Veteran actress Marian Seldes has joined Tony-winner Cherry Jones in the upcoming Mark Taper Forum production of Ellen McLaughlin's new play, Tongue of a Bird. The play is due to begin previews Jan. 3, 1999 for an opening Jan. 14, 1999. Bird will run through Feb. 7, 1999. Lisa Peterson directs.

Seldes was last seen on the New York stage in Lincoln Center's staging of Chekhov's Ivanov in fall 1997. Seldes won a Drama Desk nomination for her performance as the miserly wife of a drunken landowner. Seldes' other credits included the original U.S. productions of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance and Three Tall Women.

Cherry Jones won acclaim last season in Lincoln Center's staging of Tina Howe's Pride's Crossing. She is expected in New York next season in a Broadway revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Bird is described as "the powerful and poetic story of a search-and rescue pilot who hunts for an abducted girl, while trying to come to terms with the loss of her own mother. . . about one woman's lost child, and another's lost childhood."

The Taper production will be traveling to New York's Public Theatre in March 1999, but not necessarily with the same cast. For information on Tongue of a Bird at the Taper, call (213) 628 2772.