Sher to Direct Revival of Wilson's 'JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE' For Lincoln Center in '09

Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, and Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer) has announced today that it will present a new production of August Wilson's award-winning play Joe Turner's Come And Gone, to be directed by Bartlett Sher this spring , while its production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific continues its run at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.  

Previews are scheduled to begin on Thursday, March 19 with an opening night scheduled for Thursday, April 16 at a Broadway theatre to be announced. 

A press statement detailed the news that, "on behalf of the Estate of August Wilson, Constanza Romero, Mr. Wilson's wife, is proud to join with Lincoln Center Theater and fellow Seattle-based artist, Bartlett Sher, in welcoming the Broadway return of what "August always said was his favorite of all his plays, Joe Turner's Come and Gone." 

Joe Turner's Come and Gone, part of Mr. Wilson's ten-play Century Cycle, which depicts the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century, originally opened on Broadway in 1988, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play and won that year's New York Drama Critics Circle Award.  Set in 1911, it tells the story of Herald Loomis who, after serving seven years hard labor, has journeyed North with his young daughter and arrives at a Pittsburgh boarding house filled with memorable characters who aid Herald Loomis in his search for his inner freedom. 

Casting and designers for the production will be announced at a later date. 

August Wilson is the author of such plays as GEM OF THE OCEAN, FENCES, and RADIO GOLD. He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. All of his plays focus on the African-American experience in post World War II America and deal with issues such as racial identity, economic standing, and family drama. In 2005, Wilson died of liver cancer shortly after announcing his diagnosis to a Pittsburgh news source. A theater dedicated in his name on Broadway currently hosts the hit Jersey Boys.

Bartlett Sher (Director) directed the play The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons in 2000. He's represented on Broadway by the current hit Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific, for which he's earned 2008 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards. He also received Tony Award nominations for Awake and Sing! in 2005 and The Light in the Piazza in 2006.  Since 2000, he's been Artistic Director at Intiman Theatre Company, where he's directed Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town; Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, both in new adaptations by Craig Lucas; the world premieres of Prayer for My Enemy and The Singing Forest by Craig Lucas (both also for Long Wharf Theatre); as well as Lucas's The Dying Gaul.  He directed a new production of Cymbeline in 2002, produced by Theatre for a New Audience, which premiered in England as the first American Shakespeare ever performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company and he received the Callaway Award for the production's award-winning Off-Broadway run. He made his opera directing debut in 2006 at the Metropolitan Opera with The Barber of Seville and he'll direct Roméo et Juliette this year for the Salzburg Festival. He'll also direct the world premiere of the new musical Bruce Lee: Journey to the West, slated for Broadway in 2010.  He has just been appointed Resident Director of Lincoln Center Theater.