WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT Begins Performances at Powerhouse Tonight!

Vassar & New York Stage and Film Powerhouse Theater's second Mainstage production, Mozhan Marnò's When The Lights Went Out, directed by Kate Whoriskey has its first performance tonight and will run through Sunday, July 28. Tickets are on sale through the Box Office: (845) 437-5599 orPHTBoxOffice@vassar.edu. The Box Office is located at Vassar in the Powerhouse Theater building. For online sales visit http://powerhouse.vassar.edu/boxoffice. For general season information call 845-437-5907 or visit powerhouse@vassar.edu.

When The Lights Went Out, is the first full-length play by Mozhan Marnò. Kate Whoriskey (Ruined, The Miracle Worker, Fabulation) directs a cast that includes:

Laura Innes (TV's "ER"), Cotter Smith (Next Fall, An American Daughter), Michael Braun (War Horse, Fires Are Confusing), Clifton Duncan ("Elementary"), Lameece Issaq (Food and Fadwa) Russell G. Jones (The Power of Duff, Ruined), TJ Rossi (A Year With Frog and Toad), and Sheila Vand (Argo, Bengal Tiger...)

When The Lights Went Out tells the story of the night of the Northeast blackout of 2003 when six New Yorkers connect through interwoven stories. In the darkness, two strangers fall in love during an epic walk across Manhattan; an older couple marooned in their apartment must finally grapple with their past; and a conflicted Iraqi immigrant trapped in an elevator chases memories of her lost son and her homeland through The Shadows.

Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between Vassar College and New York Stage and Film dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. The Powerhouse program consists of an eight-week residency on the Vassar campus during which more than 250 professional artists and 40 apprentices live and work together to create new theater works. Many shows from past seasons have found their way to Broadway, Off-Broadway, and theaters nationwide, including Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theater); Seminar by Theresa Rebeck (Golden Theater); Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (Manhattan Theater Club, Union Square Theater); Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander's The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater); and Storefront Church, John Patrick Shanley's final installment to his "Church and State" trilogy that began with Doubt (Atlantic Theatre Company). Other projects developed at the Powerhouse include the Tony Award-winning Side Man and Tru; the multi-award-winning Doubt; the groundbreaking Broadway musical American Idiot, andA Steady Rain, produced on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Each summer Vassar and New York Stage and Film also collaborate on the Powerhouse Theater Training Program, one of the country's leading theater immersion programs for young artists. The program brings together 40-50 participants from across the country to form the Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Company. They are current college and high school students and recent graduates, who over six weeks on the Vassar campus study a discipline (acting, directing, or writing), create their own work, and assist the professional productions of the Powerhouse season.

New York Stage and Film is a not-for-profit company dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development of new works for theater and film. Since 1985 New York Stage and Film has played a significant role in the development of new plays, provided a home for a diverse group of artists free from critical and commercial pressures and established itself as a vital cultural institution for residents of the Hudson Valley and the New York metropolitan region.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861. Consistently ranked as one of the country's best liberal arts colleges, Vassar is renowned for its long history of curricular innovation, and for the natural and architectural beauty of its campus. More than 50 academic departments and degree programs - from Anthropology to Cognitive Sciences to Urban Studies - encompass the arts, foreign languages, natural sciences, and social services, and combine to offer a curriculum of more than 1,000 courses.