Stephen Dillane-Led FOUR QUARTETS Opens Tonight at Lincoln Center, 12/2

This December, Lincoln Center's Great Performers series will present Tony Award-winning actor Stephen Dillane in two unique performances directed by Katie Mitchell that are based on the relationship between music and literature. Just added to the series, Mr. Dillane performs T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, followed by the Miró Quartet's interpretation of Beethoven's late String Quartet in A minor, Op.132, which originally inspired the poet's timeless texts. Four Quartets, which originated at the Donmar Warehouse in London in January 2009, will be performed December 2 and 3 only at Baryshnikov Arts Center.

The following week, December 9-11 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in John Jay College, Mr. Dillane joins tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Andrew West for the previously-announced U.S. premiere of One Evening, inspired by Samuel Beckett's life-long love of Schubert's music. In a new English translation by Whitbread Award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts, Beckett's text will be interspersed with Schubert's achingly-beautiful song-cycle Winterreise.

Stephen Dillane won a Tony Award in 2000 for his portrayal of Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. He was named Best Actor at the 2009 BAFTA Awards for his work in The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. His theatrical credits include The Real Thing (West End and Broadway); Macbeth (Almeida, L.A., Sydney and Adelaide Festivals); Angels in America (National Theatre); Hamlet (West End); and three plays directed by Katie Mitchell - Uncle Vanya (RSC), Endgame (Donmar), and One Evening. Television credits include HBO's John Adams, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Thomas Jefferson. His films credits include The Hours, Welcome to Sarajevo, and Spy Game.

Katie Mitchell, whom the Guardian Unlimited (London) called "the radical force beating in the heart of the National Theatre," was named Associate Director of the theater company in 2004. Her productions for the National include Strindberg's A Dream Play, Chekov's The Seagull, Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life, and Euripides' Women of Troy. Mitchell has worked in opera and on concert stagings, including a production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion for the Glyndebourne Festival. Her revelatory staging of Virginia Woolf's novel, Waves, by the National Theater of Great Britain at The Duke on 42nd Street-a highlight of last season's New Visions: The Literary Muse-was called "a remarkable, genre-defying work from the National Theater of Great Britain that raises the bar for literary adaptations" by The New York Times. Mitchell made her American directing debut at Lincoln Center when she directed The Royal Court Theatre's productions of Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes, two plays by Harold Pinter, that were part of Lincoln Center Festival 2001's Pinter celebration.

Tickets for Four Quartets, priced at $50, and One Evening, priced at $40 and $60, are available at the Avery Fisher and AlIce Tully Hall box offices; online at LincolnCenter.org; and by phone via CenterCharge, 212-721-6500.

Four Quartets and One Evening are part of Great Performers' New Visions sub-series, which continues to break new ground with innovative productions by artists from diverse disciplines. New Visions begins with the Lincoln Center commission Pictures Reframed, in which pianist Leif Ove Andsnes collaborates with video artist Robin Rhode to re-imagine Musorgsky's monumental Pictures at an Exhibition (AlIce Tully Hall, November 13-14).

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Great Performers is a presentation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. (LCPA), which serves three primary roles: presenter of superb artistic programming, national leader in arts and education, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. As a presenter of more than 400 events annually, LCPA's programs include American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Live From Lincoln Center. In addition, LCPA is leading a series of major capital projects on behalf of the resident organizations across the campus.

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