Bartlett Sher to Direct J.T. Rogers' OSLO Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center Theater will produce OSLO, a new play by J.T. Rogers, directed by Bartlett Sher, beginning performances Thursday, June 16. Commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater, OSLO will open Monday, July 11 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street).

It's 1993. The world watches the impossible: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, standing together in the White House Rose Garden, signing the first ever peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. How were the negotiations kept secret? Why were they held in a castle in the middle of Norway? And who are these mysterious negotiators?

A darkly comic epic, OSLO tells the true but until now untold story of how one young couple, Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband social scientist Terje Rød-Larsen, planned and orchestrated top-secret, high-level meetings between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which culminated in the signing of the historic 1993 Oslo Accords. Featuring dozens of characters and set in locations across the globe, OSLO is both a political thriller and the personal story of a small band of women and men struggling together-and fighting each other-as they seek to change the world.

OSLO will have sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Donald Holder, and sound by Peter John Still. Casting for OSLO will be announced at a later date.

J.T. ROGERS's plays include Blood and Gifts (commissioned and produced by Lincoln Center Theater in 2011, and produced at the National Theatre, London and La Jolla Playhouse); The Overwhelming (National Theatre; UK tour with London's Out of Joint; Roundabout Theatre Company); and Madagascar (Summer Play Festival at the Public Theater; Melbourne Theatre Company). As one of the original playwrights for the Tricycle Theatre of London's production The Great Game: Afghanistan he was nominated for an Olivier Award. His works have been staged throughout the United States and in Germany, Canada, Australia, and Israel, and are published by Faber & Faber and Dramatists Play Service. He is a 2012 Guggenheim fellow in playwriting. Awards include NEA/TCG and NYFA fellowships, the Pinter Review Prize for Drama, and the American Theatre Critics Association's Osborne Award. Rogers is a member of the Dramatists Guild, where he is a founding board member of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and holds an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

BARTLETT SHER is Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater. He last collaborated with J.T. Rogers on the critically acclaimed production of the playwright's Blood and Gifts at LCT. Currently represented by LCT's Tony Award winning production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's THE KING AND I and the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, his other LCT productions include Golden Boy (Tony nomination), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Joe Turner's Come and Gone (Tony nomination), South Pacific (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards), Awake and Sing! (Tony nomination), and The Light in the Piazza (Tony nomination). New York: The Bridges of Madison County (Broadway, also Williamstown); Prayer for My Enemy and The Butterfly Collection (Playwrights Horizons); Cymbeline (Callaway Award, co-produced with the RSC); Waste (Best Play Obie Award); Don Juan and Pericles (Theatre for a New Audience). While Artistic Director of Seattle's Intiman Theatre from 2000 -2009, he directed 20 productions including works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Wilder, Goldoni and Kushner, among others. He is a former Resident Director of the Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater and Associate Artistic Director at Hartford Stage. Opera: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Le Comte Ory, L'Elisir d'Amore, Two Boys, Otello (Metropolitan Opera); Faust (Baden Baden); Romeo et Juliette (Salzburg Festival and La Scala); Mourning Becomes Electra (Seattle Opera and New York City Opera), Two Boys (ENO). Upcoming productions include Adam Guettel's new musical Millions.

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