John Patrick Shanley, Jose Rivera & More Complete Vassar's 2016 Powerhouse Theater Season

Tony, Oscar and Pulitzer Prize-winning scribe John Patrick Shanley will join Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s 2016 Powerhouse Season of new works with his latest comedy The Portuguese Kid. He joins previously announced festival participants Santino Fontana, Josh Radnor, Michael Mayer and John Slattery. Academy Award nominee José Rivera, Alexa Junge and Joanna Murray-Smith will complete the roster.

Shanley's Vassar return with The Portuguese Kid will be part of the Readings Series, which will also feature Stephen Belber’s We Are Among Us, Jocelyn Bioh’s Nollywood Dreams, Dan LeFranc’s Rancho Viejo, Stephen Nathan’s The Ways of Necessity, and Tim Blake Nelson’s Socrates. Debra Messing, Jason Alexander, Andy Karl and Anna Camp participated in a reading of the play at Manhattan Theatre Club in March.

A workshop of Rivera's Another Word for Beauty with music and lyrics by Grammy winner Héctor Buitrago and direction by Steven Cosson will receive its East Coast premiere following an acclaimed world premiere engagement at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. Set during a beauty pageant at Colombia’s notorious Buen Pastor prison, this new musical inspired by true stories is a soulful portrait of women who fight to transcend their dire circumstances.

Two Inside Look workshops will include the new play Fingersmith by Alexa Junge, an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel about a female pickpocket set in squalid and sexy Victorian England, with direction by Bill Rauch; and the return of Joanna Murray-Smith to Powerhouse, with her newest play Fury with direction by Mark Brokaw.

The 32nd annual festival is scheduled to run from June 24 through July 31.