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Jon Robin Baitz's THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE Added to Second Stage Theatre's 35th Anniversary Season

Posted by: Official_Press_Release 01:15 pm EST 01/17/14

Jon Robin Baitz’s
THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE
Directed by Trip Cullman

ADDED TO SECOND STAGE THEATRE’S
35TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON

First New York Staging
Since Original Off-Broadway Production 23 Years Ago

Previews Begin Tuesday, April 22
Opening Monday, May 12

Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) has announced that JON ROBIN BAITZ’s drama, THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE, will be part of the company’s current 35th Anniversary season. Directed by TRIP CULLMAN, THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE will begin preview performances on Tuesday, April 22 and officially open on Monday, May 12. Casting and the full creative team will be announced at a later date.

Acclaimed playwright JON ROBIN BAITZ (Other Desert Cities) made his New York playwriting debut at Second Stage Theatre in 1988 with his play, The Film Society, starring Nathan Lane, Laila Robins, and Daniel Gerroll. His prolific career also includes the plays Three Hotels, A Fair Country, Mizlansy/Zilinsky or “Schmucks,” Ten Unknowns, and The Paris Letter. Director TRIP CULLMAN returns to Second Stage Theatre where he staged the critically lauded productions of Bachelorette; Lonely, I’m Not; Swimming in the Shallows; and Some Men. Other directing credits include Choir Boy, Murder Ballad, Assistance, and The Drunken City, among others.

“One of the highlights of the past 35 years has been the opportunity to introduce promising playwrights to New York audiences and I’m extremely proud to have given Robbie his first New York production back in 1988 with The Film Society,” said Founder and Artistic Director Carole Rothman. “It is a thrill to welcome him back to Second Stage for this 35th Anniversary season and to re-mount one of his most powerful plays in New York for the first time in over two decades.”

From the acclaimed playwright of Other Desert Cities, comes a story of a family bound by a proud past but facing an uncertain future. Isaac Geldhart, the volatile and brilliant patriarch of his family publishing house, is stubbornly holding on to his place at the head of the company while his three children try to convince him to publish a desperately needed best-seller. Faced with a changing literary landscape and potential takeover of the company, the Geldhart children must either come to terms with their father and band together or break apart and forfeit the legacy he risked everything to build. Articulate and blessed with a lifesaving and cutting sense of humor, Isaac fights like a man with nothing to lose.

The original production of The Substance of Fire premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 1991 in a production directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Ron Rifkin and Sarah Jessica Parker. It subsequently transferred to Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theatre and was also made into a 1996 film.

For subscription, group, or single ticket information, please call the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422 or visit the company’s website, www.2ST.com. All performances are staged at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street (just west of Eighth Avenue).

* * * * * *

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

JON ROBIN BAITZ’s (Playwright) plays include Other Desert Cities (Pulitzer Prize Finalist 2012, Tony Nominee, Drama League Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), The Film Society, The End Of The Day, Three Hotels, A Fair Country (Pulitzer Prize finalist 1996), Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Ten Unknowns, and The Paris Letter, as well as a version of Hedda Gabler (Broadway, 2001). He created Brothers & Sisters, the TV series which ran for five seasons. Other TV work includes PBS’s version of Three Hotels, for which he won the Humanitas Award, and episodes of 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). He is a founding member of Naked Angels Theatre Company and is on the faculty of the MFA program at The New School for Drama, where he is Artistic Director of the BFA division. He is also a visiting professor at USC's Master of Professional Writing program.

TRIP CULLMAN’s (Director) New York credits include Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy (MTC), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash’s Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theater), Paul Weitz's Lonely, I'm Not (Second Stage), Leslye Headland’s Assistance (Playwrights Horizons), Adam Bock’s A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nom.), Adam Rapp’s The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick), Headland’s Bachelorette (Second Stage), McNally's Some Men (Second Stage), Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God (The Century Center), Bock’s The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Weitz's Roulette (EST), Jonathan Tolins’s The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center), Bock's Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage), Gina Gionfriddo’s U.S. Drag (stageFARM), and several productions with The Play Company. Select regional: John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (Old Globe), Richard Greenberg’s The Injured Party (South Coast Rep), McNally’s Unusual Acts of Devotion (La Jolla Playhouse), Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation (Bay Street Theater), Bess Wohl’s Touched (Williamstown Theater Festival), McCraney’s Choir Boy (Alliance Theater).

* * * * * *

ABOUT SECOND STAGE THEATRE

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, SECOND STAGE THEATRE produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America’s best contemporary theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman.

The company’s more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 14 Lucille Lortel Awards, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theatre Uptown” series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

SECOND STAGE THEATRE AT THE HELEN HAYES

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street. With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions. Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway. The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city’s Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com


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