LCT3 Season to Feature New Play Graceland and Musical Play On the Levee

Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 development series will complete its 2009-2010 season with the New York premiere of Graceland, a new play by Ellen Fairey, and the world premiere of the musical play On the Levee, with a score by Todd Almond and book by Marcus Gardley. Graceland will run from May 3 to May 29, 2010, with an opening date of May 17, directed by Henry Wishcamper. On the Levee will run from June 14 to July 10, 2010, with an opening date of June 28, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet. Both productions will be presented at The Duke on 42nd Street.

LCT3’s first production of the season, the world premiere of Ann Marie Healy’s What Once We Felt, is currently in previews, with opening night set for November 9. The limited engagement will continue through November 21 at The Duke, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll.

Graceland is a comedic drama about two estranged siblings who are reunited when they try to make sense of their father’s recent suicide. Fairey’s first play, Girl 20 was named one of the 10 Best Plays of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune and was nominated for two LA Weekly theater awards.

Based on a true story, On the Levee is set in 1927 in Greenville, Mississippi on a levee during an almost forgotten flood. Conceiver/director deBessonet’s productions include a site-specific Don Quixote in collaboration with playwright Lucy Thurber in Philadelphia. Gardley is a playwright-poet who received the 2007 Kesselring Honoree Award. Almond is a composer, lyricist and performer whose musicals include People Like Us and the upcoming We Have Always Lived in the Castle at Yale Rep.

Lincoln Center Theater created LCT3 to offer new artists fully staged productions at affordable ticket prices. Long-term plans for LCT3 call for the creation of a permanent venue to present the work of these artists at a 99-seat theater to be built in or near Lincoln Center.