Cale, Gurney and Nelson Onboard for Playwrights Horizons 2006-07 Season

First up in September 2006 is the New York premiere of The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris, which first played at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, where it won the Jefferson Award for Best New Play. With a young daughter in serious need of attention and a ravenous creature possibly prowling the upstairs bedrooms, what begins as an average Thanksgiving for one white urban family unravels into an exposé of disastrous choices and less-than-altruistic motives. Anna D. Shapiro directs in the Mainstage Theater.

Tanya Barfield's Blue Door will premiere in October in the smaller Peter Jay Sharp Theater. When a prominent African-American mathematician in crisis begins to lose his grip on reality, the ghosts of ancestors past shatter the serenity of an insomnia-filled night. Written for two actors, Blue Door is a highly theatrical play about the black American male experience.

The musical Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky is the next show booked for the mainstage space, starting performances in November. With a book and lyrics by David Cale and music by Cale and Jonathan Kreisberg, the show concerns a former country-western star named Floyd Duffner and a 20-year-old beauty who enters his life. A freewheeling musical journey from Montana to Austin with a side trip to Hollywood, Floyd and Clea is a tale of sweet heartbreak, a parable about finding the strength, against all odds, to keep on keepin' on.

Frank's Home, set to start on the mainstage in January 2007, is Richard Nelson's latest, concerning famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Set in the summer of 1923, Frank's Home follows Wright as he heads to California to mend broken relationships with his adult children. Frank's Home is about a man who created a new architectural vocabulary, but couldn't create a home for himself and his family. Tony Award winner Robert Falls directs.

Playwright A.R. Gurney returns to Playwrights for the world premiere of Crazy Mary on the Mainstage in May 2007, directed by Jim Simpson. In an attempt to account for the family inheritance, the scion of a wealthy Buffalo, NY clan and her willful, college-aged son visit their long lost cousin Mary. The catch: Mary is living in an asylum, and has barely spoken in years, forcing mother and son to employ radical ends to get through.