The Harvard-affiliated American Repertory Theater (ART) will maintain its ties to Broadway next spring by presenting Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman's newest work, an ART spokesman said yesterday.

In February and March, the ART will present "Traveler in the Dark," a companion piece to "Night Mother," which premiered at the ART in 1982, won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama last spring, and moved on to Broadway.

"Traveler in the Dark" is "about a brilliant surgeon, whose intelligence is not enough to save him Samuel Carter seems to have it all a beautiful wife, a bright little boy, and a dazzling career but he is a traveler in the dark," Norman said in a statement recently.

The ART received the third draft of the new play this week, and a final version is forthcoming Literary Director E. Marks said yesterday.

"In this play, Marsha is daring to open out a little bit from the tightly-composed crucible atmosphere of "Night Mother," said Marks. "This play takes place outdoors and there are four characters, but the intensity is still there," he added.

"It's productive for the ART and productive for Marsha Norman," Frank Rich' 71, chief drama critic for The New York Times said yesterday, likening the ART's relationship with Norman to other links between prominent American playwrights and established regional theater companies.

"It's a standard practice," he said. "Serious plays are very rarely produced directly for Broadway anymore. Almost every serious writer has a relationship with a non-profit residential theatre that tends to initiate that writer's work," Rich explained.

ART Director Robert S. Brustein was not available for comment yesterday.

Norman, who does not grant interviews, lives in New York with her husband, Dan Byck, who produced "Night Mother" and will produce "Traveler in the Dark."

"Night Mother" director, Tom Moore, set designer Heidi Landesman, and lighting designer James F. Ingalls will also collaborate on the production of "Traveler in the Dark."