Marlee Matlin to star in Deaf West's production

Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin is to make her Broadway debut in the upcoming production of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, producers announced.

"It's been 30 years since I had the opportunity to be part of the groundbreaking [film] Children of a Lesser God and I couldn't be more proud and honored to have been asked to join Deaf West Theatre's innovative revival of Spring Awakening on Broadway," Matlin said in a statement.

Spring Awakening, the Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 2007, will play a strictly limited Broadway engagement at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Previews are to begin Sept. 8 and opening night is set for Sept. 27.

Directed by Michael Arden, the show will be performed simultaneously in American Sign Language, and spoken and sung in English by a cast of 27 artists. Deaf West Theatre was last represented on Broadway with the production of Big River in 2003.

Deaf West Theatre's staging of Spring Awakening recently completed an extended, critically-acclaimed engagement at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles where the production was expanded from its original, sold-out run at the Rosenthal Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.