Dianne Wiest, David Ives & More Set for CSC's 2009-2010 Season

Classic Stage Company (CSC) has announced details for its 2009-2010 season, which will include a new play by David Ives and a production of The Forest starring two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest. CSC is an off-Broadway company that specializes in classics re-imagined for a contemporary audience.

First up is The Age of Iron, an epic retelling of the Trojan War, from the rape of Helen to the sack of Troy. The evening will combine works of two of the most dynamic Elizabethan playwrights, Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida and Thomas Heywood’s Iron Age. Adapted and directed by CSC artistic director Brian Kulick, The Age of Iron will be performed from November 4 through December 13. No casting has been announced.

Playwright David Ives and director Walter Bobbie, the creative team behind CSC’s critically acclaimed production of New Jerusalem, return to the company with Venus in Fur, a new play based on one of literature’s most infamous erotic novels. Described as a behind-the-scenes look at an audition for a play in which the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, and love and hate blur, Venus in Fur will run January 13- February 21, 2010.

Rounding out the mainstage season will be Oscar winner Dianne Wiest starring in Russian writer Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Forest, adapted by Kathleen Tolan. The play is described as a romantic romp, where the most dangerous creatures in the forest are two vagabond actors who crash a nearby estate posing as gentry. Love, lies and laughter ensue as they turn this otherwise orderly manor upside down. The Forest will be performed April 14-May 23, 2010; no director has been named.

Wiest starred in The Seagull at CSC and in the 2008 Broadway revival of All My Sons. She won Oscars for Woody Allen’ s Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway and is nominated for a 2009 Emmy for playing Gabriel Byrne’s psychiatrist on HBO’s In Treatment.

In addition to the mainstage season, CSC’s First Look Festival will feature John Turturro in a series of staged readings of Henry IV, among other plays, on November 16, 23, 30 and December 7. The company’s Open Rehearsal Series will feature Tony winner Mandy Patinkin and other actors exploring Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing on successive Monday evenings from January 18 to February 8, 2010.