Kathleen Chalfant, who collected countless awards for her performance as an English professor felled by cancer in last season's hit play Wit, will indeed, as suggested by season brochures, find her next role at Off Broadway's Vineyard Theatre.
The 1999-2000 Vineyard season has now been confirmed and will include Chalfant in Sybille Pearson's large, ensemble-cast show, True History and Real Adventures, directed by Michael Mayer (Side Man), Nov. 17-Jan. 1, 2000.
True/Real is about a Scottish girl who comes to America at the turn of the last century and teams up with some rogue teenagers to find the real Calamity Jane. Pearson previously penned Baby and Phantasie. Music for the production is by Mel Marvin (Fascinating Rhythm).
The season will also include a world premiere of Becky Mode's Fully Committed, the world premiere of Nicky Silver's The Altruists and a special late-night staging in April-May 2000 of Creation of the Humanoids, an stage adaptation of the 1962 cult film.
Vineyard artistic director Douglas Aibel said the season will also include the development of new works by Cornelius Eady (The Running Man) and Craig Lucas (The Dying Gaul, Prelude to a Kiss). At a glance:
• Nicholas Martin (Betty's Summer Vacation) will direct Fully Committed (Sept. 14-Oct. 24), a new play by Becky Mode about an out of work actor dealing with an avalanche of people all trying to secure a reservation for New York's hottest restaurant on a Saturday night. Mark Setlock (Rent) stars; the work is based on his experiences.
• Director David Warren, a frequent collaborator with Nicky Silver on such plays as Fit to Be Tied, The Eros Trilogy, Raised in Captivity and Pterodactyls, will stage The Altruists (Feb. 17-Late March, 2000), which takes aim at familiar Silver targets -- and then some -- including "radicals, do-gooders, leftists, fascism, racism, sexism, agism, gay rights, civil rights, the NEA, the ERA, the NRA, ACT UP and anyone with a social conscience." The play had a reading (with Veanne Cox) at the Drama Dept. in summer 1998.
• Creation of the Humanoids (April-May 2000) is written by Laurence Klavan (Bed & Sofa) and directed by Jeremy Dobrish, artistic director of the Adobe Theatre. The piece is about the social and sexual interaction between humans and robots in Manhattan of the future. The work was commissioned and developed by the Vineyard.
For information on the Vineyard, call (212) 353-3366.
--By Robert Simonson
and Kenneth Jones
