Artistic directors Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey and William Cantler, and executive director Blake West, announced their 2011-12 season, the company's 26th consecutive season producing and developing new work, on May 31.

Fans of the Stephen King novel and its film incarnation, as well as the short-lived Broadway musical version, will be eager to see how a new creative team reshapes Carrie, a famous Broadway flop from 1988.

Carrie performances begin at the intimate Lucille Lortel Theatre, MCC's home, Jan. 31, 2012. The musical's original creative team of librettist Lawrence D. Cohen (the film's screenwriter), Academy Award-winning composer Michael Gore ("Fame") and Oscar-winning lyricist Dean Pitchford ("Fame") are teaming with director Stafford Arima (London's Ragtime, Off-Broadway's Altar Boyz), music director/arranger Mary-Mitchell Campbell (Broadway's Company), choreographer Matt Williams, orchestrator Doug Besterman and vocal designer AnnMarie Milazzo.

	Molly Ranson

According to MCC, "Carrie White is a misfit. At school, she's an outcast who's bullied by the popular crowd, and virtually invisible to everyone else. At home, she's at the mercy of her loving but cruelly over-protective mother. But Carrie's just discovered she's got a special power, and if pushed too far, she's not afraid to use it…"

This production is billed as "a newly reworked and fully re-imagined vision of this gripping tale," set in present day Maine.

Mazzie is the Tony Award-nominated actress known for Passion, Ragtime, Next to Normal and Kiss Me, Kate. Ranson's Broadway credits include Jerusalem and August: Osage County.

The 2011-12 MCC season will launch Sept. 8-Oct. 16 with the previously announced winner of the first Laurents/Hatcher Playwriting Award, The Submission, the details of which are now coming to light.

	Jeff Talbott
	photo by Stephen Kunken

Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie (Chicago, New Jerusalem, The School for Lies, Venus in Fur) will direct the dark comedy about a young American playwright who hatches a desperate scheme to get his play noticed. Here's how MCC bills the play: "Shaleeha G'ntamobi's stirring new play about an alcoholic black mother and her card sharp son trying to get out of the projects has just been accepted into the nation's preeminent theatre festival. Trouble is, Shaleeha G'ntamobi doesn't exist, except in the imagination of wannabe-playwright Danny Larsen, who created her as a kind of affirmative-action nom-de-plume. But a nom-de-guerre may prove more useful as the lies pile up, shaky alliances are forged, and everyone dear to Danny must decide whether or not to run for cover as the whole thing threatens to blow up in his lily-white face."

New York-based actor-playwright Talbott makes his playwriting debut with The Submission, which was unanimously embraced by the committee selecting the Laurents/Hatcher Award, endowed by Arthur Laurents and named for Laurents and his late partner Tom Hatcher. Laurents (Gypsy, West Side Story, "The Way We Were") presented Talbott with the prize of $50,000 (plus $100,000 to MCC) earlier this year. Laurents died weeks later at the age of 93.

MCC calls the play "funny and furiously intelligent."

Wild Animals You Should Know by Thomas Higgins, will play Nov. 3-Dec. 11 under the direction of Trip Cullman (Off-Broadway's A Small Fire, Bachelorette). In Wild Animals, according to MCC, "Matthew and Jacob are an unlikely pair of friends. Matthew is a soccer star, full of brio and teenage swagger. Jacob is, well, not. Beneath the surface, though, the two are locked in an innocently erotic game of cat and mouse. When Matthew's reluctant father, Walter, is wrangled into chaperoning the boys' trip to a wilderness scout camp, he finds himself drawn into their adolescent game. But Matthew has secretly decided just how far he's willing to go for his final act of scouting and everyone might do well to heed the scout's motto: Be Prepared."

All performances will take place at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, in Manhattan.

For MCC season subscription information, visit www.mcctheater.org.

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MCC Theater is committed to presenting New York and world premieres each season. When MCC Theater was founded in 1986, its mission was to bring new theatrical voices to theatregoing audiences. Notable MCC Theater highlights include the 2008 Tony Award-nominated reasons to be pretty by Neil LaBute, last season's The Pride, Fifty Words, the 2004 Tony-winning production of Bryony Lavery's Frozen; Neil LaBute's Fat Pig; Rebecca Gilman's The Glory of Living; Marsha Norman's Trudy Blue; Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit; Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone and Alan Bowne's Beirut.