Classic Stage Company Launches BOOKS ON STAGE Reading Series with Dostoevsky, 11/12

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Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, will present its popular Books On Stage Reading Series, this season featuring stage adaptations of works by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Beginning Monday, November 12 at CSC (136 East 13th Street) at 7 pm, the company presents Crime and Punishment, featuring F. Murray Abraham, Michael Stuhlbarg and Joanne Tucker, directed by Anna Brenner.

On November 19 (at 7 pm), the company will present The Brothers Karamazov, adapted by Jaques Copeau and Croué, with Finn Wittrock, Glenn Fitzgerald, John Christopher Jones, Annika Boras, Joanne Tucker, James Patrick Nelson, Paul Lazar and Anne Troup, among others. And on November 26 (also at 7 pm), the series will conclude with Subject to Fits (an adaptation of The Idiot) by Robert Montgomery, directed by Brian Kulick, with Michael Stuhlbarg.

All readings are presently sold out, but a waiting list will form in person at the Box Office each evening one hour prior for cancellations and standby.

CSC is currently presenting Anton Chekhov’s IVANOV, starring Ethan Hawke, Joely Richardson and Juliet Rylance, directed by Austin Pendleton. Following IVANOV, CSC’s season continues in February with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony Award-winning Best Musical PASSION, featuring beloved musical theatre stars Judy Kuhn and Melissa Errico, and directed by Tony Award-winner John Doyle, who has won acclaim for his revelatory reinterpretations of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Company. Additional casting will be announced in the coming months. (Doyle’s directorial concept for PASSION will not include musical instruments played by actors.)

CSC’s Mainstage season wraps up in May with Bertolt Brecht’s THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE featuring a new score by Tony Award-winning singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening). Directed by Brian Kulick (who directed this past season's sold-out production of Brecht’s Galileo starring F. Murray Abraham at CSC), Brecht’s playful parable calls into question our basic assumptions of right in a world that has gone wrong.

Classic Stage Company is the award-winning theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience. Last season, CSC presented critically-acclaimed productions of The Cherry Orchard with John Turturro and Dianne Wiest, which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival; Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo starring Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham, directed by Brian Kulick; and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Bebe Neuwirth and Christina Ricci, directed by Tony Speciale. Past seasons have included critically-acclaimed productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Rylance and Peter Sarsgaard, directed by Austin Pendleton (Obie Award); David Ives’ The School for Lies with Hamish Linklater (Obie Award), directed by Walter Bobbie; Unnatural Acts, conceived and directed by Tony Speciale; Ostrovsky's The Forest with Dianne Wiest and John Douglas Thompson, directed by Brian Kulick; David Ives’ Venus In Fur with Nina Arianda and Wes Bentley, directed by Walter Bobbie; Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin, directed by Brian Kulick; Chekhov's Uncle Vanya with Denis O'Hare, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, directed by Austin Pendleton; Anne Carson's An Oresteia (International PEN Award for Poetry); Chekhov's The Seagull with Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; David Ives’ New Jerusalem with Richard Easton, directed by Walter Bobbie; Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III with Michael Cumpsty (Obie Award as Hamlet), directed by Brian Kulick; and Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play with Zoe Caldwell, directed by John Turturro.