Joining Cherry Jones in the new Tina Howe drama, Pride's Crossing, will be Angie Phillips, recently of All My Sons at the Roundabout, and Dylan Baker (La Bete, Eastern Standard). Beginning previews Nov. 6 for a Dec. 7 opening at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, Pride's Crossing is the second show of the Lincoln Center Theater season (after Kevin Kline in Ivanov at the Broadway Vivian Beaumont space).

As he did for San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, where he serves as artistic director, Jack O'Brien directs the Howe drama at the Off-Broadway, Mitzi Newhouse space. Pride's Crossing explores the fictional life of feisty, 91-year-old Mabel Tidings Bigelow, who relives her experiences through flashbacks.

Said O'Brien when he directed the play Jan. 25-March 2 in San Diego, "This play is funny and wise, an allegory of American women during the early 20th century, women who were not given -- particularly by their families -- the awareness that they could be great."

Jones won a Tony for her work in The Heiress and also appeared in The Baltimore Waltz, Paula Vogel's Desdemona, Our Country's Good and Night Of The Iguana.

Also starring in Crossing will be Julia McIlvaine, Casey Biggs, Kandis Chappel and David Lansbury (Hapgood). Designing the show are Ralph Funicello (sets), Robert Morgan (costumes), Jan Hartley (projections), Kenneth Posner (lighting) and Mark Bennett (sound/original music). Howe's previous works include Painting Churches, One Shoe Off, and The Art Of Dining. Vector Theatre Company, a newly formed Bay Area nonprofit theatre, opened its inaugural season Oct. 18 with the San Francisco premiere of Howe's Museum, a comic parody of the post-modern art scene. For an interview with Howe, please see the feature story, "Tina Howe Taking Pride and Visiting Museum."

Lincoln Center Theater, which is run by artistic director Andre Bishop and executive director Bernard Gersten, is hoping 1997-98 will be more commercially successful than the previous season, which saw Craig Lucas' God's Heart and Christopher Durang's Sex And Longing meet with critical disdain and audience disinterest, and Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter receive a disappointingly short Broadway run.