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Jenni Benzaquen

Press Director

Geffen Playhouse

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jenni@geffenplayhouse.com

GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE KICKS OFF

10-YEAR CAMPAIGN CELEBRATING

AMERICAN THEATER

Geffen’s 2004-2005 Season Starts with Tony Award Winning Take Me Out;

A World Premiere Adaptation of Lerner & Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon;

Tovah Feldshuh in Golda’s Balcony; and Two Pulitzer Prize Winners –

You Can’t Take It With You and the Tony Award Winning I Am My Own Wife

LOS ANGELES, CA – May 6, 2004 – Geffen Playhouse Producing Director Gilbert Cates today announced a landmark 10-year campaign to celebrate American theater. Marking a milestone for Southern California theaters, Geffen Playhouse will dedicate the majority of its season programming for the next 10 seasons to plays that examine the values and ideals of America at various times throughout history. This salute to American theater begins with the Geffen’s 2004-2005 season, which was also announced by Cates today. Geffen Playhouse’s upcoming season begins with the West Coast Premiere of Tony Award winner Take Me Out, followed by a world premiere adaptation of Lerner & Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon, and two Pulitzer Prize winning plays – You Can’t Take It With You and I Am My Own Wife (which also won the 2004 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor). The third play of the Geffen Playhouse season – Tovah Feldshuh in Golda’s Balcony – will be done in a co-presentation with the Wadsworth Theatre. The first season in the Geffen’s decade long pledge to theater made in America will also mark the inauguration of a new theater for Los Angeles – the historic Brentwood Theatre – which will serve as the Geffen’s interim home for an estimated 15 months of renovation and expansion.

“We have a dynamite season lined up the Geffen Playhouse. It’s going to be fantastic! We’ve secured two Tony Award winners fresh off the Great White Way, two Pulitzer Prize winning plays and we’re adapting a classic American musical,” said Cates. “This season is also significant to us as we inaugurate a beautiful new theater for L.A., break ground on and expand our own theater, and as we kick off a 10-year journey to explore American theater.”

Geffen Playhouse 04/05 Season at the Brentwood Theatre

Take Me Out (West Coast Premiere)

Winner, 2003 Tony Award

Finalist, 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

By Richard Greenberg

September 14-October 31, 2004

The Geffen season kicks-off at the Brentwood Theatre with the 2003 Tony Award winner for Best Play Take Me Out. In this critically acclaimed new play by Richard Greenberg, superstar baseball player Darren Lemming makes the matter-of-fact announcement to the public that he is gay. Take Me Out examines the fall-out from his announcement as it ripples through the team, the media, and across the nation. Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director, Randall Arney, will direct this 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama that explores the many layers of identity, whether personal, professional or sexual, as seen through the eyes of a homosexual baseball player in an irrefutably heterosexual sports world. Lauded by critics and fans worldwide, The New York Times called Take Me Out “an unconditional, all-American epiphany that, in these days of fretful ambivalence, is something to cherish.” The Geffen Playhouse production of the West Coast premiere of Take Me Out begins in previews at the Brentwood Theatre on September 14, 2004 and runs through October 24, with press performances beginning September 22, 2004.

Arney, who last directed the Geffen’s production of I Just Stopped By To See The Man, also directed the Geffen productions of God’s Man in Texas and The Weir. He is an ensemble member and former artistic director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (1987-1995), where he directed numerous plays including The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Death and the Maiden and Curse of the Starving Class. Arney also directed the world premiere of Picasso at the Lapin Agile at Steppenwolf, as well as the subsequent Los Angeles, off-Broadway, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Tokyo productions.

“I can’t think of a better way to begin our exploration into American theater than with a play centered on baseball, America’s favorite pastime,” said Arney. “Take Me Out is an incredibly smart, moving and funny story that brings together what may be the most traditional American pastime with very contemporary issues surrounding identity and sexuality.”

Greenberg’s Take Me Out had its world premiere in a co-production arrangement at London’s Donmar Warehouse. The play made its off-Broadway debut at The Public Theater in 2002 and transferred to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre in February 2003. One of America’s most prominent playwrights currently writing for the stage, Greenberg is known for his use of witty dialogue and eloquent characterizations. Greenberg’s other plays include Eastern Standard (1989), Night and Her Stars (1994), Three Days of Rain (1997 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Hurrah at Last (1998), and The Violet Hour (2003).

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Paint Your Wagon (World Premiere Adaptation)

By Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

November 23, 2004-January 9, 2005

Geffen Playhouse Producing Director Gilbert Cates will direct the world premiere adaptation of Lerner & Loewe’s classic musical Paint Your Wagon. American playwright David Rambo will revise this classic American tale set in the midst of the California Gold Rush. The Geffen Playhouse production of Paint Your Wagon is the first revival of the musical and is being presented in association with Christopher Allen, D. Constantine Conte and Larry Spellman. Paint Your Wagon is the story of a grizzled old prospector and his sixteen-year-old daughter who finds gold near their camp. When the word gets out, gold miners descend upon the area and create a boomtown. The Geffen Playhouse production of Paint Your Wagon begins in previews at the Brentwood Theatre on November 23 and runs through January 9, with press performances beginning December 1, 2004.

“I am so thrilled to be directing the revival of this truly American play, set in one of the most exciting eras of this country, the California Gold Rush,” said Cates. “This is also an incredibly unique opportunity for us to work with the estates of Lerner and Loewe and with David Rambo, one of the hottest American playwrights today, in rethinking this classic story about hope and love in America.”

Cates is the recipient of the James A. Dolittle Award for Leadership in Los Angeles Theatre. The Geffen Playhouse production of Collected Stories, which was directed by Cates, received the 1999 Ovation Award for Best Play. Cates served two terms as President of the Directors Guild of America from 1983 to 1987. In 1989, he received the Guild’s Robert B. Aldrich Award for extraordinary service, and in 1991 he received the DGA’s Honorary Life Membership.

The collaborative team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe dominated the Broadway stage and American musical theater from 1947 through to the 1960s. With celebrated musicals including Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, the works of this playwright and lyricist duo continue to premiere on stages all over the world.

Paint Your Wagon made its Broadway debut at the Shubert Theatre in 1951 and ran for 289 performances.

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Tovah Feldshuh in Golda’s Balcony

Winner, 2003 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actress

Winner, 2003 Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance

Written by William Gibson

Directed by Scott Schwartz

February 1-20, 2005

Tovah Feldshuh will recreate her award-winning performance as Golda Meir in Golda’s Balcony when the show moves to Los Angeles in a co-presentation by the Wadsworth Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse. This new play is a portrait of the indomitable Meir, the Milwaukee schoolteacher who became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969. From the pogroms of Russia to the halls of the Knesset, Meir’s life, and the play, encapsulates the dramatic story of the birth of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust, and its subsequent, seemingly endless struggle for peace for much of the 20^th Century. Golda’s Balcony will run for a limited engagement from February 1, 2005 through February 20, 2005 at the Wadsworth Theatre.

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You Can’t Take It With You

Winner, 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

By George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

April 12-May 22, 2005

The Geffen Playhouse celebrates the 100^th birthday of Moss Hart with a revival of the Pulitzer Prize winning play You Can’t Take It With You. Hart co-wrote this American classic with his partner George S. Kaufman. You Can’t Take It With You has been credited for paving the way for the TV sitcom, featuring what may have been Broadway’s first dysfunctional family. A paean to independence and self-indulgence, the play is centered on an eclectic family of individualists, who amuse with their energetic physical antics and inspire with their wholehearted pursuit of happiness. Directed by Christopher Hart, the son of Moss Hart, the Geffen Playhouse production of You Can’t Take It With You begins in previews at the Brentwood Theatre on April 12, 2005 and runs through May 22, with press performances beginning April 20, 2005.

You Can’t Take It With You opened in New York in 1936 to instant critical and popular acclaim. The 1937 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama went on to run for 837 performances on Broadway, followed by two major revivals in 1965 and 1983.

Recognized the world over, as masters of comedic playwriting, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart were incredibly successful collaborators in the 1930s. While each made important contributions to American theater individually, Kaufman and Hart are best known for the successful and influential comedies they wrote together in the 1930s. Other widely successful Kaufman and Hart collaborations included Merrily We Roll Along (1934), I’d Rather Be Right (1937), The Fabulous Invalid (1938), The American Way (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), and George Washington Slept Here (1940).

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Jefferson Mays in I Am My Own Wife

Winner, 2004 Tony Award for Best Play

Winner, 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor

Winner, 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Winner, 2004 Drama League Award for Best Play

Winner, 2004 Drama Desk Award for Best Play

By Doug Wright

June 14-July 10, 2005

Last year, The New York Times praised Doug Wright’s solo show I Am My Own Wife as “the most stirring new work to appear on Broadway this fall.” The Geffen Playhouse production of this 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner will feature the original acclaimed Broadway actor/director team of Jefferson Mays and Moisés Kaufman. Under the direction of Kaufman, The New York Times lauded Mays’s performance of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a soft-spoken but tenaciously gender-bending biological male, as “thoroughly mesmerizing.” Based on a true story, and inspired by interviews conducted by Wright over several years, I Am My Own Wife swept the 2004 Tony Awards and is currently still one of the hottest shows on Broadway. The Geffen Playhouse production of I Am My Own Wife opens on June 14, 2005 at the Wadsworth Theatre.

Doug Wright won an OBIE Award and the Kesselring Award for Best New American Play from the National Arts Club for his play Quills, which premiered at the Geffen Playhouse in 1996. Wright wrote the screenplay adaptation of Quills, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination and the Paul Slevin Award from the Writer’s Guild of America. His other plays include The Stonewater Rapture, Interrogating the Nude, Watbanaland, Buzzsaw Berkeley and Unwrap Your Candy.

OBIE Award winning actor Jefferson Mays originated the role of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in I Am My Own Wife in New York. A seasoned Broadway performer, Mays’s Southern California theater credits include Tartuffe, The Importance of Being Earnest, Fortinbras, Twelfth Night, Life During Wartime, and Macbeth at La Jolla Playhouse; and Hamlet at San Diego Repertory. Mays is the recipient of the Drama Logue Award, the Patte Award and the Garland Award.

Director Moisés Kaufman is the founder and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project. He co-wrote and directed The Laramie Project with Tectonic, which was later nominated for a Drama Desk Award and won the American Library Association GLBT Literature Award. Kaufman directed the film adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO, for which he won numerous accolades and awards including an Emmy nomination for Best Director (the film received four nods total), the National Board of Review Award, Opening Night Selection at Sundance Film Festival, and the Humanities Prize among others.

I Am My Own Wife premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2003 and moved to the Lyceum Theater on Broadway later that year. The Geffen Playhouse production of I Am My Own Wife is being produced in association with Delphi Productions.

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Geffen Playhouse at the Brentwood Theatre

Subscriptions to the 2004-2005 season are currently on sale and may be purchased online at www.geffenplayhouse.com, at the Geffen’s box office located at the Brentwood Theatre, or by calling the box office at (310) 208-5454.

From June 2004 through September 2005, Geffen Playhouse will be located at the historic Brentwood Theatre on the grounds of the Veterans Administration in Brentwood. The Brentwood Theatre is located at 11301 Wilshire Boulevard, building 211. Dependent upon the production, single ticket prices range from $38-$43 in previews, and $40-$64 during the regular run. The performance schedule is Tuesdays—Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays at 8:00 p.m.; Saturdays at 4:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. For ticket information, please call the Geffen Playhouse box office at (310) 208-5454. For group reservations, please call (661) 250-7424. Visit the Geffen Playhouse website at www.geffenplayhouse.com.

Geffen Playhouse is headed by Producing Director Gilbert Cates, Artistic Director Randall Arney and Managing Director Stephen Eich.

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