Austin Playhouse Presents OTHER DESERT CITIES, Beginning 1/25

Austin Playhouse will bring Austin audiences Baitz' powerful family drama. In the award-winning Other Desert Cities, Baitz brings us an emotionally charged play about a family coming to terms with long-held secrets.

Brooke Wyeth (Lara Toner) returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence and a mental breakdown to celebrate Christmas with her parents (Babs George and Rick Roemer), her brother (Jacob Trussell), and her aunt (Bernadette Nason). Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history-a wound they don't want reopened. In effect, she draws a line in the sand and dares them all to cross it.

The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 to critical acclaim and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play. The play was named Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Jon Robin Baitz's plays include My Beautiful Goddamn City, Ten Unknowns, The Paris Letter, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks, A Fair Country, The Substance of Fire, and an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. His television credits include The West Wing, Alias, and Brothers and Sisters, which he created.