Public Theater 2011-12 Season to Feature Sam Waterston, David Henry Hwang, Stew and More

The Public Theater has announced the lineup for its upcoming 2011-2012 season. In addition to the previously announced 2011 Shakespeare in the Park productions of All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, the season will feature new works by Mike Daisey, Nathan Englander, David Henry Hwang, Richard Nelson, and Stew and Heidi Rodewald. Sam Waterston will play the title role in King Lear.

Beginning the season is Nelson’s Sweet and Sad, which will run at the Public LAB, September 6–September 25, 2011, with an official opening night on September 11. The second in a series of plays about the Apple family, Sweet and Sad reunites the original cast (Jon DeVries, Shuler Hensley, Maryann Plunkett, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders and J. Smith-Cameron) from last season’s That Hopey Changey Thing for this world premiere.

Solo artist Daisey returns to the Public from October 11–November 13 with The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The hilarious and harrowing tale of pride, beauty, lust and industrial design will be directed by Daisey's longtime collaborator Jean-Michele Gregory.

Three Shakespeare works will be presented in the fall: King Lear, directed by James Macdonald and starring Waterston as Lear, will run from October 18–November 20, 2011. Love’s Labor's Lost, directed by Karin Coonrod, will run from October 18-November 6, and Titus Andronicus, directed by Michael Sexton and starring Jay O. Sanders in the title role, will run from November 29-December 18.

Kicking off 2012, from January 19–February 5, will be Gob Squad's Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good). Devised and performed by the German/British collective Gob Squad, the group invites audiences to take the hand of the King of Pop himself, Andy Warhol, and take a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York City.

In February bestselling author Nathan Englander adapts his moving new play, The Twenty-Seventh Man, from his acclaimed short story of the same name. Barry Edelstein helms this world premiere, which will run from February 21–March 25, 2012. Also in February Public LAB will present The Total Bent, a new musical by Stew and Heidi Rodewald (Passing Strange). Their latest show, about a black gospel prodigy and a white music producer who meet in a recording studio just south of the Twilight Zone, will be directed by Joanna Settle and run from February 14–March 4, 2012.

Tony Award-winner David Henry Hwang with his latest play, Chinglish, directed by his Yellow Face director Leigh Silverman. Chinglish is a funny, sexy portrait of our Pacific Century that reveals what gets lost—and found—in translation. Exact dates have yet to be announced.

Finally February House, the first commission of the Public’s Musical Theater Initiative, will premiere in May/June 2012, with music and lyrics by Gabriel Kahane and book by Seth Bockley. Directed by Davis McCallum, this new musical set in Brooklyn in the 1940s is inspired by true events and features a cast of characters that includes novelist Carson McCullers, composer Benjamin Britten, poet W.H. Auden and Gypsy Rose Lee.