New Works From Duncan Sheik, Stephen Trask & More Set for Vassar's 2015 Powerhouse Season

We know where we want to be this summer! New works from Spring Awakening’s Duncan Sheik, Hedwig’s Stephen Trask, 2015 Tony nominee Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced) and more are slated for Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s 2015 Powerhouse Season. The event will run June 26 through August 2 at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Casting will be announced later.

Noir, with music by Sheik, book by Kyle Jarrow, and lyrics by Jarrow and Sheik, will receive a musical theater workshop. Helmed by Rachel Chavkin, the tuner follows a heartbroken man who never leaves his apartment and is consoled only by the music on the radio. Through the thin walls, he hears almost every word of the couple next door—and before long, his eavesdropping becomes an obsession. Soon he finds himself drawn into a web of lust, lies, deceit and danger. Sheik is also currently working on the Broadway-aimed American Psycho.

Meanwhile, Junk by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Doug Hughes, is set for the Reading Festival #1, which takes place June 26 through June 28. Also tapped for the Reading Festival #1's lineup is Stephen Trask & Peter Yanowitz's 15 Minutes, which will have a book by Rick Elice and direction by Trip Cullman.

First up on the mainstage will be Keith Bunin’s The Unbuilt City, which will run July 1 through July 12. Directed by Sean Mathias, the show is set on a cold afternoon in February. Jonah knocks on the door of a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. He’s come to persuade Claudia to sell her famously secret art collection to a university archive. Instead she turns the tables and reveals to him a series of mysteries about the nature of love, legacy and the untold history of the city.

Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen’s The Light Years will follow on the Main Stage, playing July 23 through August 2. Developed and directed by Oliver Butler and made by The Debate Society, the production is a haunted love story spanning 40 years. Set at the Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1933, The Light Years revolves around Steele MacKaye, a forgotten visionary theatrical impresario commissioned to design and build the Spectatorium, a 12,000 seat theater at the 1893 fair.

Other notable presentations include a musical workshop of Michael John LaChiusa’s Rain, which will be directed by Barry Edelstein and is based on the short story by Somerset Maugham, and a reading of the new play White Noise, White Light by Nicky Silver.