New Plays by Halley Feiffer, Sam Hunter, Lucy Thurber and More Set for Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's 2013-14 Season!

By: Jun. 23, 2013
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Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Artistic Director David Van Asselt and Managing Director Brian Long have announced the company's 2013-14 season-its 19th-will include world premieres by Halley Feiffer, Charles Fuller, Samuel D. Hunter, Craig Lucas, Lucy Thurber, and Ken Urban.

As the first part of its 19th season, Rattlestick will present The Hill Town Plays, a cycle of five plays by Lucy Thurber that will be produced simultaneously at five different West Village theaters, including Rattlestick Theater, Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre, Cherry Lane Studio Theatre, Axis Theatre, and the New Ohio Theatre. The Hill Town Plays comprise the inaugural season of Theater: Village, what will become an annual theatrical event of five plays centered around one playwright or theme running simultaneously in five different West Village venues.

The Rattlestick 2013-14 Season opens with:

The Hill Town Plays

Written by Lucy Thurber

August 14 - September 28; opening September 5

Theater: Village

The Hill Town Plays tell the story of a woman who works her way into a new life from a troubled childhood. Each play examines a pivotal stage of the character's life--from a childhood of poverty, alcoholism, and abuse in a western Massachusetts mill town through adulthood as a successful author. The Hill Town Plays investigate where we come from, what we dream of becoming, and who we are.

Lucy Thurber is the author of the plays: Where We're Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus and The Insurgents. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We're Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay. She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She has had readings and workshops at Steam Boat Springs, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The O'Neill with WET, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep. She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights' Coalition. She is the recipient of the 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting 2008 and a proud recipient of a Lilly Award.

The Hill Town Plays include:

Scarcity

Presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Cherry Lane Theatre

Directed by Daniel Talbott

August 14-September 28

Cherry Lane Studio Theatre

Where We're Born

Directed by Jackson Gay

August 14-September 28

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Killers and Other Family

Presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Axis Company

Directed by Caitriona McLaughlin

August 14-September 28

Axis Theatre

Ashville

World Premiere

Directed by Karen Allen

August 21-September 28

Cherry Lane Theatre, Mainstage

Stay

Presented in association with the New Ohio Theatre

Directed by GT Upchurch

August 21-September 28

New Ohio Theatre

Rattlestick's 2013-14 Season will continue with:

One Night...

World Premiere

Produced by Cherry Lane Theatre and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Written by Charles Fuller; Directed by Clinton Turner Davis

October 16 - December 7; opening o/a October 30

At Cherry Lane Theatre, Mainstage

One Night... takes an unflinching look at what has happened to women in the US Armed Forces when their decision to serve their country exposes them to an unforeseen battle against their fellow soldiers. Home from war, One Night... explores the lingering effects of trauma and injustice and one woman's recompense. One Night... was commissioned by the Cherry Lane Theatre.

Charles Fuller was born in Philadelphia. He achieved critical notice in 1969 with The Village: A Party. He later wrote plays for the Henry Street Settlement theatre and the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. His 1975 play The Brownsville Raid, won him critical acclaim. He won an Obie Award for Zooman and the Sign in 1980. His next work, A Soldier's Play, was a critical success, winning the 1982 Pulitzer Prize, Best American Play, New York Critics and Edgar Awards. He later adapted the script into the 1984 film A Sodier's Story. Directed by Norman Jewison the film and his screenplay were nominated for Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award. Fuller has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also written short fiction, a novella 'Snatch: The Adventures of David and Me in Old New York' for young readers, screenplays for CBS, Showtime, NBC and PBS, and worked as a motion picture producer. He is a member of the Dramatist Guild and Writers Guild of America, East.

How to Make Friends and then Kill Them

World Premiere

Written by Halley Feiffer; Directedby Kip Fagan
October 23 - December 14; opening o/a November 7

At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Left to their own devices by their alcoholic mother, Ada and Sam cultivate an insular world into which they soon draw a third wheel - a pockmarked, limping wallflower named Dorrie. In the years spanning childhood to young adulthood, these three troubled girls learn to lean on each other completely, finding ways to fill each other up and to tear each other down. But when a horrible accident turns their reality upside down, they find they must decide whether they will continue to foster their familiar, codependent cycle, or whether they will break free, with or without each other's aid.

Halley Feiffer is a New York-based playwright and actress. Her plays have been produced or developed by Second Stage, The New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, The Orchard Project, terraNOVA Collective, Rising Phoenix Rep, Naked Angels, LAByrinth Theater Company and Young Playwrights Inc. (Young Playwrights' Festival XXII). She is the current Harold Clurman playwright-in-residence at the Stella Adler Studio. She co-wrote the film He's Way More Famous Than You, directed by Michael Urie, which was released in May.

The Correspondent

World Premiere

Written by Ken Urban; Directed by Stephen Brackett
February 5 - March 23; opening o/a February 20
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

A grieving husband hires a dying woman to deliver a message to his recently deceased wife in the afterlife. When he receives letters signed by his wife, describing events that only she could know, he's faced with determining if the correspondence is from a con artist or actually from a ghost.

Ken Urban's plays have been produced and developed at Summer Play Festival at The Public, Donmar Warehouse (London), TimeLine Theatre Company, Studio 42, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Irish Rep, Primary Stages, and The Huntington. Upcoming productions and workshops: A Future Perfect (The Huntington), Wasps (Studio 42), The Awake (kef productions/59E59 Theatres), Nibbler (Stable Cable) and SImple (Rising Phoenix Rep). Awards include the Weissberger Playwriting Award, Huntington Playwriting Fellowship, Djerassi Artist Residency, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and MacDowell Colony Fellowships. The feature film adaptation of his play The Happy Sad, with a screenplay by the author, premieres this summer. He is in the band occurrence and their releases are available for free from their bandcamp site.

Ode to Joy

World Premiere

Written and directed by Craig Lucas
February 12 - April 12; opening o/a February 27
At Cherry Lane Theatre, Mainstage

Ode to Joy tells the story of love, heartbreak, addiction, and illness through the eyes of Adele, an audacious painter and her destructive relations with Mala and Bill, her two lovers.

Craig Lucas is the author of the plays Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss,God's Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, Prayer for My Enemy, and The Singing Forest. His screenplays include Blue Window, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, The Secret Lives of Dentists and The Dying Gaul (which he also directed). Lucas has written the scripts for the musicals Marry Me A Little, Songs by Stephen Sondheim, Three Postcards (music and lyrics by Craig Carnelia) and The Light in the Piazza (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel). His opera libretti include Orpheus in Love (composer Gerald Busby) and Two Boys (composer Nico Muhly), which premiered at the English National Opera. Lucas directed the world premiere of The Light in the Piazza atthe Intiman Theater in Seattle,the film Birds of America,the play This Thing of Darkness (by Lucas and David Schulner) and Harry Kondoleon's plays Saved or Destroyed and Play Yourself. He has created a new scenario for Christopher Wheeldon's version of Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella for the Dutch National Ballet.

The Few

World Premiere

Written by Samuel D. Hunter; directed by Davis McCallum
April 16 - May 31; opening o/a May 1
At Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Four years ago Bryan abandoned his labor of love, a newspaper for truckers. Now he's returned--with no word of where he's been--and things have changed. His former lover is filled with rage, his new coworker is filled with incessant adoration, and his paper is filled with personal ads. As he considers giving up for good, Bryan searches for what he couldn't find on the road: a way to keep faith in humanity.

Samuel D. Hunter's plays include The Whale (2013 Drama Desk Award, 2013 Lucille Lortel Award), A Bright New Boise (2011 Obie Award), and his newest plays, The Few, A Great Wilderness, and Rest. He is a member of New Dramatists and currently a Playwright-in-Residence at Arena Stage. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.

Memberships for Rattlestick's 2013-2014 season are now on sale and can be purchased at www.rattlestick.org/membership or by phoning the theater at 212.627.2556 (Monday through Friday 11am - 4pm). Rattlestick has specially priced memberships available for students, under 30 patrons, and theater artists.Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is located at 224 Waverly Place (off Seventh Avenue South - between West 11th & Perry Streets). Cherry Lane Theatre is located at 38 Commerce Street, two blocks below Bleecker Street.

Currently playing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through June 29th is Jessica Dickey's Charles Ives Take Me Home, directed by Daniella Topol, and at Cherry Lane Theatre through June 22nd is Mando Alvarado's Basilica, directed by Jerry Ruiz. The Rattlestick production of Buyer & Cellar, written by Jonathan Tolins, directed by Stephen Brackett, and starring Michael Urie is currently playing a commercial run at the Barrow Street Theatre following a critically-acclaimed, sold-out run at Rattlestick.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multi-award-winning company which has produced over sixty world premieres in the past eighteen seasons and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for its work developing new and innovative work. Previous plays includeTwo 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, That Pretty Pretty or The Rape Play, 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, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, Little Doc, underneathmybed, There Are No More Big Secrets, The Hallway Trilogy, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, The Wood, Asuncion, Horsedreams, Yosemite, Massacre (Sing to Your Children), 3C, Through the Yellow Hour, A Summer Day, The Revisionist starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jesse Eisenberg, Buyer & Cellar (2013 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance), the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June, Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2008), as well as The Aliens by Annie Baker (2010 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play).



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