Oscar and Tony nominated actor Gary Sinise will play Stanley Kowalski, the avatar of brute force, in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire this season at Steppenwolf theatre in Chicago.

Sinise, who is one of the theatre's founders and a member of the theatre's three-member executive artistic board, was nominated for a 1995 Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Forrest Gump, and for a Best Director of a Play Tony Award as director of Buried Child. Streetcar, which is scheduled for May 4 to June 15, 1997, will mark his first acting assignment at the Steppenwolf since 1988 when he starred as Tom Joad in the adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath that won a Tony Award as Best Play when the production transferred to Broadway.

Terry Kinney is scheduled to direct the revival.

Here is a summary of the rest of the Steppenwolf season:

• Slaughterhouse Five -- World premiere adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel, by Eric Simonson (Sept. 29-Nov. 3).
  
• Mojo -- U.S. premiere of a British play by Jez Butterworth, about the 1950s London rock scene. (Nov. 27-Jan. 19)
  
• Time To Burn -- World premiere of drama by Charles L. Mee in collaboration with avant garde director Tina Landau (Feb. 23-March 30).
  
• John Malkovich will direct a fifth play, title and dates TBA.