Giant, David Byrne/Fatboy Slim Musical & More Announced for Public Theater’s 2012-13 Season

Michael John LaChiusa’s epic musical adaptation of Giant and a new musical collaboration between The Talking Heads' David Byrne and Fatboy Slim are among the offerings on tap for the the Public Theater’s 2012-13 season.

Kicking off the downtown venue's season will be Wild With Happy, by Tony-nominated actor Colman Domingo. The world premiere will begin on October 9, directed by Robert O’Hara. The play, which follows the journey of a young man named Gil who plans to scatter his mother’s ashes in the place where she was the most happy, will run through November 9.

Next up will be Giant, based on the classic novel by Edna Ferber, with music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa and a book by Sybille Pearson. Tony winner Michael Greif directs the New York premiere, which runs from October 26 through December 2. Giant spans generations in an epic chronicle of Texas. A cattleman and ranch heir and his East Coast sophisticate wife, along with their family, friends and enemies, embrace and confront the joys and sorrows that loom as large as America’s Lone Star State.

Sorry, written and directed by Richard Nelson, will premiere on October 30 and run through November 18, with opening night set for November 9. Sorry is the third in Nelson’s trio of Apple family plays, following That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad. Original cast members Jon DeVries, Maryann Plunkett, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders, and J. Smith-Cameron return to the Public stage, as the Apple family again shares a meal in Rhinebeck, NY where they sort through personal and political feelings of loss and confusion on the morning of election day.

Nathan Englander’s The Twenty-Seventh Man, directed by Barry Edelstein, will run from November 7 through December 9. Englander adapts this new play from his acclaimed short story of the same name. Set in a Soviet prison in 1952, Stalin's secret police have rounded up twenty-six writers, the giants of Yiddish literature in Russia. As judgment looms, a twenty-seventh suddenly appears.

The Public Lab Production of Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit 67 will run from February 26, 2013 through March 17, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The show will be followed by the English language premiere of Neva, written and directed by Guillermo Calderon, with a translation by Andrea Thome. Neva will run from March 1 through March 31.

April will feature the world premiere of the new musical Here Lies Love, with concept and lyrics by David Byrne, music by Byrne and Fatboy Slim, and directed by Alex Timbers. The show, set within a throbbing dance club environment, will deconstruct the meteoric rise of Filipina First Lady Imelda Marcos and her subsequent descent into infamy. The show begins on April 2 and runs until May 5.

Old Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance), written, directed, and designed by avant-garde theater maker Richard Foreman, will run from April 30 through June 2, 2013. The show is described as “snapshots from an enigmatic fairy-tale in which Suzie, the elusive coquette, brings Samuel to his knees—from where he worships a life he only half understands.”