[June, 2008] Shepherdstown, West Virginia–Acclaimed playwright Steven Dietz will join the Contemporary American Theater Festival this summer for a stage reading of his play Yankee Tavern on Tuesday, July 15 at 7:00 pm. “We are thrilled to welcome back Steven Dietz for our 2008 Festival,” stated Ed Herendeen, CATF Founder and Producing Director. “He is a world class playwright and I know our adventurous audience will enjoy his new play, Yankee Tavern.” This reading will take the place of the previously scheduled Umkovu, as Eisa Davis is still performing in Passing Strange on Broadway. Yankee Tavern is a highly praised dramatic thriller about a young couple and an old codger in a tavern in New York. “As the couple tries to debunk Ray’s outlandish theories, they find themselves caught up in what might be the biggest conspiracy of them all, showing what you don’t know can hurt you,” stated Dietz.
Mr. Dietz’s thirty-plus plays and adaptations have been widely produced in regional theatres since 1983. International productions have been seen in England, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Austria, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina, Peru, Greece, Singapore and South Africa. He received the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for Fiction – produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company; the PEN USA West Award in Drama for Lonely Planet; the Yomuiri Shimbun Award (the Japanese “Tony”) for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel, Silence. Other widely produced plays include Inventing van Gogh, Private Eyes, God’s Country, Halcyon Days, and The Nina Variations (which premiered at CATF in 1996). His latest plays include the Pulitzer-nominated Last of the Boys; the widely-produced baseball adaptation, Honus and Me; and the Edgar Award-winning Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure.
The 2008 CATF season runs from July 9 through August 3 with five adventurous plays in rotating repertory: The Overwhelming by JT Rogers, Pig Farm by Tony Award-winner Greg Kotis, Stick-Fly by Lydia Diamond, A View of the Harbor, a world premiere by Richard Dresser, and WRECKS by Neil LaBute. Group and individual tickets are now available. The Contemporary American Theater Festival prides itself on producing and developing new American theater. Since 1991, CATF has produced 63 new plays, including 23 world premieres. This year, “thinktheater” and “thinkfive” with the Contemporary American Theater Festival … five playwrights, five unique theatrical experiences. For more information, please visit www.catf.org or call 304-876-3473 or 800-999-CATF (2283).