New York Stage And Film, Vassar Set 30th Anniversary Season: 'BABYLON LINE,' THE LISTENER & More

New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, this summer celebrating the 30th year of their Powerhouse Theater collaboration, are pleased to announce the three new works that will be featured on the Mainstage during the 2014 Powerhouse Theater Season, running from June 20 to July 27 at Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, New York). Subscriptions go on sale May 7; full programming and ticket sale information will be announced at a later date.

The three mainstage productions of the 30th Powerhouse Theater Season are:

THE BABYLON LINE
By Richard Greenberg
Directed by Terry Kinney
June 25-July 6

1967. A 38-year-old writer from bohemian Greenwich Village commutes to Levittown, Long Island to teach an adult-education Creative Writing class. He finds anything but the cookie-cutter lives he expected in this straight-laced community, as his students come to discover the power of storytelling to transform their lives. And one special student - a kindred spirit? or something more? - reawakens him to his own artistic impulses.

IN YOUR ARMS
Directed and Choreographed by Christopher Gattelli
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Vignettes written by Douglas Carter Beane, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Carrie Fisher, David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, & Alfred Uhry
July 5-13

In Your Arms features ten dance vignettes-written by a unprecedented collection of preeminent playwrights-that each tell a story without words of a pair of lovers, constituting an evening of storytelling, dance and music with a cast of more than 20 performers.

THE LISTENER
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley
July 16-27

The Listener is a mystery which unfolds against an international backdrop. The main character, a female insurance investigator, finds herself battling wits with a formidable Danish widow. Disturbing, funny, deadly serious, sexy, like a Hitchcock film with a modernist edge.

Johanna Pfaelzer, New York Stage and Film's Artistic Director, said: "We are delighted to welcome this enormously exciting group of theater artists to our 30th Powerhouse season. In this landmark year, we are thrilled to have John Patrick Shanley and Richard Greenberg back on our mainstage, and to help bring such a unique, ambitious theatrical event as In Your Arms to life."

Celebrating 30 years this summer, Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College 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 50 apprentices in the Powerhouse training program live and work together to create new theater works. Recent highlights at Powerhouse include The Hamilton Mixtape, the latest work from In the Heights Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda; Bright Star, an original musical from Steve Martin and Edie Brickell; and The Fortress of Solitude, a musical adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jonathan Lethem. 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); Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander's The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater); and Storefront Church, John Patrick Shanley's final installment of his "Church and State" trilogy that began with Doubt (Atlantic Theater 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, and A Steady Rain, produced on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

Richard Greenberg (The Babylon Line) is the author of The Assembled Parties (Tony, Drama Desk nominations), Take Me Out (Tony Award for Best Play; Drama Desk Award; NY Drama Critics Circle Award; Outer Critics Circle Award; Lucille Lortel Award), The House in Town, The Violet Hour, The Dazzle (Outer Critics Circle Award), Everett Beekin, Three Days of Rain (L.A. Drama Critics Award; Pulitzer finalist),The American Plan, and many other plays.

Terry Kinney (The Babylon Line) is a co-founder of Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His directing credits there include The Violet Hour, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Clockwork Orange, Of Mice and Men, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which moved to Broadway and won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. NYC directing credits include the world premiere of Checkers by Doug McGrath, reasons to be pretty for MCC and Broadway, After Ashley and Beautiful Child at the Vineyard Theatre, among others. Upcoming projects include The Money Shot by Neil LaBute, Sins of the Mother by Israel Horowitz, and Rear Window, adapted by Keith Reddin. Mr. Kinney's film directing credits include the short film Kubuku Rides (This Is It) for Steppenwolf Films, and Diminished Capacity with Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda. Film appearances include Save the Last Dance, Sleepers, Fly Away Home, Last of the Mohicans, The Firm, Devil in a Blue Dress, and Turn The River. TV credits include Tim McManus in HBO's prison drama Oz, The Mentalist, The Unusuals (ABC), The Laramie Project, thirtysomething, Kidnapped, George Wallace, and The Good Wife with Julianna Margulies.

John Patrick Shanley (The Listener) is from The Bronx, New York. His plays include Outside Mullingar, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, Italian-American Reconciliation, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Dirty Story, Defiance, Beggars in the House of Plenty and Storefront Church. His theatrical work is performed extensively across the United States and around the world. For his play Doubt, he received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the arena of screenwriting, he has nine films to his credit, most recently Doubt, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay. The film of Doubt was also directed by Mr. Shanley. Other films include Five Corners (Special Jury Prize, Barcelona Film Festival), Alive, Joe Versus the Volcano, which he also directed, and Live From Baghdad for HBO (Emmy nomination). For his script of Moonstruck he received both the Writers Guild of America Award and an Academy Award for best original screenplay. The Writers Guild of America awarded Mr. Shanley the 2009 Lifetime Achievement In Writing.

Christopher Gattelli (In Your Arms) was awarded the 2012 Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his choreography in Newsies. His monumental career as a Broadway choreographer includes his Tony nominated work in South Pacific, as well as Sunday in the Park with George, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Godspell, The Ritz, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, 13, and High Fidelity. Off-Broadway, his work includes the hit shows Dogfight, Altar Boyz, Bat Boy: The Musical, and tick.tick.BOOM!, among many others. His work has appeared on the West End, regionally, and internationally. As a director/choreographer, his credits include the hit Off-Broadway musical Silence! The Musical, named to Time Magazine's Top 10 of 2011; as well as Jim Henson's Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas at the Goodspeed Opera House, Radio Girl (Goodspeed's Norma Terris), and Departure Lounge at The Public.

Stephen Flaherty (In Your Arms) is the composer of Rocky (currently on Broadway), Ragtime (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC Awards, two Grammy nominations), Seussical (Grammy, Drama Desk nominations) and Once on This Island (Tony nomination, Olivier Award, Best Musical). Additional Broadway includes Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (original songs) and Neil Simon's Proposals (incidental music). Stephen has also written four musicals at Lincoln Center Theater: The Glorious Ones (OCC, Drama Desk nominations), Dessa Rose (OCC, Drama Desk nominations), A Man of No Importance (OCC, Best Musical, Drama Desk nomination) and My Favorite Year. Other theater includes Lucky Stiff and Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein (Chicago's Jefferson Award, Best New Musical). Film includes Anastasia (two Academy Award and two Golden Globe nominations), the documentary After The Storm and the upcoming Lucky Stiff. This year celebrates Stephen's 30-year collaboration with lyricist-librettist Lynn Ahrens. Upcoming: Little Dancer at the Kennedy Center, fall 2014. AhrensAndFlaherty.com

New York Stage and Film (Johanna Pfaelzer, Artistic Director; Thomas Pearson, Executive Director; Mark Linn-Baker, Max Mayer, Leslie Urdang, Producing Directors) 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 www.newyorkstageandfilm.org.

Vassar College (Ed Cheetham, Producing Director) 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 sciences, and combine to offer a curriculum of more than 1,000 courses. Vassar College is sited in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, NY. www.vassar.edu