Eight U.S. or World Premieres
from the O’Neill Theater Center
Debut Around the Country this Season

Waterford, CT, December 6, 2002 – Eight U.S. or world premieres, supported through residencies and public readings at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s O’Neill Music Theater Conference (OMTC) and O’Neill Playwrights Conference (OPC), are lighting up theater’s leading stages around the country during the 2002-2003 season. Two earlier O’Neill-developed works will receive Broadway revivals.

The premieres include the following plays and musicals:

RADIANT BABY (OMTC ‘98) is expected at The Joseph Papp Public Theater January 31. Written by Debra Barsha (music & lyrics), Ira Gasman (lyrics) and Stuart Ross (book & lyrics), the musical is based on the 1993 biography of artist Keith Haring, and takes its title from one of Haring’s most famous drawings. Public Theater Artistic Director George C. Wolfe will direct the premiere.

UNTIL WE FIND EACH OTHER (OPC ’02), by Brooke Berman, premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in late October. The tale of three cousins, gifted with psychic talents and seeking their personal and religious identities, in addition to each other, was directed by Anne Shapiro.

THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE (OPC ’99), by Deborah Brevoort, has received recognition from both the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays and the Onassis International Cultural Competition. In LOCKERBIE, a mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Scotland searching for her son’s remains and discovers the Women of Lockerbie, who are fighting to convert an act of hatred into an act of love. Women’s Project & Productions and The New Group in New York City will debut this play in March.

MOONTEL SIX (OPC ’02) by Constance Congdon was a special commission by the American Conservatory Theater and the Royal National Theatre, in a unique collaboration with the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. The short play, written for audience members of all ages, focuses on a colony of genetically altered teens who leave the shelter of an abandoned motel on the moon in search of a home of their own. MOONTEL SIX will premiere at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco this June.

The parallel lives of two mothers and their daughters struggling in West Virginia are explored in OLD WOMAN FLYING (OPC ’01), by Susan Johnston. Slowly, the four women's lives become intertwined and lessons, often painful ones, are learned. OLD WOMAN FLYING opens at the Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Virginia on January 28 and runs through February 2.

AVENUE Q (OMTC ’02), by Robert Lopez (book, music & lyrics), Jeff Marx (book, music & lyrics) and Jeff Whitty (book) takes a playful look at a fictitious neighborhood where singing puppets and their human neighbors tackle some of life’s most vexing issues – including love, money, race, and what to do with a jury summons. The New Group and the Vineyard Theatre join forces for this production February 6 through March 30.

FRAME 312 (OPC ’01) by Keith Reddin takes a Ïwhat-if?Ó look at a former LIFE MAGAZINE secretary who is forced to keep a secret about the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination. The play premiered at the Donmar Warehouse last spring and opened this fall at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta and Houston’s Alley Theatre.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson brings his new play, GEM OF THE OCEAN (OPC ’02), to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre April 18 through May 24. Wilson was a writer-in-residence at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference last summer, and read from GEM OF THE OCEAN during OPC’s annual All-Conference Series; it did not receive a script-in-hand performance. The play, set in 1904, continues Wilson’s 20th Century cycle, and will appear at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum in August, following its Chicago premiere.

This year’s two O’Neill-developed Broadway revivals include:

NINE, the musical adapted from Fellini's classic film 8 á, by Mario Fratti, Maury Yeston, and Arthur Kopit. The musical concerns film director Guido Contini, who is having trouble starting his ninth film, in large part because of difficulties with the women in his life. The Roundabout Theatre Company brings this production, originally on Broadway from March 1982 to February 1984, to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre beginning previews March 11.

Previews for MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM will begin January 17 at the Royale Theatre. Sageworks and Benjamin Mordecai produce the revival of August Wilson's first work to arrive on Broadway, a powerful account of a blues singer and the effect racism has on her life and career. MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM originally ran on Broadway from October 1984 to June 1985 and recently received a production at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Other works developed at The O’Neill and playing across country, in addition to those premiering, include: TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom, based on the book by Mitch Albom, at the Minetta Lane Theatre, opened November 19; KIMBERLY AKIMBO (OPC ’00) by David Lindsay-Abaire at Manhattan Theatre Club, January 14 – March 30; FUDDY MEERS (OPC ’98) by David Lindsay-Abaire at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, September 13 – October 13, 2002; NO NIGGERS, NO JEWS, NO DOGS (OPC ’00) by John Henry Redwood at Detroit Repertory Theatre, January 16 – March 23; GOING TO ST. IVES (OPC ’96) by Lee Blessing at InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, October 18 – November 17, 2002; THE GIG (OMTC ’93) by Douglas J. Cohen, based on the motion picture by Frank D. Gilroy, at Lyric Stage Company of Boston, November 2002 and THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES (OPC ’66) by John Guare at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, October 2002.

In addition to premieres and productions, a recording of DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, a Ïfolk operaÓ by Joe Masteroff (libretto) and Edward Thomas (music) and based on the play by Eugene O’Neill, was recently released by the Naxos Classical label. The cast features Jerry Haley and James Morris singing with the London Symphony Orchestra.

All of these projects were developed in one of The O’Neill’s theater advancement programs prior to their first full production. The O’Neill Playwrights Conference chooses playwrights for a month-long residency at The O’Neill. Surrounded by other writers, directors, designers and actors they undergo a four-day rehearsal process culminating in two staged readings of their work. James Houghton, founder and artistic director of New York’s Signature Theatre Company, is the current artistic director. Lloyd Richards served as artistic director from 1966 through 1999.

Writers, composers and lyricists chosen for the O’Neill Music Theater Conference spend up to three weeks rehearsing their projects and perform them as many as five times throughout the rehearsal process in one of The O’Neill’s four performance spaces. Paulette Haupt has been the artistic director since the Conference began in 1978.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 and based in Waterford CT, is dedicated to the advancement of new work for the theater and creates and operates programs which complement that goal. These include the Puppetry Conference, Playwrights Conference, Critics Institute, Music Theater Conference and the National Theater Institute, a college-accredited training program for theater artists. The O’Neill also owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, childhood home of America’s only Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Eugene O’Neill, and holds an annual celebration honoring the life and works of its namesake every October.