The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles will end its 1999-2000 season with the world premiere of Lee Kalcheim's Defiled, a drama about the dangers of modern technology, May 16-June 18, 2000.

Barnet Kellman (TV's "Murphy Brown") will stage the production, which officially opens May 24.

No cast has been decided for the story of a young librarian whose world is turned upside down when a computer threatens to replace the institution's idiosyncratic card catalogue filing system.

Playwright Lee Kalcheim penned Breakfast with Les and Bess (Broadway, 1985), Friends (Manhattan Theatre Club), Big Men/Small Rooms (Williamstown Theatre Festival), among others. He has written extensively for TV and film, including an Emmy Award winning script for "All in the Family," "The Class of '63" and the series "Something Wilder." Kelman is a theatre and TV director perhaps best known direction of TV series including "Designing Women," "ER," "Mad About You," and the upcoming Mary Tyler Moore-Valerie Harper reunion, "Mary & Rhoda."

The Geffen is currently housing the hit, It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues. -- By Kenneth Jones