental Veronica has managed to afford is a far cry from the idyllic getaway she and her children so desperately need. And the disheveled property owner, Hogan, has problems of his own - problems that Veronica is inevitably - and irrevocably - pulled into.

An engrossing and revealing portrait of two strangers bound together by circumstance, LOST LAKE is a vivid new work about the struggle for connection in an imperfect world.

LOST LAKE was developed during a residency at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference in 2013 (Preston Whiteway, Executive Director, Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director) and was produced as part of the inaugural season of The Sullivan Project at Illinois Theatre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, February 2014 (Daniel Sullivan, Artistic Director, Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, Producer).

MTC AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER - STAGE I

THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS

World Premiere by FRANCES YA-CHU COWHIG

Directed by ERIC TING

A co-production with THE GOODMAN THEATRE

Previews Begin: Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Opening Night: Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Unwanted from the moment she's born, Sunny is determined to escape her life in rural China and forge a new identity in the city. As naïve as she is ambitious, Sunny views her new job in a grueling factory as a stepping stone to untold opportunities. When fate casts her as a company spokeswoman at a sham PR event, Sunny's bright outlook starts to unravel in a series of harrowing and darkly comic events, as she begins to question a system enriching itself by destroying its own people.

Critically acclaimed in a workshop production at London's National Theatre, THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS makes its world premiere in a co-production with Chicago's Goodman Theatre. "Hard-hitting and bruisingly funny" (Time Out London), this epic new drama by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is as fierce and unflinching as the world it examines. Eric Ting directs.

THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS is a co-production with the Goodman Theatre which will present the Chicago run of the play (September 13 - October 12 in the Owen Theatre at the Goodman) before coming to Manhattan Theatre Club.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, MTC has become one of the country's most prominent and prestigious theatre companies. Over the past three decades, MTC productions have earned a total of 19 Tony Awards and six Pulitzer Prizes, an accomplishment unparalleled by a New York theatrical institution. MTC has a Broadway home at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and two Off-Broadway theatres at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). Renowned MTC productions include The Assembled Parties; Venus in Fur; Master Class; Good People; The Whipping Man; Time Stands Still; The Royal Family; Ruined; The American Plan; Come Back, Little Sheba; Blackbird; Translations; Shining City; Rabbit Hole; Doubt; Proof; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; Love! Valour! Compassion!; A Small Family Business; Sylvia; Putting It Together; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Crimes of the Heart; and Ain't Misbehavin'.

THE COUNTRY HOUSE BIOGRAPHIES

DONALD MARGULIES (Playwright). Margulies' plays include Time Stands Still, Brooklyn Boy, Dinner With Friends, Sight Unseen, Collected Stories, Coney Island Christmas, The Loman Family Picnic, God of Vengeance, What's Wrong With This Picture?, Found A Peanut, The Model Apartment, and Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told By Himself). He has won a Lucille Lortel Award, two American Theatre Critics New Play Citations, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two Obie Awards, one Tony Award nomination, two Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Awards, five Drama Desk Award nominations, two Pulitzer Prize nominations and one Pulitzer Prize. His works have been performed at major theatres across the United States and around the world. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature, and was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre. Margulies is an alumnus of New Dramatists and serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild of America. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University.

DANIEL SULLIVAN (Director) most recently directed The Snow Geese, Orphans, and Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway. For The Public Theater, Sullivan directed A Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Stuff Happens, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his Broadway credits are The Columnist, Good People, Time Stands Still, Accent on Youth, The Homecoming, Prelude to a Kiss, Rabbit Hole, After the Night and the Music, Julius Caesar, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, I'm Not Rappaport, Morning's at Seven, Proof, the 2000 production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Ah, Wilderness!, The Sisters Rosensweig, Conversations with my Father, and The Heidi Chronicles. Among his Off-Broadway credits are The Night Watcher, Intimate Apparel, Far East, Spinning into Butter, Dinner with Friends, and The Substance of Fire. From 1981 to 1997, he served as artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Sullivan is the Swanlund Professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

BLYTHE DANNER (Anna Patterson) won two Emmy awards for her role on Showtime's "Huff" and was nominated twice for roles on "Will & Grace" and in Joyce Carol Oates' "We Were the Mulvaneys." She received a Golden Globe nomination for Anne Tyler's Back When We Were Grownups, and her list of career accomplishments continues with a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in Butterflies Are Free and nominations for roles in Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, and Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies. She most recently appeared on Broadway in the musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Off-Broadway in The Commons of Pensacola. Her film roles include Woody Allen's Alice, The Great Santini, the Meet the Parents trilogy, What's Your Number?, and Sylvia, a film in which she appeared with her daughter, actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Most recently Danner has appeared in The Lucky One and Hello I Must Be Going, and she will next be seen in the films I'll See You In My Dreams and Tumbledown. Danner takes action to support causes that are important to her. She has passionately advocated for environmental concerns for more than 40 years as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists and other groups, and serves on the national board of Planned Parenthood. Since the death of her husband Bruce Paltrow from oral cancer, she has also been helping the Oral Cancer Foundation raise disease awareness.

LOST LAKE BIOGRAPHIES

DAVID AUBURN (Playwright). Auburn's plays include The Columnist (MTC/Broadway 2012), The New York Idea (adaptation; Atlantic Theater 2010), An Upset and Amateurs (EST Marathons), The Journals of Mihail Sebastian (Keen Company), and Proof (2001 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, New York Drama Critics Circle Award). His film work includes The Girl in the Park, starring Sigourney Weaver and Kate Bosworth, which he wrote and directed; and the screenplay for The Lake House, starring Sandra Bullock. Recent stage directing credits include Anna Christie, A Delicate Balance, Tennessee Williams' Period of Adjustment, and Zayd Dohrn's Sick (all Berkshire Theatre Group); and the world premiere of Michael Weller's Side Effects (MCC). He also recently directed the LA Theatreworks radio production of The Columnist. His short plays have been collected in the volume Fifth Planet and Other Plays (DPS). Last year he gave the Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters at Oxford's Rothermere American Institute. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York City.

DANIEL SULLIVAN (Director) most recently directed The Snow Geese, Orphans, and Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway. For The Public Theater, Sullivan directed A Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Stuff Happens, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his Broadway credits are The Columnist, Good People, Time Stands Still, Accent on Youth, The Homecoming, Prelude to a Kiss, Rabbit Hole, After the Night and the Music, Julius Caesar, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, I'm Not Rappaport, Morning's at Seven, Proof, the 2000 production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Ah, Wilderness!, The Sisters Rosensweig, Conversations with my Father, and The Heidi Chronicles. Among his Off-Broadway credits are The Night Watcher, Intimate Apparel, Far East, Spinning into Butter, Dinner with Friends, and The Substance of Fire. From 1981 to 1997, he served as artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Sullivan is the Swanlund Professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

THE WORLD OF EXTREME HAPPINESS BIOGRAPHIES

FRANCES YA-CHU COWIG (Playwright). Cowig's play The World of Extreme Happiness was recently produced at the National Theatre in London. Her other plays have been produced by Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End], Crowded Fire, Page 73 Productions, Interact Theatre, Borderlands Theatre and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Awards her plays have received include the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and the Keene Prize for Literature. She is currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep and the Goodman Theatre. Frances received an MFA in Writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, a BA in Sociology from Brown University, and a certificate in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Her work has been published by Yale University Press, Glimmer Train, Methuen Drama, Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. Frances was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Northern Virginia, Okinawa, Taipei and Beijing.

ERIC TING (Director) is an Obie Award-winning director. Recent NYC credits: We Are Proud to Present A Presentation... (Soho Rep), Miriam (BAM Next Wave). Regional credits: Warrior Class (Alliance), We Are Proud... (Victory Gardens), Let Me Down Easy (American Repertory Theater), The Bluest Eye (Hartford Stage) and for Long Wharf Theatre: 4000 Miles, Clybourne Park, Agnes Under The Big Top, January Joiner, The Old Man & The Sea, Underneath The Lintel (CT Critics Circle awards for Best Play and Best Direction), Sylvia, Italian American Reconciliation, Macbeth [1969] among others. Ting is a recipient of a TCG New Generations Fellowship, a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize and a 2012 MAP Fund Award for the development of Motherland/Foreign Relations (We All Here Why You Never Call?) by Meiyin Wang. Ting is a founding member of the artists' collective Intelligent Beasts. Upcoming: Rising Son (Singapore Rep).

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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