Marsha Mason, Celia Keenan-Bolger to Headline at Playwrights Horizons

Marsha Mason and Celia Keenan-Bolger have signed on to star in productions at Playwrights Horizons next season. Mason will headline the world premiere of Sarah Treem's play A Feminine Ending, directed by Blair Brown at the company's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Performances will begin in October. Keenan-Bolger will star in the world premiere of the new musical Saved, directed by Gary Griffin. The show will be mounted in the Mainstage Theatre in Spring 2008.

Treem's play is the story of aspiring composer Amanda Blue, who's summoned home to answer a distress call from her mother Mason about a marital crisis. The role of the daughter has not yet been cast. Brown, who starred in The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theatre earlier this season, recently directed a workshop of Treem's play at Portland Center Stage.

Mason most recently appeared on Broadway in Steel Magnolias. Other Broadway credits include The Good Doctor, Happy Birthday, Wanda June and The Night of the Iguana. Off-Broadway, Mason has appeared in The Deer Park, The Indian Wants the Bronx, The Vagina Monologues, Love Letters, Old Times, The Big Love and Lake No Bottom. She is a four-time Academy Award nominee for The Goodbye Girl, Cinderella Liberty, Only When I Laugh and Chapter Two.

In Saved which will feature music and lyrics by Michael Friedman and book and lyrics by John Dempsey and Rinne Groff, good girl Mary Keenan-Bolger and her domineering best friend Hilary Faye are starting their senior year at the top of the social food chain at American Eagle Christian High School, until Mary's boyfriend tells her he thinks he's gay. When Jesus appears in a vision, and Mary heeds his message "to do everything she can to help him," her good deeds are met with dire consequences, and Mary is forced to question everything she's ever believed. Through it all, she finds faith in unexpected places and learns what it truly means to be saved. Jena Malone played Mary in the 2004 feature film of Saved.

Keenan-Bolger received a 2005 Tony nomination for her performance as Olive Ostrosky in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a role she is currently reprising in Los Angeles. She recently left the Broadway revival of Les Miserables, where she opened as Eponine. Off-Broadway credits include Little Fish, Kindertransport and Summer of ས. Regionally, she starred in Sweeney Todd, Our Town and The Light in the Piazza.

Playwrights Horizons also announced that Anne Bogart will direct the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, which will be produced in winter/spring 2008 at the company's Mainstage Theatre. Bogart is the artistic director of SITI Company, which she co-founded in 1992, and is the recipient of two Obie Awards.