The Atlantic Theater Company have announced the cast for the first production of their 20th Anniversary Season. The New York premiere of Rolin Jones’ new comedy The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, which opens at the Atlantic Theatre on the 19 Sep 2005, following previews from the 31 Oct 2005. This is a limited engagement through to the 15 Oct 2005, not the 16 Oct as originally announced.

Jennifer is just an average girl who re-engineers obsolete missile components for the U.S. Army from her bedroom. Afraid to leave her house, yet desperate to find her birth mother in China, she uses her technological genius to devise a new form of human contact.

The The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow's cast, directed by Jackson Gay, features Michael Cullen, Linda Gehringer, Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Ryan King, Remy Auberjonois and Eunice Wong.

The comedy has scenic design by Takeshi Kata; costume design by Jenny Mannis; lighting design by Tyler Micoleau; sound design by Daniel Baker and original music by Matthew Suttor.

Celebrated young Playwright Rolin Jones received both the American Theatre Critics’ Association Elizabeth Osborne Award for an Emerging Artist and Orange County Weekly’s 2004 Best New Play Award for The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow's. His play The Jammer won the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival Fringe First Award for Best New Writing prior to a New York International Fringe Festival staging. Jones is currently an NEA/TCG playwright-in-residence at Yale Repertory Theatre.

The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow's received its world premiere production at South Coast Repertory Theatre.

In honor of the 20th Anniversary Season, Atlantic will offer the “Theater for The Price of a Movie" $10 theater ticket in an effort to build young audiences and attract first time theatergoers. Beginning August 24, thirty-three seats at every performance will be available to the general public.

(For tickets and more information click here)

Biographies:

ROLIN JONES’ (Playwright) play The Intelligent Design Of Jenny Chow received the 2004 Elizabeth Osborne Award for an Emerging Artist (American Theatre Critic’s Association) and OC Weekly’s 2004 ‘Best New Play’ Award. Productions at South Coast Repertory, Old Globe Theatre and Yale Rep and the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. Upcoming productions: Portland Center Stage and San Jose Rep (in a co-production) and Seattle Public Theater. His full-length plays include Time Of No Reply, The Jammer and Last Of The Chatterbox Wolves.

Jackson Gay (Director). Winner of the 2004/2005 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Production for The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, by Rolin Jones, at Yale Repertory Theater. Agency, by Ken Lin, for the Yale School of Drama. Bertolt Brecht’s Man is Man for NYC Prospect Theater Company. A View from the Bridge for Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center. Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich for Denver Center’s NTC. Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing for Banyan Theater Company. Spring Awakening for NYC Prospect Theater Company (2003 OOBR Award for Best Production). After the Show for the Drama League. Tough, by George Walker, and Maria Irene Fornes’ Molly’s Dream for the Williamstown Theater Festival.

Michael Cullen (Mr. Marcus/Mr. Zhang). New York: Bug (Barrow St.Theatre); Cobb (Lucille Lortel); One Shot, One Kill (Primary Stages); Monster (CSC); Four Beers (Rattlestick Theater) and Bus Stop (Circle in the Square). Regional: Buffalo Studio Arena, Denver Center Theater and The Penguin Rep.

Linda Gehringer (Adele Hartwick/Su Yang) appeared in the original production of Jenny Chow at South Coast Repertory where she also appeared in the world premieres of Richard Greenberg's A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Keith Reddin's But Not for Me, Annie Weisman's Hold Please, Horton Foote's Getting Frankie Married and Afterwards as well as the West Coast premieres of The Retreat from Moscow and Peter Hedges' Good as New. She's played leading roles at The La Jolla Playhouse, The Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Centerstage, Boston's Huntington Theatre, New York Stage & Film, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, among others, and was a company member at The Dallas Theatre Center for seven seasons.

Julienne Hanzelka Kim (Jennifer Marcus) Theatre credits include: Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses on Broadway; David Henry Hwang's Golden Child on Broadway, at The Kennedy Center, A.C.T., Singapore Repertory and Seattle Repertory; The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci at Second Stage; Blood Orange at the Cherry Lane Theater and the Blue Heron Arts Center and Chay Yew's The House of Bernarda Alba for NAATCO.

Ryan King (Todd/Boy). Off-Broadway debut. He recently graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2004, where his favorite productions included Phaedra's Love; Henry IV, Part I; The Skin of Our Teeth, as well as a production of Faust is Dead, by Mark Ravenhill, which he directed. Regional: Three Days of Rain; A Midsummer's Night Dream; Hot 'n' Throbbin'; This Is Our Youth; Sexual Perversity in Chicago; Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella.

Remy Auberjonois (Dr. Yakunin, Preston, Terrence, Colonel Hubbard) appeared in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Jenny Chow. He has appeared in the NY Fringe Festival production of Big Trouble in Little Hazzard as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, a role he portrayed at the Yale Cabaret.  Theater: Hartley in the New York premiere of AR Gurney’s Strictly Academic (Primary Stages), the Public Theater’s Othello and roles at the Houseman Theater, HERE, Soho Rep and the Jose Quintero. He graduated from Yale School of Drama where he received the Herschel Williams Award.

Eunice Wong (Jenny Chow). New York: Faust in Love (Target Margin Theater); Antigone, The House of Bernarda Alba (NAATCO and Pearl Theatre); She Stoops to Conquer (Pearl Theatre); An Infinite Ache (Penguin Rep); The Warrior Sister (La MaMa ETC); Twelfth Night (Blue Heron); Free Market (Working Theater). Regional: The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Studio Theater DC, dir. David Muse); Top Girls (Guthrie Theater); An Infinite Ache (Cincinnati Playhouse, Merrimack Rep); Iphigeneia at Aulis (Yale Rep); A Christmas Carol (Virginia Stage Company); Love's Fire (Berkshire Theater Festival).