Westport Country Playhouse to Stage Joan DidionÂ's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, 6/12-30

Westport Country Playhouse will stage the National Book Award-winning memoir, "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, June 12 – 30, featuring noted actress Maureen Anderman as Didion. Directed by Nicholas Martin, the play is based on the author's actual experience rebuilding her life during the year after her spouse's death and her capacity to emerge strengthened from even the most shattering of life's trials.

"With unblinking honesty, Joan Didion faces the truth about existence and loss and the ability to go on," said Mark Lamos, Playhouse artistic director. "It has the word 'thinking' in the title, and I feel that's a directive to the way we are meant to respond to the work. Sharing in its presence, clarity and illumination can prove exhilarating, useful and good."

According to an excerpt from "Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking" which first appeared in the "The Daily Telegraph" in 2008, Didion noted, "I could see right away that writing a play could not be a simple matter of adapting the book: I had written the book, I had no interest in rewriting it, a play would need to go deeper, come from a new perspective, tell me what I did not know when I wrote the book."

Didion's other books include the recently published "Blue Nights," as well as "Play It As It Lays," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and "The White Album." With her husband, John Gregory Dunne, she wrote the screenplays for such films as "The Panic in Needle Park" with Al Pacino, "True Confessions" with Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, "A Star Is Born" with Barbra Streisand and "Up Close & Personal" with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded her its 2005 Gold Medal in nonfiction. She also received the 1996 Edward MacDowell Medal, the 1999 Columbia Journalism Award and the 2002 George Polk Book Award.

Maureen Anderman, who will play Didion, appeared at Westport Country Playhouse in "Later Life" and "After-Play." She just completed a world tour of the Bridge Project's "Richard III" with Kevin Spacey, directed by Sam Mendes. Her numerous Broadway credits include "Driving Miss Daisy," "The Year of Magical Thinking," "Seascape," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "The Lady From Dubuque," "Benefactors," "Social Security," "You Can't Take It With You," "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" (both for Lincoln Center Theater), "The Man Who Came to Dinner," "A History of American Film," and "Moonchildren." Off-Broadway she appeared in "Passion Play," "Later Life," "Ancestral Voices," and "The Waverly Gallery." Regionally, she has worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, The Old Globe, and Guthrie Theater. Ms. Anderman's film and television credits include "Jesus, Maria"; "Final"; "Man, Woman, and Child"; "The Seduction of Joe Tynan"; "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"; "Homicide"; "One Life to Live"; and recurring roles on "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and "The Equalizer." She has been honored with IRNE, Drama Desk, and Tony Award nominations, and has received a Theatre World Award and Connecticut Critics Circle Award. A Weston, Connecticut, resident, she was recently honored for her work in theater with a Westport Arts Award.