Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman, Princeton singer and songwriter Sarah Donner, and Princeton University Hodder Fellow A. Rey Pamatmat are among the writers and composers whose work will be featured in McCarter Theatre Lab’s 2012 Fall Festival.

All readings for the festival, which runs from Oct. 29 through Nov. 4, are free and open to the public. Readings will begin at 7 p.m. in McCarter’s Berlind Rehearsal Room. Seating is limited and reservations are encouraged. To reserve seats, call (609) 258-2787.

The festival begins with `In The Writers Voice’ on Oct. 29. Writers and composers, including Norman and Donner, will read and perform excerpts from their works-in-process.

On Nov. 1, the lab will be a reading `The Noise’, a new play by Rachel Bonds, whose works have been developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, La MaMa, The Flea, Playwrights Horizons, and Williamstown Theater Festival. On Friday, Nov. 2, there will be a staged reading of the new McCarter commission `Smart People’, an exploration of the complexities of race, class, friendship and the human brain, written by Lydia Diamond.
The series will continue Nov. 3 with `Pure’, by A. Rey Pamatmat. The play explores the life of British mathematician Alan Turing, who fathered computer science. Pamatmat, is a Truman Capote Literary Fellow and the current Hodder Fellow in Playwriting at Princeton.

The festival will conclude on Nov. 4 with McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann’s newest work, `Hoodwinked’. Inspired by the Ft. Hood shooting and using FBI transcripts and interviews with experts across the spectrum, the new project explores the clash of civilizations and the dangerous repercussions of Radical Islam. This reading will be followed by a post-show discussion moderated by Nadine Strossen, who served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 through 2008 and is currently a professor at New York Law School.

McCarter’s goal is to produce the plays and artists that are introduced through the Lab. This year, McCarter opened its 2012-13 season with the comedy, `Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ by Christopher Durang, which was commissioned by McCarter and developed in the Lab in 2010 and 2011. Since 1990, McCarter has produced more than 50 new plays, musicals, and adaptations from leading and emerging American playwrights, including Edward Albee, Eric Bogosian, Marina Carr, Steven Dietz, John Guare, Danai Gurira, Beth Henley, Tarell McCraney, Will Power, Theresa Rebeck, and Regina Taylor, among many others.