Neil LaBute News

The Open Fist Theatre Company presents their third FIRST LOOK FESTIVAL OF NEW PLAYS, with new works written by D. Tucker Smith, Shoshana Bean, Eydie Faye, Laura Richardson, Rebecca Sue Haber, Philip William Brock, Richard Manley, Jesse Bernstein, Jim Bontempo.

MCC THEATER today announced that Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, 'Glee'), Will Rogers (When the Rain Stops Falling), Eddie Kaye Thomas (American Pie, HBO's 'How to Make It in America'), and Rutina Wesley ('True Blood,' The Vertical Hour) will star in the world premiere production of The Submission, by Jeff Talbott, directed by Tony Award-Winner Walter Bobbie (School for Lies, Chicago). Performances of this funny and furiously intelligent new play begin at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) on September 8, 2011 and continue through October 22, 2011. An official opening is set for September 26, 2011.

The Katselas Theatre Company and Rogue Machine present Rogue Machine's production of SMALL ENGINE REPAIR by John Pollono.

New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Artistic Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Associate Director; Jaynie Saunders Tiller, Managing Director), the OBIE Award-winning downtown theater company founded in 1992, will present 'THE GERM PROJECT,' featuring the work of playwrights Kara Lee Corthron (directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni), Lynn Rosen (directed by Shoshana Gold), Kathryn Walat (directed by Portia Krieger), and Anna Ziegler (directed by Beatrice Terry). The four 'germs' of full-length plays of scope and adventure commissioned by New Georges for this project will be presented together, fully produced, in a cohesive and satisfying ninety-minute intermission-less evening. There will be a connective thread to the pieces that will take place with visuals and storytelling. 'THE GERM PROJECT' will be performed at 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street (just south of Rector). Previews will begin on June 11, and the official Opening Night will be Monday, June 20 at 8:00 p.m. Performances will run through July 9.

Throughline Artists (J.J. Kandel and John McCormack, Producing Directors) will present SUMMER SHORTS 5, their fifth annual festival of new American short plays from established and emerging writers, at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street).

In a quiet ceremony, stage and screen veterans Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz were married on June 22.

Size matters, but that doesn't mean that longer plays are better plays. In the abbreviated form, playwrights are free to explore through character, genre, dialogue, and structure in ways that are frowned upon in longer works from a commercial standpoint.

Ed Harris, Bill Pullman, Amy Madigan and Glenne Headly are checking into The Jacksonian, Pulitzer Prize winner Beth Henley's eerie world-premiere set in a seedy motel in Jackson, Mississippi circa 1964. Ed Harris, a four-time Oscar nominee and Broadway vet who recently appeared at the Geffen Playhouse in Wrecks, is Bill Perch, a dentist with ambiguous morality who goes to The Jacksonian to bury his secrets. Estranged from his wife, played by Amy Madigan (Broadway's Streetcar Named Desire and Oscar nominee for Twice in a Life Time), Perch makes his new home in the motel's unsettling world where the subversive becomes commonplace and the passage of time becomes hauntingly unpredictable. As the Perch's lives become intertwined with the inhabitants of the motel - proprietor Fred Weber played by Bill Pullman (most recently seen on Broadway in Oleanna and on-screen in HBO's Too Big to Fail) and bar tender Glenne Headly (most recognizable for her big-screen role in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and recently seen at the Geffen Playhouse in Love, Loss, and What I Wore) - the audience is taken on a surreal trip that is rife with disturbingly dark humor. Helmed by Tony Award winner and Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls, The Jacksonian opens in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse on February 8, 2012.

Following a critically acclaimed season which included the World Premiere of Lynn Nottage's hit comedy, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Second Stage Theatre has announced three of the four mainstage productions in the company's upcoming 33rd season.

Duncan Stewart, Director of Casting at National Artists Management Company since 2007, has joined colleague Benton Whitley to form DUNCAN STEWART AND COMPANY, a New York-based legit casting office.

Theater Breaking Through Barriers presents SOME OF OUR PARTS Seven ten-minute plays about disabilities - and the people affected by them. World-premiere short plays by Neil LaBute, Kate Moira Ryan, Samuel D. Hunter, Diana Son, Bekah Brunstetter, Jeff Tabnick and Emily Chadick Weiss.

Film and stage star Jason Patric has signed on to star as 'Christian Walker' in the FX drama series pilot Powers, based on the award-winning comic and graphic novel series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.

Producers Julian Schlossberg and Letty Aronson have announced that Caroline Aaron, Bill Army, Lisa Emery, Ari Graynor, Steve Guttenberg, Danny Hoch, Julie Kavner, Fred Melamed, Grant Shaud and Marlo Thomas will star in the ensemble cast of the world premiere production of RELATIVELY SPEAKING, three one-act comedies by the prolific writing trio of Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen, and directed by John Turturro.

Theater Breaking Through Barriers presents SOME OF OUR PARTS Seven ten-minute plays about disabilities - and the people affected by them.

MANIPULATION, a world-premiere play by Victoria E. Calderon about one woman's struggle for freedom and self-discovery, begins previews on June 21, prior to an official Off-Broadway press opening on June 28 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) in Manhattan. Will Pomerantz directs.