World Premieres by David Lindsay-Abaire, Alfred Uhry & Beau Willimon Join The Pitmen Painters at MTC

Manhattan Theatre Club will present world premiere productions of plays by David Lindsay-Abaire, Alfred Uhry and Beau Willimon as part of its 2010-2011 season, along with the previously announced Broadway transfer of Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters. Two additional productions (one on Broadway, one at City Center Stage I) will be announced in the coming weeks.

The fall season at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre begins with the highly anticipated American premiere of The Pitmen Painters, directed by Max Roberts. Previews will begin on September 14, with opening night set for September 30. The play is based on the triumphant true story of a group of British miners who discover a new way to express themselves and unexpectedly become art-world sensations. The entire original London cast, which has been together since the play’s 2007 premiere, will star: Christopher Connel, Michael Hodgson, Ian Kelly, Brian Lonsdale, Lisa McGrillis, Deka Walmsley, David Whitaker and Phillippa Wilson.

The world premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People will be presented on Broadway at the Friedman Theatre beginning on February 8, 2011, with opening night set for March 3, directed by Daniel Sullivan. Cast and creative team members will be announced in the coming weeks.

A Pulitzer Prize winner for Rabbit Hole (directed by Sullivan at MTC), Lindsay-Abaire has set his new play in Southie, a Boston neighborhood where a night on the town means a few rounds of bingo, where this month’s paycheck covers last month’s bills and where Margie Walsh has just been let go from yet another job. Facing eviction and scrambling to catch a break, Margie thinks an old fling who has made it out of Southie might be her ticket to a fresh new start. But is this apparently self-made man secure enough to face his humble beginnings?

MTC’s off-Broadway season at New York City Center Stage I will begin with the world premiere of Alfred Uhry’s Carl’s Sister, directed by company artistic director Lynne Meadow. Dates, casting and creative team members will be announced in the coming weeks.

Based on the memoir Apples and Oranges by Marie Brenner, this latest work by Pulitzer Prize-winner Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) centers on how a medical crisis brings Marie, a liberal investigative journalist in New York, reunites with her brother Carl, a conservative apple grower in Washington state. While Marie abandons her life to help her dying brother, Carl fights her every step of the way.

Also at City Center Stage I, MTC will present the world premiere of Spirit Control, the latest work by Beau Willimon (Farragut North), directed by Doug Hughes. Dates, casting and creative team members will be announced in the coming weeks.

Spirit Control centers on Adam Wyatt, who has the perfect family and a perfect record as an air traffic controller. But when the pilot of a small plane suffers a heart attack, Adam must talk a terrified passenger through an emergency landing. What happens next will link him inextricably to a woman he’s never met, and set the life he once knew irrevocably adrift.

MTC is currently presenting the Broadway premiere of Donald Margulies' Collected Stories at the Friedman and Polly Stenham's That Face at City Center Stage I.