MTC Announces 'After Words: COLLECTED STORIES' Participants

Manhattan Theatre Club is pleased to announce guests for the upcoming session of After Words, the popular discussion panels held after selected Saturday matinees at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street). The latest offering will focus on the Broadway premiere of COLLECTED STORIES by Donald Margulies, directed by Lynne Meadow, starring Linda Lavin and Sarah Paulson.

On Saturday, April 17, After Words will feature Marie Brenner, bestselling author of Apples & Oranges which is currently being adapted for the stage in a Manhattan Theatre Club commission; National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert (Our Kind) and COLLECTED STORIES Pulitzer-prize winning Playwright Donald Margulies.

After Words is part of MTC's continuing effort to deepen and enrich the play-going experience for its audiences. Held after selected Saturday matinees, these panels, featuring writers, cultural critics and journalists, provide provocative and illuminating insights into the political, cultural, and artistic contexts of the work MTC produces.

For more information on After Words, or to download a podcast of past After Words, please visit: www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

BIOGRAPHIES
MARIE BRENNER is an author and writer-at-large at Vanity Fair. Raised in San Antonio, Texas, celebrated author and investigative journalist Marie Brenner has been riveting national audiences since 1985, when she joined the staff of Vanity Fair. Her investigation into Big Tobacco became the basis for the 1999 film The Insider, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe and nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. She is the author of five books, most recently Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found, which Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) is adapting for the stage. She is the winner of six Front Page awards for her journalism and the Frank Luther Mott Kappa Tau Alpha Award for research.

DONALD MARGULIES (Playwright). Plays: Time Stands Still, Brooklyn Boy, Dinner With Friends, Sight Unseen, The Loman Family Picnic, The Model Apartment, What's Wrong With This Picture?, Found a Peanut, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. Honors: Pulitzer Prize, Lucille Lortel Award, two American Theatre Critics Association Best Play Citations, Outer Critics' Circle Award, two L.A. Drama Critics' Awards, two Obies, two Dramatists Guild Hull-WarrinerAwards, five Drama Desk nominations, two Pulitzer Prize finalists. Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters; Cultural Achievement Award, National Foundation for Jewish Culture; Sidney Kingsley Award. Grants: National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Alumnus, New Dramatists. Council member, Dramatists Guild of America. Adjunct professor of English and theatre studies, Yale University.

KATE WALBERT is the author of Our Kind, a National Book Award Finalist for fiction in 2004; The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the 2002 Connecticut Book Award in Fiction, and Where She Went, a collection of linked stories and New York Times notable book. Her new novel, A Short History of Women, was published by Scribner in June 2009. Her plays include Year of the Woman, produced at the Yale Cabaret and the Lanten Theater in Philadelphia; Quiet, She Said; and Elsewhere, which has had readings at Playwrights Horizons and Ars Nova, in New York, and the Marin Theater in Marin, California. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughters.

INFORMATION ON COLLECTED STORIES
COLLECTED STORIES stars Tony Award winner Linda Lavin (The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, The New Century) and Golden Globe nominee Sarah Paulson (Still Life, Killer Joe, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip").

This acclaimed drama from Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies (Time Stands Still, Dinner With Friends) chronicles the relationship between two female writers - a celebrated New York author (Lavin) and her young protégé (Paulson). As their fascinating story evolves, and the line between fact and fiction blurs, the twists and turns of this complex relationship weave a play that's as smart and witty as it is powerful.

Lavin and director Lynne Meadow reunite for this Broadway premiere after working together on MTC's hit production of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.

TICKETING INFORMATION FOR COLLECTED STORIES
Single tickets to COLLECTED STORIES are available via www.Telecharge.com; by telephone at (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250 if outside the NY metro area; and at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre box office (261 West 47th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue).
COLLECTED STORIES tickets range in price from $57.00-$97.00.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Please note COLLECTED STORIES is dark on Monday.
FRIDAY, APRIL 9 - SUNDAY, APRIL 11: Friday and Saturday at 8 PM. Sunday at 2 PM & 7 PM. There will be no Saturday matinee for this first partial week.
MONDAY, APRIL 12 - SUNDAY, MAY 2: Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Saturday at 8 PM, Sunday at 7 PM. Matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2 PM.
MONDAY, MAY 3 - SUNDAY, JUNE 6: Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Saturday at 8 PM. Matinees on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2 PM.