Kevin Kline, Ed Harris, Brian Dennehy and More Come to the Public in 2006-2007

The Public Theater has announced a starry 2006-07 season. The company's lineup will include Kevin Kline in a yet to be announced William Shakespeare work, Neil LaBute's Wrecks with Ed Harris, Julia Cho's Durango, Emergence-SEE! written and performed by Daniel Beaty, the new musical Passing Strange and Craig Lucas' The Singing Forest. Additionally the company will present Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 Days/365 Plays over the course of the entire year and, in summer 2007, Tony Award winner Brian Dennehy will make his Public Theatre debut in Shakespeare in the Park.

The season will open in the fall with James Lapine directing Kline in a Shakespearean classic. Kline has a long history performing Shakespeare at the Public, taking on lead roles in mountings of Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V and Hamlet twice.

In October, LaBute will direct Harris in the American premiere of Wrecks. In the fall of 2005, Harris appeared in a mounting of Wrecks at the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork, Ireland. It tells the story of one man's unique love for his recently deceased wife.

Durango by Cho best known for writing BFE will have its world premiere in November. It centers on single father Boo-Seng who decides it's time for a family road trip to Durango, Colorado. As he and his two teenage sons get closer to their destination, secrets are revealed that intensify the sons' struggle with growing up in the shadow of their father, who left Korea to pursue the American Dream. Chay Yew directs.

Emergence-See! will have its New York premiere in November. Through slam poetry and song, Beaty portrays a multitude of characters who offer responses to the fictional finding of a slave ship in the Hudson River.

From singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew comes Passing Strange, a musical that takes the audience on a journey across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention. Stew, a popular performer at Joe's Pub, was commissioned by The Public to develop this story of a young black bohemian in search of self and home who charts a course for "the real" through sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Passing Strange is a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre which will being at the Public in January 2007. The show features book and lyrics by Stew, music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald and it is directed and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen.

Lucas' The Singing Forest, directed by Bartlett Sher, will hit the Public in the spring. The play the audience on a passage through time-from today's world of Starbucks, celebrity and therapy to Freud's inner circle in 1930s Vienna and to Paris at the end of WWII. It's the story of three generations of a family whose lives are intertwined despite the secrets that have torn them apart. The show has had major mountings at Seattle's Intiman Theatre and Connecticut's Long Wharf Theatre.

In November 2002, the Pulitzer prize-winning Parks sat down and committed to writing a play a day for the next 365 days and the result is 365 Days/365 Plays. For the 2006-2007 season, the Public will produce the New York premiere of these works by gathering together a cross-section of New York's theater companies to participate in this project. Over the course of one year, the selected theaters will perform these brief snapshots from the imagination of Parks. This will be part of a yearlong national festival of the play cycle that will take place in major cities around the country including Atlanta, Los Angeles and Denver. Tickets for this work will be offered free of charge.

The Public will also back LAByrinth Theater Company for its fourth season of residency. As previously announced, that company's season will include Bob Glaudini's Jack Goes Boating with Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman.