Tolan's plays include The Wax and Kate's Diary at Playwrights Horizons. Previews begin April 22, 2005, toward a May 17 opening at the PH Mainstage on West 42nd Street. Wiest is a two-time Academy Award winner ("Hannah and Her Sisters," "Bullets Over Broadway"). Her Broadway credits include Salome, Solitaire, Othello, Beyond Therapy and In the Summer House.

The essay question, "What’s in your memory house?," sparks the play, according to the Playwrights Horizons announcement. "This innocuous question for a college entrance essay prompts a free-spirited 18-year-old to confront her mother (Wiest) about the ethical ramifications of her own international adoption. Unfolding in real time as one woman struggles to bake a pie and another races to meet a rapidly looming postmark deadline, Memory House is a remarkable, wryly funny and utterly recognizable mother-daughter drama that examines the global ties that bind family to state, and state to family."

Additional casting and a complete design team will be announced in the coming weeks.

Currently on the PH Mainstage is the new comedy with music, People Be Heard, about an eventful period in the life of a small-town school board.

For information, visit www.playwrightshorizons.org.