Joe Mantello to Direct MTC's Blackbird Off-Broadway

Joe Mantello has been tapped to direct the Manhattan Theatre Club production of David Harrower's Blackbird at City Center Stage I. The show is scheduled to begin performances on March 15, 2007.

Mantello, currently represented on the Great White Way by Wicked, The Odd Couple and Three Days of Rain, has not directed anything off-Broadway since 2002's A Man of No Importance. His previous MTC directing credits are Love! Valour! Compassion! which transferred from off-Broadway to Broadway and earned Mantello his first Tony Award nomination for direction Blue Window, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks and Corpus Christi. Mantello, who started his career as an actor, received Tony Awards for directing the play Take Me Out and the musical Assassins.

Blackbird centers on two people who had a relationship and meet 15 years after its completion. Ray has made a new life for himself; he has a new identity and didn't think he could be found. Una has thought of nothing else, and on finding a photo of Ray sets out to find him—with shattering consequences.

Blackbird is scheduled to officially open off-Broadway on April 10, 2007.