By Adam Hetrick
28 Oct 2009

Todd Almond

The New York premiere of Ellen Fairey's Graceland and the world premiere of the Todd Almond-Marcus Gardley musical play, On the Levee, will complete the LCT3's 2009-10 Off-Broadway season.

Lincoln Center Theater's developmental initiative, LCT3, is presenting Ann Marie Healy's What Once We Felt through Nov. 21 at the Duke on 42nd Street. The new programming for 2010 was announced on Oct. 28.

The first production of the year will be Ellen Fairey's Graceland, May 3-May 29, 2010 (officially opening May 17). The acclaimed Chicago world premiere of the family drama, which concludes Nov. 15, has been extended four-times in a production by Profiles Theatre. Henry Wishcamper (Port Authority) will direct the play, which is described as "a comedic drama about two estranged siblings who are reunited when they try to make sense of their father's recent suicide."

Fairey's play, Girl, 20, was named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune and nominated for two LA Weekly Awards in 2007. She has also penned Tuning in El Paso and Chill Is Good.

In summer 2010, LCT3 will stage the world premiere of On the Levee, featuring a score by Todd Almond and a book by Marcus Gardley. Lear deBessonet, who staged the site-specific Don Quixote with Lucy Thurber in Philadelphia in May 2009, conceived the project, which she will direct. The production will run June 14-July 10, 2010 (officially opening June 28).

Yale Rep commissioned On the Levee, which, according to LCT3, "is based on a true story and is set in 1927 in Greenville, Mississippi on a levee during an almost forgotten flood."

Almond has penned the musicals People Like Us, Girlfriend, Ahraihsak and We Have Always Lived In the Castle for Yale Rep. Gardley is the author of the plays Love is a Dream House in Lorin, dance of the holy ghost, (L)imitations of Life and like sun fallin' in the mouth.

All tickets for LCT3 productions are priced $20. For tickets phone (646) 223-3010 or visit Dukeon42.

Visit LincolnCenterTheater.

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Citing the need to develop strong relationships with new artists and to develop a new audience, and recognizing the frustrations that playwrights have with the current system of readings and workshops, Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of artistic director Andre Bishop and executive producer Bernard Gersten) created LCT3 to offer new artists fully staged productions. Lincoln Center Theater's long term plans for LCT3 call for the creation of a permanent venue to present the work of these artists; to that end a 99-seat theatre will be built in or near Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Paige Evans is the director of LCT3.