Juilliard School's Drama Division Announces its 2010-2011 Season

Juilliard's Drama Division presents a series of fully-staged productions during the 2010-2011 season featuring students in their fourth and final year of acting training at Juilliard. This season's plays include Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Israel Hicks, October 20-24; David Auburn's Proof, directed by Harris Yulin, November 11-15; and Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Richard Feldman, December 9-13. Led by James Houghton, Richard Rodgers Director of Drama, the Division also presents two Shakespeare plays in repertory next spring, performed by its 3rd year actors, on a modern designed version of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. The Drama Division also showcases the graduating actors in presentations on both coasts. This season, the Drama Division presents 4th year repertory during the month of February 2011, which cycles three additional plays in rotation. Those plays are: David Mamet's Boston Marriage, directed by Lucie Tiberghien; Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, directed by Stephen McKinley Henderson; and a Shakespeare play (to be announced), directed by Rebecca Guy.

The 2010-2011 season opens with Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Israel Hicks, on Wednesday, October 20; Thursday, October 21, and Friday, October 22, at 8 PM; Saturday, October 23 at 2 and 8 PM; and Sunday, October 24 at 7 PM. This groundbreaking 1959 play tells the story of a South Side Chicago family's friction while reaching for the American dream. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. The play ran for 530 performances and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

Israel Hicks (director) returns to The Juilliard School this season after directing August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 2007. Mr. Hicks studied at Boston University and received his graduate degree from New York University. A longtime director at the Denver Center Theatre Company, his credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, Romeo and Juliet, Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Home. Mr. Hicks is now artistic director of Ebony Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles, as well as the artistic director and chairman of the theater arts program at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts.

The season continues with the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof by David Auburn, directed by Harris Yulin, on Thursday, November 11 and Friday, November 12 at 8 PM; Saturday, November 13 at 2 and 8 PM; Sunday, November 14 at 7 PM; and Monday, November 15 at 8 PM. On the eve of her 25th birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant, but unstable father, a famous mathematician.

Following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions. Proof won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and playwright David Auburn is an alumnus of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program (1994-1995).

Harris Yulin (director) is an acclaimed actor with extensive credits in theater, film, and television. Mr. Yulin made his 1963 off-Broadway acting debut in Next Time I'll Sing for You. His movie work includes the roles of Wild Bill Hickok in the 1971 revisionist Western Doc, Bernstein in the 1983 remake of Scarface, and King Edward in 1996's Looking for Richard, a contemporary spin on Shakespeare's Richard III. Mr. Yulin (who also is a frequent master class teacher for the 3rd year drama students at The Juilliard School) returns this year after directing Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale in 2007.