GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD WINNER & EMMY AWARD NOMINEE KERI RUSSELL JOINS THREE-TIME EMMY AWARD NOMINE

IN A NEW PRODUCTION DIRECTED BY TONY AWARD WINNER

MICHAEL MAYER

Performances Begin March 2019

In a Broadway Theater to Be Announced

“AN EXQUISITELY ARRANGED TANGO OF LOVE, LUST AND LONELINESS.” – New York Times

(New York, NY) Producer David Binder announces today that Golden Globe Award Winner and Emmy Award Nominee Keri Russell will join three-time Emmy Award nominee Adam Driver in the first revival of Pulitzer Prize Winner Lanford Wilson’s BURN THIS. Directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, BURN THIS will begin performances in March 2019 at a Broadway theater to be announced.

BURN THIS tells the story of four New Yorkers whose lives are uprooted by a young dancer's mysterious death. Set in downtown New York in the raw and gritty 1980s, the combustible drama explores the spiritual and emotional isolation of the dangerous, sexy, raw and demanding Pale (Adam Driver) and the modern dancer Anna (Keri Russell), and their tempestuous relationship after the two iconoclasts are brought together in the wake of a life-changing personal tragedy.

Keri Russell returns to the New York theatre after making her off-Broadway stage debut in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig. She has most recently received her third Emmy nomination as Best Actress for her role as Elizabeth Jennings in FX’s “The Americans,” which just completed its sixth and final season. Upcoming she will appear in Star Wars: Episode IX and in in Antlers directed by Scott Cooper and produced by Guillermo del Toro.

Additional casting and the design team will be announced shortly.

101 Productions, Ltd will be the General Manager.

The original production of BURN THIS premiered Off-Broadway in 1987 starring John Malkovich as Pale and Joan Allen as Anna, before transferring to Broadway in a critically acclaimed, award-winning production.

KERI RUSSELL (Anna Mann). A familiar face to audiences worldwide, Keri Russell has starred in a number of major motion pictures, independent films and television shows. Russell was most recently seen on the critically acclaimed FX series “The Americans”, which completed its six-season run this spring. For the show, Russell received a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, three Emmy nominations, one Golden Globes® nomination, and four Critics’ Choice Award nominations. Upcoming, Russell will be seen on the big screen in Star Wars: Episode IX, which reunites her with director J.J. Abrams, and the Scott Cooper directed, Guillermo Del Toro produced supernatural horror thriller, Antlers. Both films are scheduled to be released in 2019. Russell’s film credits include We Were Soldiers, Mad About Mambo, The Upside Of Anger, Million Impossible III, August Rush, The Girl In The Park, Bedtime Stories, Extraordinary Measures, Goats, Austenland, Dark Skies, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, Free State Of Jones, and of course the romantic film Waitress for which she received rave reviews. Russell first garnered attention when she starred in the title role of the hit television series “Felicity” from J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. Just four months after the show’s acclaimed premiere on the WB, she was honored with a Golden Globe® Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series. Russell’s other television credits include the miniseries “Into the West,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation “The Magic of Ordinary Days,” and “Running Wilde” with Will Arnett. Russell made her New York theatre debut in the off-Broadway production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, in 2005.

ADAM DRIVER (Pale) can currently be seen in theaters in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. He was most recent seen in Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as well as Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. Upcoming films include an Untitled Noah Baumbach feature for Netflix opposite Scarlett Johansson, Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, Scott Burns’ The Torture Report, and Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Driver won the Volpi Cup Award for Best Actor for Hungry Hearts, which premiered at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival. Other recent credits include Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special, and J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens. His other film credits include: While We’re Young, This Is Where I Leave You, Tracks, Inside Llewyn Davis, Lincoln, Frances Ha, and J. Edgar. Driver also starred on HBO’s critically acclaimed series “Girls.” His performance in “Girls” garnered him three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. His Broadway credits include Man and Boy (dir. Maria Aitken), opposite Frank Langella, as well as Mrs. Warren’s Profession (dir. Doug Hughes) opposite Cherry Jones. Off-Broadway, he starred in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (dir. Sam Gold), which earned him the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor. Prior to that, he took the stage as ‘Louis Ironson’ in The Signature’s revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (dir. Michael Greif). In 2008, Driver founded Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit organization dedicated bringing live stage performance to active duty and veteran members of the US Armed Forces and their families. Driver is a Juilliard graduate and is a former Marine who was with 1/1 Weapons Company at Camp Pendleton, CA.

MICHAEL MAYER (Director). Recent work includes: Head Over Heels (Hudson), Chess (Kennedy Center), WarholCapote (ART), Michael Moore’s The Terms of My Surrender (Belasco), and the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s opera Marnie at London’s ENO. Broadway Credits include: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Tony Award, best musical revival, also National Tour), Spring Awakening (Tony Award/Best Musical and Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Director; also London, National Tour, Vienna, Tokyo, and Seoul productions); American Idiot (also co-author, Drama Desk Award for Best Director; also US, UK and Asia tours); Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony Award/Best Musical also London and National Tour), Side Man (Tony Award/Best Play also London and Kennedy Center Productions), A View from the Bridge (Tony Award/Best Revival), Everyday Rapture, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Triumph of Love. Off-Broadway credits include: Love, Love, Love (Roundabout), Brooklynite (Also co-author, Vineyard), Whorl Inside A Loop (with Dick Scanlan, Second Stage), 10 Million Miles (Atlantic). National Tour: Angels in America. London: a record-breaking West End run of Funny Girl and UK tour. Tokyo: As You Like It (Toho Theatre). Film: The Seagull, A Home at the End of the World, and Flicka. Television: Smash (Director/Producer, Season One) and two seasons of Alpha House for Amazon. Opera: a celebrated production of Rigoletto (Met). He serves on the Board of New York Stage and Film. @MichaelMayerDIR.

LANFORD WILSON (1937 – 2011) authored Balm in Gilead, The Rimers of Eldritch, The Gingham Dog, Lemon Skey, Serenading Louie, The Hot L Baltimore, The Mound Builders, Angels Fall, Burn This, Redwood Curtain, Trinity, Fifth of July, Talley & Son, Talley's Folly, Book of Days, Rain Dance, Sympathetic Magic and some 20 one-act plays including Brontosaurus, The Great Nebula in Orion and the paired A Poster of the Cosmos and The Moonshot Tape. For television, he wrote for "Taxi!" (no relation to the series) and "The Migrants," from a story by Tennessee Williams. He also wrote the libretto for Lee Hoiby's opera of Williams' Summer and Smoke and a new translation of Chekov's Three Sisters. Wilson co-founded (with Tanya Berezin, Rob Thirkield and Marshall W. Mason) the Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was a resident playwright there from 1969-1995. Awards include the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in Theatre Arts, The Institute of Arts and Letters Award, The Edward Albee Last Frontier Award, The John Steinbeck Award, The Drama-Logue Award (Los Angeles) for Talley's Folly and Fifth of July, two New York Drama Critic's Circle Awards for Best Play (Talley's Folly and The Hot L Baltimore), two Obie Awards for Best Play (The Hot L Baltimore and The Mound Builders), an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Talley's Folly). He was a member of the Dramatists Guild Council. The theatre community as a whole deeply felt his loss in March 2011 when he passed away at the age of 73.

DAVID BINDER (Producer) is a Tony Award-winning producer whose credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway, and festivals. David has been recently appointed as BAM’s next Artistic Director, where he will succeed Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo in January 2019. This year, David was the Guest Artistic Director of LIFT, the London International Festival of Theatre, which featured artists from around the world including Back to Back, Taylor Mac, Anna Deavere Smith, the National Theatre of Korea and Duke Riley’s Fly by Night, among many others. On Broadway, David produced Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which won four Tony Awards including Best Revival. Hedwig also played a US national tour. He is the original producer of Hedwig, having mounted the original production in 1997. David produced the record-breaking production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, starring James Franco and Chris O’Dowd, which was the first Broadway show to be filmed by NT Live. Other credits include A Raisin in the Sun starring Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad, and Audra McDonald; Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda on Broadway and subsequently in Los Angeles with Center Theatre Group; De La Guarda; and Fuerza Bruta. In New York, David produced the High Line Festival, curated by David Bowie. He also produced the Dutch New Island Festival on New York’s Governors Island, 10 days of site-specific performance, music, theater, and dance from the Netherlands. At the Sydney Opera House, David produced This Is Our Youth with Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin. He has been a teaching fellow at Princeton University and was on the faculty at the Yale School of Drama for six years. David’s TED talk, “The Arts Festival Revolution,” has been seen online by more than a half million people and was chosen by The Guardian as one of the best talks about theater on the web.

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