Gilpin, Horton, Houdyshell Set For Roundabout's THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE

Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) is pleased to announce the full company for the upcoming New York premiere of The Language Archive, a new play by Julia Cho, directed by Mark Brokaw. The cast will include Betty Gilpin (Emma), John Horton (Resten), Jayne Houdyshell (Alta), Matt Letscher (George) & Heidi Schreck (Mary).

The Language Archive will begin previews on Friday, September 24th and open officially on Sunday, October 17th, 2010 at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street). This is a limited engagement through Sunday, December 19th, 2010.

The design team includes Neil Patel (Sets), Michael Krass (Costumes), Marc McCullough (Lights) & David van Tieghem (Sound).

The Language Archive is a poignant and quirky comedy that seems to prove love is the one language that can leave us all at a loss for words. George is a man consumed with preserving and documenting the dying languages of far-flung cultures. Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.

Roundabout commissioned The Language Archive, which won the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize awarded to an outstanding new English-language play by a woman. The play had its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California in March 2010, produced by special arrangement with Roundabout and directed by Roundabout Associate Artist Mark Brokaw.

Roundabout Associate Artist Mark Brokaw returns following his recent staging of After Miss Julie & Distracted (2009).

The Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre reflects Roundabout's commitment to produce new works by established and emerging writers as well as revivals of classic plays. This state-of-the-art off-Broadway theatre and education complex is made possible by a major gift from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. The Trust was created in 1986 by Harold Steinberg to promote and advance American Theatre as a vital part of our culture by supporting playwrights, encouraging the development and production of new work, and providing financial assistance to theatre companies across the country. Since its inception, the Trust has awarded over $45 million to more than 100 not-for-profit theatre organizations.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Betty Gilpin (Emma). Theatre credits include That Face (MTC City Center); What is the Cause of Thunder? (Williamstown); Boys Life (Second Stage); Good Boys and True (Second Stage); Top Girls (Fordham Lincoln Center); The Laramie Project (Fordham Lincoln Center); Earth-Leigh Delights (Fordham Lincoln Center); The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (Baruch College). She has also been seen at the Loomis School in Taxi (penned and performed); Wonderful Town; Hamlet; Kiss Me Kate; As You Like It; Cabaret; and West Side Story.

John Horton (Resten). Broadway: A Touch of the Poet, Noises Off; Kiss Me, Kate; Golden Child, London Assurance; The Homecoming; Bedroom Farce; Amadeus; Allegro (Encores!); Spokesong; Lettice and Lovage (national tour); Moby Dick; Photo Finish; Otherwise Engaged. Off-Broadway: Damn Yankees, Engaged, The Stand-In, The Rear Column, Close of Play, A Backer's Audition, After the Prize, Love's Labour's Lost, Engaged. Regional: Racing Demon (Guthrie), Alphabetical Order (Long Wharf), The Recruiting Officer (Long Wharf), Heartbreak House (BTF, Stockbridge). Television: "Law & Order: CI," "NY Undercover," "Liberty," "Benjamin Franklin," "Trinity," "One Life to Live," "George Washington". Film: Shawshank Redemption, Thinner, Donnie Brasco. Mr. Horton has performed, as narrator, in concerts and recordings with Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, Penderecki, Glenn Gould and the Juilliard String Quartet. He has recorded more than 500 titles for the American Foundation for the Blind's Talking Books Program.

Jayne Houdyshell (Alta). Broadway: Bye Bye Birdie at Roundabout; Wicked; Well (2006 Tony Nomination, Theatre World Award Winner 2006). Off-Broadway: The New Century at Lincoln Center Theater (Outer Critics Circle Nominations, Drama League Nomination), The Receptionist at Manhattan Theatre Club (2008 Lucille Lortel Nomination, Drama League Nomination), The Pain and the Itch (2007 Drama League Nomination); Well, Public Theatre (2004 Obie Award and Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel Award Nominations); Much Ado About Nothing, NYSF; Fighting Words, Playwrights Horizons; True Love, Zipper Theater; Attempts on Her Life, Soho Rep. Regional Theater: The Pain and The Itch, Steppenwolf Theatre (2005 Jefferson Award); The Clean House, Wilma Theatre (2005 Barrymore Award), Yale Repertory Theater, McCarter Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Missouri Repertory Theater, Syracuse Stage, GeVa Theatre, Asolo Theater, Studio Arena Theater, Meadow Brook Theater and many others. Film: Everbody's Fine, Garden State, Changing Lanes, Trust The Man, and Things That Hang From Trees. Television: "Unorthodox", "Conviction", "Law & Order", "Law & Order: Criminal Intent", "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Third Watch". Proud Member of Actors Equity Association.

Matt Letscher (George). After attending the University of Michigan, Matt Letscher made his professional debut at Jeff Daniels' Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea, MI, in the Daniels-penned farce, "The Tropical Pickle." This led directly to being cast in Turner Films' Civil War epic, "Gettysburg," after he was seen by director Ron Maxwell. Living in Los Angeles since 1993, Letscher has steadily built an extensive and diverse resume covering screen and stage. Films include Straight-Jacket, Identity, Gods and Generals, Madison, Supersucker, Lovelife, The Mask of Zorro and, most recently, Alan Ball's Nothing is Private, opposite Toni Colette. Television work includes series regular roles on "Good Morning Miami," Fox's "Living in Captivity," CBS' "Almost Perfect" and ABC's "Eli Stone" and starring roles in TNT's "King of Texas," ABC's "The Beach Boys: An America Family" and NBC's "Jackie, Ethel, and Joan: Women of Camelot." Matt recurred in "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and "The West Wing," as well as in "Joey," "NYPD Blue," "Criminal Minds," and most recently on HBO's "Entourage." On stage Letscher has appeared on Broadway in The Rivals at Lincoln Center and Neil Simon's Proposals, and regionally in the world premiere of Lanford Wilson's Raindance, Love's Labors Lost, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, The Sisters, Absolution, On Approval, Tonight at 8:30, What They Have and The Seagull. He has recently been working once again with the Purple Rose Theater, this time as a playwright and director, with the premiere of his farce, Sea of Fools. He most recently performed at the South Coast Repertoire in In the Garden.

Heidi Schreck (Mary). New York theatre credits include Drum of the Waves...(Two-Headed Calf at HERE, 2008 Obie Award); Open House (The Foundry); Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb); Unfold Me (SPF 2007); Women of Trachis (Target Margin); Major Barbara (Two-Headed Calf/La MaMa); The Internationalist (13P at the Culture Project); Circle Mirror Transformation (Sundance Theatre Lab; 2010 Theatre World Award; OBIE and Drama Desk for ensemble); and Demon Baby (Clubbed Thumb). Regional Credits include A Christmas Carol (Actors Theatre of Louisville); The Internationalist (Fairfield Theatre Co., CT); Strange Attractors (Empty Space Theatre, Seattle); The Convention of Cartography (Empty Space Theatre, Seattle); Hedda Gabler and The Seagull (Printer's Devil Theatre, Seattle); As You Like It (Robinson Theatre). Workshops include The Language of Trees (Roundabout Theatre); Origin Story (Sundance Theatre Lab); Macbeth (Soho Rep); The Evildoers (Yale Repertory Theatre); In the Thick (Playwrights Horizons); and The Museum Play (Playwrights Horizons). Film credits include Hedda Gabler and Perfidia.

Julia Cho (Playwright) is the author of The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories, which have been produced at SCR, The Vineyard Theatre, The Public Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, East West Players and The Theatre @ Boston Court among others. An alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Ms. Cho is a member of New Dramatists.

Mark Brokaw (Director). For the Roundabout: After Miss Julie, Distracted, Suddenly Last Summer, The Constant Wife. Other Broadway: Reckless and the musical Cry-Baby. New York premieres include Mouth to Mouth, This is Our Youth (New Group); The Long Christmas Ride Home, Stranger, The Dying Gaul, How I Learned to Drive, (Vineyard Theatre); The Busy World is Hushed and Lobby Hero (Playwrights Horizons); As Bees in Honey Drown (Drama Dept.); The Good Times are Killing Me (Second Stage); Old Money (Lincoln Center); 2.5 Minute Ride (Public). Other work includes Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, La Jolla, Steppenwolf, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, New York Stage & Film, Sundance and the O'Neill Conference. He has also directed at London's Donmar Warehouse and Dublin's Gate Theatre. Mark is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre.

TICKET INFORMATION:
Tickets are available by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212)719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org<http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/> or at the Laura Pels Box Office (111 West 46th Street). To become a Roundabout subscriber visit www.roundabouttheatre.org<http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/> or call Roundabout Ticket Services (212)719-1300. Ticket prices range from $71.00-81.00.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
The Language Archive will play Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30PM with a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinee at 2:00PM.

Roundabout Theatre Company is a not-for-profit theatre dedicated to providing a nurturing artistic home for theatre artists at all stages of their careers where the widest possible audience can experience their work at affordable prices. Roundabout fulfills its mission each season through the revival of classic plays and musicals; development and production of new works by established playwrights and emerging
writers; educational initiatives that enrich the lives of children and adults; and a subscription model and audience outreach programs that cultivate loyal audiences.

Roundabout Theatre Company currently produces at three permanent homes each of which is designed specifically to enhance the needs of the Roundabout's mission. Off-Broadway, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, which houses the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre, with its simple sophisticated design is perfectly suited to showcasing new plays. The grandeur of its Broadway home on 42nd Street, American Airlines Theatre, sets the ideal stage for the classics. Roundabout's Studio 54 provides an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for its musical and special event productions. Together these three distinctive venues serve to enhance the work on each of its stages.

The Language Archive is made possible through a commission by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation's Theatre Visions Fund Award.

Major support for The Language Archive provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

American Airlines is the official airline of Roundabout Theatre Company. Flatotel is the official hotel of Roundabout Theatre Company. Roundabout productions are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State's 62 counties; the New York Department of State; the New York State Department of Education; and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Roundabout Theatre Company's 2010-2011 season features George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession starring Cherry Jones & Sally Hawkins, directed by Doug Hughes; Noël Coward's Brief Encounter, adapted and directed by Emma Rice; Kim Rosenstock's Tigers Be Still, directed by Sam Gold; Julia Cho's The Language Archive, directed by Mark Brokaw; Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, starring and directed by Brian Bedford; Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore starring Olympia Dukakis, directed by Michael Wilson; Anything Goes starring Sutton Foster, directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. Roundabout's sold out production of The 39 Steps made its third transfer to the New World Stages after a successful Broadway run at three Broadway theatres.

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Photo credit: Jennifer Forchell