Chernus, DeHaan, Gann Cast In Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's THE ALIENS

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater will conclude its 15th Anniversary season with the world premiere of The Aliens, by Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation, Body Awareness). Directed by Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation, Rag and Bone), performances begin Wednesday, April 14th, 2010. Opening night is Thursday, April 22nd at 7pm. The show is scheduled to run through Sunday, May 23rd, 2010.

In The Aliens, two angry young men sit outside a Vermont coffee shop and discuss music and Bukowski. When a lonely high school student arrives on the scene, they decide to teach him everything they know. A play with music and shrooms.

The cast of The Aliens includes Michael Chernus (Essential Self-Defense, American Sligo), Dane DeHaan (End Days, Sixty Miles to Silver Lake) and Erin Gann (First Day, Percussionist).

The creative team will include Andrew Lieberman (sets), Bobby Tilley (costumes), Tyler Mycelou (lights), Bart Fasbender (sound), and Eugenia Furneaux-Arends (props). Additional members of the creative team will be announced at a later date.

The Aliens will have the following performance schedule: Monday at 8pm; Wednesday - Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $45.00 and are available through SmartTix (212-868-4444) or www.smarttix.com. Rattlestick Theatre is located at 224 Waverly Place (off Seventh Avenue South - between West 11th & Perry Streets).

Annie Baker (Playwright). Annie Baker's full-length plays include Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, spring 2010), The End of the Middle Ages (commission for Soho Rep) and NOCTURAMA. Her work has been developed and produced at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, Atlantic Theater Company, Soho Rep, the Orchard Project, the Ontological-Hysteric, Ars Nova, the Wilma, the Lark, the Magic Theater, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Utah and Ucross, Wyoming. Annie is a member of MCC's Playwrights Coalition, Ars Nova's Play Group and EST, and she is an alumna of Youngblood and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Recent honors include a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship and commissions from Center Theatre Group and Playwrights Horizons. MFA, Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College.

Sam Gold (Director). Sam has worked with Annie Baker on Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons and The Aliens at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Recent credits include Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children and Betty Shamieh's The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop), Nick Jones and Raja Azar's Jollyship The Whizbang (Ars Nova). Noah Haidle's Rag and Bone (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), ALena Smith's The Sacrifices (SPF at The Public Theater), Sam Forman's The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall (Stage 13), Sam Mark's The Joke (Studio Dante), Colin McKenna's The Secret Agenda of Trees (Cherry Lane), Rogelio Martinez's Fizz (The Ohio Theater), Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (NYU Grad), Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra(Williams College). Sam is a teaching artist and guest director at The Juilliard School. Credits there include Beau Willimon's Farragut North and War Story, Sam Hunter's I Am Montana, Marlowe's Edward II, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Lanford Wilson's Book of Days, Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, and Suzan-Lori Parks' In The Blood Sam has developed work at American Conservatory Theater, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Manhattan Class Company, Manhattan Theater Club, The Marin Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, The Ojai Playwrights Conference, Primary Stages, The Sundance Theater Lab, The Vineyard Theater, and The Yale Repertory Theater. He is a recipient of a Princess Grace Award, a Theater Hall of Fame Fellowship, and is a Wooster Group Associate Artist, a Drama League Directing Fellow, and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multi-award-winning company which has produced over forty world premieres in the past fourteen seasons and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for its work developing new and innovative work. Rattlestick's Advisory Board participates in The Emerging Playwrights Project, which matches a new playwright with an established artist for an experienced eye and creative support. Playwright and artist mentors have included Edward Albee, Jon Robin Baitz, Zoe Caldwell, Arthur Kopit, Craig Lucas, Joe Mantello, Terrence McNally and Marsha Norman. Previous plays include Two Boys in a Bed, Message to Michael, Carpool, Volunteer Man, A Trip to the Beach, Ascendancy, Stuck, Vick's Boy, The Messenger, Saved or Destroyed, Neil's Garden, My Special Friend, Faster, Bliss, St. Crispin's Day, Where We're Born, Five Flights, Boise, Finer Noble Gases, God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, Miss Julie, Acts of Mercy: passion-play, Cagelove, It Goes Without Saying, Dark Matters, Stay, American Sligo, Rag and Bone, War, Geometry of Fire, That Pretty Pretty; or The Rape Play, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June and Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee - Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee - Outstanding Play of 2008). www.rattlestick.org.