Maria Tucci will co-star with Cynthia Nixon in Frank Pugliese's Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, which opens the Drama Dept.'s new season on Dec. 2 at the Greenwich House Theatre (opening on Dec. 9).

Tucci has starred in countless stage productions over the years, including, most recently, Donald Margulies' Collected Stories at Manhattan Theatre Club, and Filumena with the Blue Light Theatre Company, in which she played the title role. Feathers marks her Drama Dept. debut.

Nixon, meanwhile, has been seen in more Dept. production than any other company member. Her ensemble credits include Kingdom of Earth, June Moon and As Bees in Honey Drown.

Also in the cast are Paula Garces, Avery Glymph, Robert Hogan, Jeannine Moore and Keith Nobbs (Stupid Kids). Feathers will be directed by Randolph Curtis Rand.

Wendell K. Harrington, widely known and hailed for her projections on Broadway and off, will make her debut as a set designer. The play is about three couples from three generations whose lives intertwine, and it's the first venture in a collaboration between Drama Dept. and Fine Line/New Line Cinema and producer Anne Strickland Squadron.

Feathers will be only the second original play proffered by the company, after Beane's successful As Bees in Honey Drown. The troupe's other mountings have all been carefully chosen and sometimes idiosyncratic revivals, such as As Thousands Cheer and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Rand previously directed the Dept.'s Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both he and Pugliese (Aven `U Boys) are company members.

Feathers will run through Dec. 19 only.

Also featured this season are the new Beane (As Bees in Honey Drown) play, Country Club, and an evening of two one-act plays: The Author's Voice by Richard (Three Days of Rain) Greenberg and Imagining Brad by Peter (Good as New) Hedges.

The two one-acts will play in June at the company's regular space, The Greenwich House Theatre.

Added to next season's roster is the world premiere production of Adam Baum and the Jew Movie by Daniel Goldfarb. Adam Baum takes place in 1946 and is based on an incident involving a failed collaboration between Ring Lardner (a Drama Dept. favorite) and producer Samuel Goldwyn. Twenty-three-year-old Goldfarb, a Julliard playwrighting graduate, will receive his first major production with the show. Goldfarb's play Oedipus Jew, written when he was nineteen, was subject to producer scrutiny last year. Daniel Sullivan (An American Daughter, A Fair Country) is slated to direct.

-- By Robert Simonson