SoHo Rep, the Obie Award-winning Off-Off Broadway company, named director Daniel Aukin as the new artistic director for the theatre. The company also announced the start of their 1999 season.

Aukin has directed Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway since 1994. The former artistic director of Austin's Physical Plant, Aukin produced SoHo Rep's Summer Camp 4 in 1998 and was produced in workshop at Summer Camp 3 with his play, Saucy Paper. A former resident director at The Bat Theatre, Aukin most recently directed a revival of Maria Irene Fornes' Molly's Dream.

SoHo Rep was founded in 1974. Past playwrights and actors with the theatre company have included Mac Wellman, Len Jenkin, Kevin Spacey, Kathleen Turner and Steve Buscemi.

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First in the 1999 SoHo Rep season will be Richard Maxwell and Jim Strahs' Cowboys and Indians running March 11-April 11. Based on the real life journey of Francis Parkman and a party of settlers along the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800's, Cowboys is a part historical, part fictional trip into America's past. Maxwell has been produced at Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and wrote House, recently performed at P.S. 122. In May, SoHo Rep will run two co-productions, Alice's Evidence and The Escapist, in repertory through June 6. Sweet Jane Productions' Alice's Evidence debuted at the 1998 New York International Fringe Festival. The Escapist is the latest piece from Brooklyn's The Flying Machine.

For further information on SoHo Rep, call (212) 334-0962 or visit their website at http://www.sohorep.org.

-- By Christine Ehren