Playwrights Horizons Announces Five Shows for 2011-2012 Season

Playwrights Horizons has announced the first five productions of its 2011-2012 season, which will include one world premiere and four New York premieres. A sixth production and casting for the five announced shows will be announced in the coming months.

The Mainstage Season season will begin with the New York premiere of Itamar Moses’ Completeness, which will be mounted in August 2011, directed by Pam MacKinnon. Described as a meta-comedy, the play centers on a computer scientist and molecular biologist. When Elliot builds a computer program to help Molly with her research project, the variables in their evolving relationship shift as rapidly as the terms of their experiment.

First up at Playwrights Horizons’ smaller Peter Jay Sharp Theater is the New York premiere of Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar, a co-production with the Women’s Project directed by Rebecca Taichman. Sixteen-year-old Annie’s got a choice: honor the pregnancy pact she made with her friends, or find the path to a brighter future. Milk Like Sugar finds savage humor and gritty poetry in one inner-city girl’s struggle to carve out a life beyond the only one she knows.

The second Mainstage production will be the world premiere of Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, directed by Peter DuBois. After grad school, Catherine built a career as a rock-star academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, unfulfilled in polar opposite ways, each woman covets the other’s life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs, the prize being Gwen’s husband.

Also on tap for the Mainstage is the New York premiere of Leslye Headland’s Assistance, directed by Trip Cullman. Described as a high-octane satire, the play centers on young assistants whose lives are an endless series of humiliations at the hands of their hellacious boss, a powerful uber-magnate. In rare moments of calm when the phone calls stop rolling, Nick and Nora and their traumatized co-workers question whether their work will lead to success, or just more work.

Finally, the New York premiere of Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal will be presented in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, directed by Sam Gold. Somewhere in America, in a typical suburban restaurant on a typical night, Sam and Nicole meet. Sparks fly, setting in motion an expansive tale that traverses five generations of a modern family, from first kiss to final goodbye.