Bonney Directs Weller's 'Beast' At NYTW 9/15, Marshall-Green Stars

 New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director William Russo have announced that Beast, written by Michael Weller and directed by Jo Bonney, will begin performances Friday, August 29 at 8pm, at NYTW, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery.  Opening night is scheduled for Monday, September 15 at 7pm.  The production will run through Sunday, October 12.

In Beast, a blood-red comic road adventure, two Iraqi War veterans (Logan Marshall-Green and Corey Stoll)—badly mutilated but as fiercely patriotic as ever—make their way home from a military hospital in Germany.  Their marauding adventure across America takes them to Crawford, Texas, where they meet up with their Commander-in-Chief (Larry Pine) and offer a surefire solution to all his problems.

The cast of Beast is Raul Aranas, Jeremy Bobb, Lisa Joyce, Logan Marshall-Green, Larry Pine, Eileen Rivera, and Corey Stoll.

Michael Weller's best known plays are Moonchildren, Fishing, Loose Ends, Spoils of War and What the Night is For.  His films include Hair, Ragtime and Lost Angels.  He was a writer/producer on the television series "Once and Again," recently developed his own series called "Just Like Home," and is developing a pilot called "Nassau County."  He helped establish (and now serves as supervising mentor of) The Mentor Project of the Cherry Lane Theatre.  Weller has won multiple awards, including a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, an N.A.A.C.P. Outstanding Contribution Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, as well as an Academy Award nomination.  He is currently revising the book for Zhivago, a musical based on the novel Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.  This fall, MCC will produce his play Fifty Words.  He is also working on the book for the musical Rumours, featuring the music of Fleetwood Mac.  Weller received his BA in music composition from Brandeis University, and a graduate degree in playwriting from the University of Manchester, England.

Jo Bonney's previous work at NYTW includes Alan Ball's All That I Will Ever Be (NYTW), Will Power's The Seven (Lortel Award for Best Musical; also at La Jolla), and Universes' Slanguage (also at Mark Taper Forum).  Other credits include Naomi Wallace's Fever Chart (Public Theater Lab); Eric Bogosian's subUrbia, Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play, and Lisa Loomer's Living Out (Second Stage); Neil LaButes's Fat Pig (MCC & Geffen Playhouse) and Some Girl(s) (MCC); Caryl Churchill's Top Girls (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Christopher Shinn's On the Mountain (Playwrights Horizons); Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics (Arena Stage); Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July (Signature Theatre, Lortel Award for Best Revival); Jose Rivera's Adoration of the Old Woman (La Jolla) and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (Public Theater); Diana Son's Stop Kiss and Anna Deavere Smith's House Arrest (Public Theater); Jessica Goldberg's Good Thing (The New Group); John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (CSC); Danny Hoch's Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop (USA/Britain); numerous solos and plays by Eric Bogosian (USA/Britain).  Ms. Bonney is the recipient of a 1998 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction and editor of Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Text from the Twentieth Century (TCG).

The scenic design for Beast is by Eugene Lee; costume design is by Colleen Werthmann; lighting design is by David Lander; sound design is by David Van Tieghem; video design is by Tal Yarden; and make-up and effects design is by Nathan Johnson.

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), now celebrating its 26th season, is a leading voice in the world of Off-Broadway and within the theatre community in New York and around the world. NYTW has emerged as a premiere incubator of important new theatre, honoring its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape our lives. In addition, NYTW is known for its innovative adaptations of classic repertory. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village neighborhood, NYTW presents three to five new productions, over 80 readings, and numerous workshop productions, for over 45,000 audience members. Over the past 26 years, NYTW has developed and produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul, Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla, and Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number. The 2002 remounting of Martha Clarke's seminal work Vienna: Lusthaus and subsequent American tour was one of the longest-running productions in NYTW's history.  NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies, and minority artist fellowships. In 1991, NYTW received an OBIE Award for Sustained Achievement and in 2000 was designated to be part of the Leading National Theatres Program by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Lead support for the 2008-2009 Season is provided in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.  Additional support for the production of new plays is from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the Jerome Foundation.

Memberships and SmartPasses are currently on sale for New York Theatre Workshop's 2008-09 season, which also features C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord's The Grand Inquisitor, adapted by Marie-Hélène Estienne from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, featuring Bruce Myers, directed by Peter Brook; and Things of Dry Hours by Naomi Wallace, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson.  For more information on membership packages and NYTW's upcoming season, please visit www.nytw.org.

Beast plays Friday, August 29 through Sunday, October 12, at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery.  The regular performance schedule is Tuesday at 7:00pm, Wednesday through Friday at 8:00pm, Saturday at 3:00pm and 8:00pm, and Sunday at 2:00pm and 7:00pm.  Tickets, which go on sale July 29, are $65 and may be purchased online at www.telecharge.com, 24 hours a day, seven days a week or by phoning Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200.  For exact dates and times of performance, call Telecharge.com.  For more information about Beast, visit www.nytw.org.

Maintaining its commitment to making theatre accessible to all theatergoers, NYTW continues its CheapTix Sundays program in which all tickets for all Sunday evening performances will cost $20. Tickets may be purchased in advance, payable in cash only, and are available in person only at the NYTW Box Office. And for all performances, student tickets cost $20, based on availability, and can be purchased in advance from the NYTW Box Office with valid student identification. The NYTW Box Office is open 1:00pm to 6:00pm, Tuesday through Saturday.

Photo Credit Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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