OTHER DESERT CITIES to Run 3/6-4/5 at NCTC's Decker Theater

After last season's successful run of the San Francisco Premiere of Jon Robin Baitz' The Paris Letter, New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Baitz' Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Other Desert Cities, directed by Aturo Catricala. In this "witty, deeply enjoyable family drama" (The New York Times) Brooke announces to her prominent Republican parents she is about to publish a memoir on an explosive chapter in the family's history, drawing a line in the Palm Springs sand and daring them all to cross it. As Baitz brings dysfunctional family drama to blazingly witty and gripping new heights, NCTC's intimate Decker Theatre brings the passion, drama, and superbly crafted blow darts of wit closer to the audience than ever.

Other Desert Cities runs March 6 - April 5, 2015 in NCTC's Decker Theater. Opening Night is Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 8pm. Tickets are $25 - $45 and available at nctcsf.org or by calling (415) 861-8972.

Greeted with unanimous praise on its premiere at Lincoln Center Theatre in 2009, Other Desert Cities has gone on to garner raves in productions across the country.

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz's plays include The Paris Letter, The Film Society, The Substance of Fire, The End of the Day, Three Hotels, A Fair Country (Pulitzer Prize finalist 1996), Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Ten Unknowns, as well as a version of Hedda Gabler that appeared on Broadway in 2001. He is the creator of Brothers & Sisters, an acclaimed television series that ran for five seasons on ABC until 2011. Other television work includes PBS' version of Three Hotels, for which he won the Humanitas Prize, and episodes of The West Wing and Alias. He is the author of two screenplays: the film script for The Substance of Fire (1996) and People I Know (2002). Baitz is a founding member of Naked Angels theater company, a professor at Stony Brook Southampton, and Artistic Director of the BFA Theatre program at The New School for Drama.

Director Arturo Catricala has is a frequent collaborator with NCTC, most recently directing Bay Area Premiere of The Homosexuals by Philip Dawkins, the World Premiere of Rights of Passage, as well as productions Master Class, A Perfect Ganesh, and the West Coast Premiere of The Pride. He attended Fordham University at Lincoln Center and NYU School of the Arts where he studied stage directing with Carl Weber of the Berliner Ensemble and Mel Shapiro. Mr. Catricala is a member of SDC, the national labor union representing Stage Directors and Choreographers.

The cast of Other Desert Cities features Paul Collins, Geoffrey Colton, Michaela Greeley, Melissa Keith, and Cheryl Smith.