Public Theater's APPLE FAMILY PLAYS to be Filmed by WNET

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Patrick Willingham, Executive Director) is proud to announce that the acclaimed THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS: SCENES FROM LIFE IN THE COUNTRY, written and directed by Richard Nelson, will be recorded for television by THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET the week of December 16, following the end of the epic run at The Public Theater on Sunday, December 15. All four plays will be captured for posterity and broadcast at a future date. Fans of THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS can attend a taping of one or all four of the plays by visiting www.publictheater.org.

"The Apple Family Plays are an amazing writing achievement, but they have also been blessed with one of the greatest ensembles New York has seen in recent years," said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. "We are delighted that these exquisite performances will be captured, and honored to be partnering with our great New York sister organization WNET."

Each year since 2010, Tony Award winner Richard Nelson has premiered a new play at The Public Theater about the fictional, liberal Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York. The compelling plays are about family, politics, change, and the way we live today. They resonate with remarkable immediacy and relevance. Each of these plays originally premiered on the night on which it is set. In THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, the Apples reflect on the state of their family and discuss memory, manners and politics as polls close on mid-term election night 2010 and a groundswell of conservative sentiment flips Congress on its head. In SWEET AND SAD, a family brunch stirs up discussions of loss, remembrance and a decade of change. SORRY finds the Apples sorting through family anxieties and confusion on the day of electing the President. And the fourth and final play, REGULAR SINGING, opened on the day it was set, November 22, 2013 - the 50th Anniversary of JFK's assassination that shocked the world.

The cast features Maryann Plunkett (Barbara), Jay O. Sanders (Richard), Laila Robins (Marian), Jon Devries (Benjamin), Stephen Kunken (Tim), and Sally Murphy (Jane).

THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS feature scenic and costume design by Susan Hilferty, lighting design by Jennifer Tipton, and sound design by Scott Lehrer and Will Pickens.

Past Public Theater collaborations with WNET's "Great Performances" include King Lear in 1974 featuring James Earl Jones and Raúl Julia; Samuel Beckett's Happy Days in 1980; and the 1990 production of Hamlet featuring Kevin Kline.

Richard Nelson (Playwright, Director) just opened Regular Singing, the fourth and final play in the tetralogy for The Apple Family Plays: Scenes from Life in the Country at The Public Theater. His additional credits for The Public include Conversations in Tusculum. His other plays include Nikolai and the Others, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Two Shakespearean Actors, Some American Abroad, Madame Melville, New England, Frank's Home, Rodney's Wife, Franny's Way, The General from America, The Vienna Notes, and others. His musicals include James Joyce's The Dead, for which he won a Tony Award; and My Life with Albertine. His films include Hyde Park on Hudson, Ethan Frome, and Sensibility and Sense. He is a recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which has produced ten of his plays.

THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS are directed for television by David Horn and produced by Mitch Owgang.