Eric Bogosian, Maria Dizzia and More Join Playwrights Horizons' STORIES ON 5 STORIES; Full Cast Announced!

Acclaimed theater company Playwrights Horizons has announced additional performers participating in the return of its popular benefit evening STORIES ON 5 STORIES: Poetic Justice on Monday evening, October 22.

Newly announced cast members include Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Ruined), Pulitzer Prize finalist and 3-time Obie Award winner Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio), Robert Dorfman (The Wax at PH), Victor Williams (A Small Fire at PH, “The King of Queens”), Teresa Yenque (“Ed”), Mary Stout (Cather County at PH), Emily Walton (The Shaggs at PH), Tony nominee Maria Dizzia (The Drunken City at PH, In the Next Room), Adam Rothenberg (The Retributionists at PH) and Marni Nixon (James Joyce’s The Dead at PH).

The line-up of performers also features the previously announced Christine Lahti (the Playwrights Horizons productions of The Heidi Chronicles on Broadway and Hooters, Dr. Kathryn Austin on “Chicago Hope,” Oscar for directing the short Lieberman in Love, Oscar nomination for Best Featured Actress for Swing Shift), Campbell Scott (On the Bum at PH, Longtime Companion, The Atheist), Zachary Booth (Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I and Prayer for My Enemy at PH, the current Keep the Lights On, “Damages”), Drama Desk Award winner Marylouise Burke (The Savannah Disputation at PH, Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, Into the Woods), Kathleen McElfresh (Present Laughter on Broadway, “Royal Pains”), Karl Miller (Completeness at PH) and Richard Thieriot (PH’s Clybourne Park on Broadway).

This year’s event will feature new works by eight artists, including seven of the theater’s alumni writers. The evening will consist of new short plays by Tony Award nominee and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Robin Baitz (The Substance of Fire at Playwrights Horizons), Obie Award winner Neal Bell (Spatter Pattern at PH), Jessica Goldberg (Refuge at PH), Obie Award winner Kirsten Greenidge (Milk Like Sugar at PH), Itamar Moses (Completeness at PH), Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park at PH); and a musical piece by Todd Almond (Melancholy Play at 13P) and Tony Award nominee and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl (Dead Man’s Cell Phone at PH). STORIES ON 5 STORIES will take place at Playwrights Horizons’ home at 416 West 42nd Street, and will benefit the company’s annual programs and productions.

Each play will be performed in a different, unconventional space throughout all five stories of Playwrights Horizons’ home at 416 West 42nd Street, and the entire evening will benefit the company’s developmental programs and productions.

Promotional materials for this year’s event state: “You’re out of order! Still, no one objects to STORIES ON 5 STORIES, Playwrights Horizons’ annual, one-night-only, one-of-a-kind fundraiser. This year, writers explore the notion of Poetic Justice. Join us to see seven new mini-plays by some of America’s finest playwrights.”

The Event Board Chair is Michael Patsalos-Fox. Event Patron Chairs are Sandra and Mitchell Sockett. Event Generation PH Chair is Deborah Grant. Generation PH is a group of young supporters aged 40 and under.

“STORIES ON 5 STORIES is one of our favorite events here at Playwrights Horizons,” said Artistic Director Tim Sanford. “What started in 2004 as a special event to showcase our then-new home has blossomed into an annual celebration of original writing, unconventional staging and community. Patrons and artists alike have grown to love this event not just because it is such a high caliber ‘unique theatrical experience,’ but also because it so manifestly represents who we are as a company.

“Every year, the unusual journey through our back spaces and offices leads our guests to see some of our most cherished New York actors an arm’s length away, as well as hear each writer’s unique take on the same theme. By the end of the evening you have a true appreciation for the depth of imagination of these writers, the generosity and spiritedness of the actors, and the infectious love for theater that animates the whole event.”

The schedule for STORIES ON 5 STORIES will be as follows:

6:00 PM – Pre-show dinner (optional) at Chez Josephine (414 West 42nd Street), attended by some of the evening’s writers as well as Playwrights Horizons senior staff and Board members.

8:00 PM – Event and performances begin.

9:00 PM – After party with participating writers, directors and actors.

All net proceeds from Poetic Justice will benefit the theater company’s 2012/2013 Season activities.

Playwrights Horizons’ season productions are generously supported in part by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.

Currently playing at Playwrights Horizons is the theater company’s acclaimed, sold-out production of DETROIT, a new play by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Lisa D’Amour, directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman and featuring two-time Tony Award winner John Cullum, Darren Pettie, Oscar and two-time Tony Award nominee Amy Ryan, Emmy Award nominee David Schwimmer and Drama Desk nominee Sarah Sokolovic. Following DETROIT, the company’s 2012/2013 season will continue with THE WHALE, the New York premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Samuel D. Hunter, directed by Davis McCallum and featuring Cassie Beck, Reyna de Courcy, Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley, Tasha Lawrence and Cory Michael Smith; THE GREAT GOD PAN, the World Premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog, directed by Carolyn Cantor and featuring Becky Ann Baker, Tony Award nominee Peter Friedman, Sarah Goldberg, Keith Nobbs, Jeremy Strong, Joyce Van Patten and Erin Wilhelmi; THE FLICK, the World Premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Annie Baker, directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold; THE CALL, the World Premiere of a new play by Tanya Barfield, directed by Obie Award winner Leigh Silverman; and FAR FROM HEAVEN, the World Premiere of a new musical featuring a book by Tony Award winner & two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg, music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel, lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie and directed by three-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif, featuring four-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O’Hara. The musical is based on the Focus Features / Vulcan Productions motion picture Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes.

For subscription and ticket information to all Playwrights Horizons productions, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200, Noon to 8 pm daily, or purchase online at the Playwrights Horizons website at www.TicketCentral.com.

THE EVENING’S ARTISTS

Todd Almond is a composer, lyricist and playwright. His musicals include We have Always Lived in the Castle (Yale Repertory Theater), On the Levee(Lincoln Center Theater), Girlfriend (Berkeley Rep), the award-winning People Like Us, Ahraihsak (Theater Mitu) and Kansas City Choir Boy. In addition to having some of the theater world’s top singers perform his music (Sherie Rene Scott, Victoria Clark, Cheyenne Jackson, Jayne Houdyshell, Laura Benanti and more), Almond regularly performs his own material in New York City’s top venues and he recently released a CD of original songs entitled Mexico City. He has been an artist-in-residence at Sundance (both Utah and Ucross, Wyoming), Vassar (with New York Theatre Workshop) and The Orchard Project. He is currently collaborating with Warren Leight and Stafford Arima on a musical adaptation of John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace.

Jon Robin Baitz’s work at Playwrights Horizons includes The Substance of Fire, The End of the Day and Chinese Friends. His other plays include Mizlansky/Zilinsky or “schmucks,” The Film Society, Three Hotels, A Fair Country (Pulitzer Prize finalist), an adaptation of Hedda Gabler, Ten Unknowns, The Paris Letter and Other Desert Cities (Pulitzer Prize finalist; Tony, Drama Desk and Lortel award nominations; Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards). He is a Guggenheim, NEA and American Academy of Arts & Letters Award winner. He is on the faculties of the New School’s Graduate Drama Division and Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Theater and Film Program. His screenplays include The Substance of Fire and People I Know starring Al Pacino, both for Miramax. He created the ABC-TV drama “Brothers & Sisters” in 2006, after writing an episode of “The West Wing” (“The Long Goodbye”).

Neal Bell has been represented at Playwrights Horizons with his plays Spatter Pattern (or, How I Got Away with It), On the Bum, Cold Sweat, Raw Youth, Breaking and Entering and Two Small Bodies. His other plays include Monster and Theresa Raquin (both produced at CSC), Ready for the River, Sleeping Dogs, Ragged Dick and Somewhere in the Pacific. His work has also been produced at Regional theaters across the country, including Berkley Rep, the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse and Actors Theatre of Louisville, where his ten-minute play Out the Window was a co-winner of the 1990 Heideman Award. Mr. Bell has been a playwright-in-residence at the Yale Drama School and has taught playwriting at NYU, Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and the 42nd Street Collective. He was awarded an Obie Award in 1992 for Sustained Achievement in Playwriting.

Jessica Goldberg’s play Refuge premiered at Playwrights Horizons and won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her other plays include Get What You Need (Atlantic Theatre Company), The Schaubuhne, Body Politic, Good Thing, Sex Parasite, The Hologram Theory and Stuck. She was a Tennessee Williams Fellow at The University of the South, a recipient of The Le Compte de Nouy stipend, the first annual Helen Merrill Award and a 2000 Berrilla Kerr Foundation Award. She has been a resident at New River Dramatists, a member of PEN American Center. Her television and screen work includes “The Prince of Motor City” (ABC), “Passing Strange” (HBO), Absent Heart, The Amadou Ly Story, Delirium, Heart of a Soldier and writing and directing the adaptation of her play Refuge. Jessica is a graduate of the Dramatic Writing Program at New York University and The Juilliard School.

Kirsten Greenidge won a 2012 Obie Award for her play Milk Like Sugar (La Jolla Playhouse; Playwrights Horizons/The Women’s Project; Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award). Her other plays include Bossa Nova (Yale Rep; Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award, Tome Warner Award), The Luck of the Irish (Huntington Theatre Company), Rust (Magic Theatre), The Curious Walk of the Salamander, Sans-Culottes in the Promised Land (Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival), 103 Within the Veil and The Gibson Girl (Company One; Moxie Theatre). She has developed her work at Sundance, South Coast Repertory, Madison Rep, Bay Area Playwrights, Playwrights Horizons, New Dramatists, The Mark Taper Forum, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Guthrie Theater, McCarter Theatre Center, Humana Festival of New American Plays, Moxie Theatre and New Georges, among others. She is a member of New Dramatists and Rhombus.

Itamar Moses was represented last season at Playwrights Horizons with his play Completeness. He is also the author of the plays Outrage, Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us, Yellowjackets and Back Back Back. He is presently adapting Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. His work has appeared Off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at Regional theatres across the country and in Canada, and has been published by Faber & Faber, Heinemann Press, Playscripts Inc., Samuel French, Inc. and Vintage. Mr. Moses holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwrights Coalition, Naked Angels Mag 7 and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. His new musical, Nobody Loves You, co-written with Gaby Alter, recently had its World Premiere at The Old Globe.

Bruce Norris is the author of Clybourne Park, which had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons and won the Tony Award for Best Play (2012), the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2011) and London’s Olivier and Evening Standard awards for Best Play (2010). His other plays include The Infidel (2000), Purple Heart (2002), We All Went Down to Amsterdam (2003), The Pain and the Itch (2004, New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2006), The Unmentionables (2006) and A Parallelogram (2010), all of which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago. His newest play, Domesticate, will be produced by Lincoln Center Theatre in 2013. His work has also been seen at Woolly Mammoth Theatre (DC), Lookingglass Theatre (Chicago), Philadelphia Theatre Company and Staatstheatrer Mainz (Germany), among others. He is also the 2009 recipient of the Steinberg Playwright Award.

Sarah Ruhl was previously represented at Playwrights Horizons with Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play). Her other plays include In the Next Room (Tony Award nomination for Best Play, 2010; Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010) The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Melancholy Play; Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Eurydice; Orlando and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have also premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre, The Goodman Theater, Second Stage, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, cornerstone Theatre, Madison Repertory Theatre and the Piven Theater Workshop and have been produced across the country and internationally.

Playwrights Horizons is a writer’s theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American Playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work. Under the leadership of artistic director Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, the theater company continues to encourage the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. In its 42 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, including a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.” Notable productions include five Pulitzer Prize winners – Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award, Best Play), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George – as well as Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar (2012 Obie Award), Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn; Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal; Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution; Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (three 2010 Obie Awards including Best New American Play); Bathsheba Doran’s Kin; Adam Bock’s A Small Fire; Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I; Melissa James Gibson’s This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist); Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie’s Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards); Craig Lucas’s Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play); Adam Rapp’s Kindness; Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting); Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero; David Greenspan’s She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award); Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award); Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead; Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins; William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland; Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You; Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere; Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island; Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire; Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room; A.R. Gurney’s Later Life; Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins; and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.