Featured in the cast, directed by Jerry Ruiz, are Heidi Armbruster, Rob Breckenridge, Peter Cormican, Bradford Cover, Curzon Dobell, David Graham Jones, Thomas Matthew Kelley, Ned Noyes, Jay Patterson, Angela Pierce, and Margot White.

Love Goes To Press is a sharp-tongued comedy about women war correspondents that had them rolling in the aisles in London in 1946.  The play paints a delicious portrait of two smart, funny, brave, ambitious and complex women—working just miles from the front lines (as Cowles and Gellhorn did), surrounded by less competent, less adventurous men. 

Martha Gellhorn was a trailblazing journalist, filing dispatches over the course of five decades from some of the most dramatic hot spots across the globe.  Her career as a war correspondent began in 1937 when she reported on the Spanish Civil War for Colliers magazine.  She was a resident of the famed Hotel Florida in Madrid, along with many other foreign correspondents, including Virginia Cowles—and Ernest Hemingway with whom she was having an affair.  They married in 1940-and divorced in 1945.  The HBO film Hemingway and Gellhorn directed by Philip Kaufman and starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman will premiere on Monday May 28th.

In 1946, Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles decided on a lark to write a comedy about two female war correspondents covering WWII.  Their comedy, Love Goes to Press, is a frothy concoction, a romantic comedy set in a press camp in Italy in 1944.  The cast of characters includes a tough American newspaperman, recently divorced from one of the heroines: “You can’t tell from the outside that he’s got the character of a cobra,” the Gellhorn character says of her ex “From the outside he’s a beautiful, funny, fascinating man.”  

Love Goes To Press premiered to great success in June 1946 at the Embassy Theatre in London, where Cowles and Gellhorn, though American, were then living. “At times the humor rises to brilliance,” observed The Stage. “The kind of comedy which lavishly mingles public relations, private lives, lines of communication, tough dames, and tender passages,” opined The Observer.  The play quickly transferred from the “fringe” to a healthy run in the West End.

 Given its glowing reception in London, success in America seemed assured.  Try-outs in Washington and Pittsburgh in December 1946 were greeted positively, but on the Great White Way, everything changed. Love Goes To Press lasted just four days.  Its very strengths — particularly its comedy — were the very reasons it was dismissed. New Yorkers were not yet ready to laugh about the war. When the play was finally published, in 1995, Gellhorn wrote an introduction: “I must advise you at once, that this play bears no resemblance whatever, of any kind at all, to war or war correspondents. It is a joke. It was intended to make people laugh.”

A distinct current of sexism pervaded some of the reviews. Wolcott Gibbs sneered in The New Yorker: “It is quite possible that Miss Gellhorn and Miss Cowles were indeed able to commandeer ambulances and even airplanes to take them behind enemy lines practically at will, I can only say it seemed a little silly to me.”  Ironically, Gellhorn and Cowles had done precisely that—driven ambulances, flown in combat missions, and in Gellhorn’s case, stowed away in a hospital ship on D-Day—all in a day’s work.

Love Goes To Press faded from memory until 1995 when Professor Sandra Spanier of Penn State University rescued the play from the ash-heap and arranged for its long overdue publication with Gellhorn’s blessing.  Spanier is the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway, projected to run to a dozen volumes, at minimum.

“The Mint does for forgotten drama what the Encores! series does for musicals, on far more modest means” (The New York Times).  The Mint was awarded an OBIE for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition,” and a special Drama Desk Award for “unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.” Ben Brantley, in The New York Times Arts & Leisure (August 21st, 2011) hailed the Mint as the “resurrectionist extraordinaire of forgotten plays.” It is currently a Drama Desk nominee for Outstanding Revival for its recent production, A Little Journey.

Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55, with some half-price tickets (CheapTix) available for every performance. All performances will take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43rd Street. 

Tickets are available by calling the Mint box office toll-free at 866-811-4111 or go to the Mint website, where you can also see video and more!

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET opened in 2010 to rave reviews from critics and had audiences leaping to their feet every night. The New York Times called the show, “a buoyant new musical that whips the crowd into a frenzy,” New York Magazine said it is, “a dazzling raucous spectacle that sounds like a million bucks,” and NY1 called it, “90 minutes of platinum grade entertainment.” MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET originally opened at the Nederlander Theatre on April 11, 2010 and transferred to New World Stages on July 28, 2011.

In addition to the New York production, the Chicago production of MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET is in its fourth smash year where it continues to play to packed houses at the Apollo Theater and a national tour is currently bringing audiences across the country to their feet. A London production ended its successful run at the Noël Coward Theatre in 2011.

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET made Broadway history with drop-in appearances by music legends including Jerry Lee Lewis the last surviving member of the real life “Million Dollar Quartet,” Grammy Award winner Melissa Etheridge, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Darlene Love, country music superstar Larry Gatlin, pop music icon Lesley Gore, the Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson, original 1956 “Million Dollar Quartet” audio engineer and music pioneer Cowboy Jack Clement, “Today Show” co-host Kathie Lee Gifford, Grammy Award-winning country star Ray Benson, and Stray Cat bassist Lee Rocker.

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET currently features Eddie Clendening (Elvis Presley), Lance Guest (Johnny Cash), Robert Britton Lyons (Carl Perkins), Randy Redd (Jerry Lee Lewis), Victoria Matlock (Dyanne), and Curt Bouril (Sam Phillips).

The show won a Tony Award and Outer Critics Circle Award and received Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Musical Revue and three Drama League nominations including Distinguished Production of a Musical and two Distinguished Performance nominations.      

On December 4, 1956, an auspicious twist of fate brought Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley together. The place was Sun Records’ storefront studio in Memphis. The man who made it happen was Sam Phillips, the “Father of Rock and Roll,” who discovered them all. The four young musicians united for the only time in their careers for an impromptu recording that has come to be known as one of the greatest rock jam sessions of all time.

Inspired by the true story, MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET features a treasure trove of the greatest rock and roll, gospel, R&B and country hits from these musicians, including such iconic songs as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Fever,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Who Do You Love?,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Riders in the Sky,” “I Walk the Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET captures the infectious spirit, freewheeling excitement and thrilling sounds of a singular moment when four of the music industry’s most extraordinary talents, all in their creative prime, came together for one of the most memorable nights in music history.

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET is directed by Eric Schaeffer and features a book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux. The design team for the New York production includes: Derek McLane (scenic design), Howell Binkley (lighting design), Jane Greenwood (costume design), Kai Harada (sound design) and Chuck Mead (musical arrangements and supervision).

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET is produced by Relevant Theatricals, John Cossette Productions, American Pop Anthology, and Broadway Across America.

For more information about MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET, visit www.MillionDollarQuartetLive.com.

Follow MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET news on Twitter @milliondquartet and on Facebook.

TICKET INFORMATION:

Tickets for MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET are available at www.Telecharge.com, by calling 212-239-6200, or by visiting the New World Stages Box Office (340 West 50th Street). All ticket prices are $89.50.

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET’s performance schedule at New World Stages is Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8PM, and Sundays at 7PM. Matinees are Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30PM and Sunday at 3PM.

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If you have been a part of a recent local production of ANNIE or ANNIE Jr. or are about to start a new production, you can nominate your show for a chance to win a visit from a creative team member of the new Broadway production.   A list of current and upcoming productions of ANNIE and ANNIE Jr. is available on the official website of Music Theatre International. 

To enter the contest, upload a photo from your production (your troupe’s logo, your production’s poster, a photo of your theatre – anything that represents your show); tell us in one sentence what made or is going to make your production shine like the top of the Chyrsler Building; and get your friends and fans to show their support by voting for your production of ANNIE.  Productions can be nominated up through May 31 at 11:59 PM.  Voting process will be from 9:00 AM on  June 1 through 11:59 PM, June 15.  The production with the most votes will win a special visit from the ANNIE on Broadway creative team, including a Q&A with your cast, crew and community.  Winners will be announced on Facebook on June 18.  

ANNIE features music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and book by Thomas Meehan, based on the newspaper character “Little Orphan Annie” by Harold Gray.   The new production of ANNIE is directed by three-time Tony Award®-winner James Lapine and choreographed by Tony Award®-winner Andy Blankenbuehler. 

The original production of ANNIE opened April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre and went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, seven Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and seven Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Best Book (Thomas Meehan) and Best Score (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin).  The show was one of the biggest Broadway musical hits of the 1970s, running for almost six years and playing 2,377 performances. 

The score for ANNIE includes “Maybe,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” “Easy Street,” “I Don’t Need Anything But You” and the eternal anthem of optimism, “Tomorrow”. 

The creative team includes scenic design by Drama Desk Award-winner David Korins, costume design by Tony Award-winner Susan Hilferty, lighting design by two-time Tony Award-winner Donald Holder and sound design by Tony Award-winner Brian Ronan.  Music director is Todd Ellison.  Hair and wig design is by Tom Watson.  Casting is by Telsey + Company.  Animal training is by Tony Award-winner William Berloni.   

ANNIE will be produced on Broadway by Arielle Tepper Madover, Roger Horchow, Sally Horchow, Roger Berlind, Roy Furman, Debbie Bisno, Stacey Mindich, Nederlander Presentations, Inc., Jane Bergère/Daryl Roth and Eva Price/Christina Papagjika.

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The Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast will complemented by an exclusive video drawing back the curtain on the extraordinary process that the Clybourne Park set undergoes as it ages 50 years in 15 minutes.  In addition, HowStuffWorks.com will feature a series of themed blog posts inspired by the play:

A Visit to Clybourne Park: This Old House

Clybourne Park’s Tony Award nominated director, Pam MacKinnon, will talk about America’s housing history and racial issues and provide insight into how Tony Award-nominated scenic designer Dan Ostling’s set transitions from 1959 in Act I to 2009 in Act II during the show’s brief 15 minute intermission.

A Visit to Clybourne Park: The Hansberry Connection

Readers will learn about A Raisin in the Sun author Lorraine Hansberry and how the events of her personal life parallel those facing the characters in Clybourne Park.

A Visit to Clybourne Park: Pure Drama

The final Stuff You Missed in History Class blog post will further delve into A Raisin in the Sun and its connection to Clybourne Park, offering a brief history of Broadway with contributions from Pam MacKinnon.

Clybourne Parkwill also host a Twitter contest inviting fans to a special HowStuffWorks performance at the Walter Kerr Theatre (219 West 48th Street) on Thursday, May, 31 at 7 pm.  Fans will be asked to answer Clybourne Park trivia questions based on HowStuffWorks’ online content for the chance to attend the special performance, during which interesting facts and tidbits about all facets of the theatre will be revealed through fun and informative pop-up signage. 

Nominated for 4 Tony Awards including “Best Play” (Bruce Norris), “Best Direction of a Play” (Pam MacKinnon), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play” (Jeremy Shamos), “Best Scenic Design of a Play” (Daniel Ostling), and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and Olivier Award, Clybourne Park is the wickedly funny and fiercely provocative new play about race, real estate and the volatile values of each.  Clybourne Park explodes in two outrageous acts set 50 years apart.  Act One takes place in 1959, as nervous community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification. 

Clybourne Park received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2010 followed by a critically acclaimed pre-Broadway engagement at Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The highly praised original cast includes Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos and Frank Wood. 

Clybourne Park is produced by Jujamcyn Theaters, Jane Bergère, Roger Berlind/Quintet Productions, Eric Falkenstein/Dan Frishwasser, Ruth Hendel/Harris Karma Productions, JTG Theatricals, Daryl Roth,  Jon B. Platt, Center Theatre Group, in association with Lincoln Center Theater. 

Tickets, which range from $30.00 to $127.00 (premium seating ranges from $137.00 to $199.00) are available via telecharge.com, by calling (212) 239-6200/(800) 432-7250, or at the Walter Kerr Theatre box office (219 West 48th Street). Groups of 10 or more can be purchased through telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6262 in New York or (800) 432-7780 outside the NY Metro area.  A limited number of $30.00 General Rush tickets are available the day of performances. Tickets can be picked up at the Box Office beginning at 10 am.

About Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications (Nasdaq: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) is the world's #1 nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in over 200 countries and territories. Discovery is dedicated to satisfying curiosity through more than 140 worldwide television networks, led by Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science and Investigation Discovery, as well as US joint venture networks OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, The Hub and 3net, the first 24-hour 3D network. Discovery also is a leading provider of educational products and services to schools and owns and operates a diversified portfolio of digital media services, including HowStuffWorks.com. For more information, please visit www.discoverycommunications.com.

Connect with Clybourne Park & Stuff You Missed in History Class

Clybourne Park

Online: http://www.clybournepark.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/clybournepark
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clybourne-Park/348789258466108 

HowStuffWorks Stuff You Missed in History Class

Online: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hsw-shows/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class-podcast.htm
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MissedinHistory
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HistoryClassStuff

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The Drama Desk nominees were announced at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency on April 27 and celebrated at an exclusive Nominees’ Reception on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at Oceana Restaurant in Manhattan. The 57th Annual Drama Desk Awards will take place on Sunday, June 3, 2012, at 8:00 PM at The Town Hall (123 West 43th Street) in Manhattan. This year’s award show is being written by cast album producer, playwright, and two-time Drama Desk Award winner Bill Rosenfield and directed by multi-award winning director Mark Waldrop (Divine Miss Millennium Tour, When Pigs Fly, Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends). Executive Producer Gretchen Shugart, CEO of TheaterMania, will present the awards ceremony with Robert R. Blume and David S. Stone in association with Renee McCurry. TheaterMania has engaged Joey Parnes Productions to produce and manage the event.

The Drama Desk was founded in 1949 to explore key issues in the theater and to bring together critics and writers in an organization to support the ongoing development of theater in New York. For additional information about the Drama Desk and this year's awards show, and to purchase tickets to the 57th Annual Drama Desk Awards show at The Town Hall on June 3, visit www.dramadeskawards.com.

PRINCE OF BROADWAY will open on Broadway in the Fall of 2013.

“We are honored, thrilled and excited to be producing PRINCE OF BROADWAY. Hal Prince has the most important legacy in the American theatre and he continues to create great work for the stage.  Hal and his creative team have completed an extraordinary new musical, which we want to give the best possible Broadway production,” said Steven Baruch on behalf of the producing team.

“After reviewing everything ranging from the schedules of the creative team, theatre availability, advance group sales needs, among many other elements, we have determined that the optimum time for the show to open on Broadway would be the Fall of 2013.” 

Celebrating one of the most influential and successful careers in the American theatre of the past 60 years, PRINCE OF BROADWAY will look at the circumstances and fortune, both good and bad, that led to Hal Prince creating some of the most enduring and beloved theatre of all time, including The Pajama Game, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running show in Broadway history.

PRINCE OF BROADWAY will feature words and music from many of the shows that have earned Hal Prince a record 21 Tony Awards.

PRINCE OF BROADWAY includes scenic design by Tony Award nominee Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Tony Award winner William Ivey Long, lighting design by Tony Award winner Howell Binkley and sound design by Tony Award nominee Jonathan Deans.

The production also features musical supervision, incidental music, vocal and dance arrangements by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown, orchestrations by Don Sebesky and musical direction by Eric Stern.

The Common Pursuit officially opens on May 24, 2012 at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre / Laura Pels Theatre (111 West 46th Street).  This is a limited engagement through July 29, 2012.

The design team includes Derek McLane (Sets), Clint Ramos (Costumes), David Lander (Lights) and Daniel Kluger (Sound).

The Common Pursuit chronicles twenty years in the lives of six friends, from their ambitious collegiate days to their surprising discoveries in the real world.  Idealistic Cambridge student Stuart Thorne enlists some of his classmates to help him launch a new literary magazine. With the pursuit of great literature as their common thread, they become lifelong friends. But when damaging secrets crop up and business demands creep in, Stuart is faced with some unexpected decisions. Delightfully witty and remarkably poignant, The Common Pursuit is a captivating journey from who we think we are...to who we turn out to be.

The Common Pursuit had its American premiere at Long Wharf Theater in 1985.  The off-Broadway production in 1986 ran 352 performances and received the 1987 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play and the 1987 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play.

Major support for The Common Pursuit provided by The Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater.

TICKET INFORMATION:

Tickets are available by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212)719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org or at the Laura Pels box office (111 West 46th Street).  Ticket prices range from $71.00-81.00.

Roundabout Subscribers save up to 50% off of ticket prices and have access to special in-theatre events and perks. To become a Roundabout Subscriber, visit www.roundabouttheatre.org/joinnow or call Roundabout Ticket Services (212)719-1300 today.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:

The Common Pursuit plays Tuesday through Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m. with Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. 

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2011-2012 season features Marc Camoletti’s Don’t Dress For Dinner starring Ben Daniels, Adam James, Patricia Kalember and Jennifer Tilly, adapted by Robin Hawdon, directed by John Tillinger; Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit,directed by Moisés Kaufman; Mary Chase’s Harvey starring Jim Parsons, Jessica Hecht & Charles Kimbrough, directed by Scott Ellis. Roundabout’s Tony Award winning production of Anything Goes starring Stephanie J. Block & Joel Grey, directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, is currently playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. The 2011 Tony® Award winning Anything Goeswill set sail on a National Tour at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square in October 2012.  Following its opening in Cleveland, Anything Goes will cruise into more than 25 other cities during the 2012/2013 season.

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2012-2013 season features Rupert Holmes’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood starring Chita Rivera, directed by Scott Ellis; William Inge’s Picnic directed by Sam Gold; Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet directed by Michael Longhurst, with Jake Gyllenhaal; Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife starring Bobby Cannavale, directed by Doug Hughes; Steven Levenson’s The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin directed by Scott Ellis.

Joshua Elias Harmon’s Bad Jews directed by Daniel Aukin is a world premiere production that launches the sixth season of Roundabout Underground following five critically acclaimed seasons of world-premiere productions since its premiere in 2007. 

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Fierstein along with theatre owners Martin Markinson and Jeff Tick will be joined by Danny Aiello, Douglas Carter Beane, Kerry Butler, Kevin Chamberlin, Alison Fraser, Steve Guttenberg, Jonathan Hadary, Jessica Hecht, Jackie Hoffman, Rupert Holmes, Dana Ivey, Jay Johnson, Sarah Jones, Patricia Kalember, Roslyn Kind, Debra Monk, Mary Testa and Alfred Uhry and more.

This centennial celebration was conceived by Alan R. Markinson and the event is produced by Carla Weiss with co-producers Susan S. Myerberg, Alan R. Markinson, Sharon Fallon and Jacqueline Munoz. The house staff for the event is Matthew DiCarlo (production stage manager), Douglas Purcell (Head Carpenter), Joseph P. Beck (Head Electrician), Albert Toth (Head Propertyman), Robert Etter (Sound Engineer) and Hector Angulo (Engineer).

[The history that follows is courtesy of Playbill©]

This theatre opened as the Little Theatre in 1912. Later names included the Winthrop Ames, Anne Nichols’ Little, Times Hall and finally, in 1983, the Helen Hayes Theatre. In the winter of 2007 the Hayes, owned and operated by Martin Markinson and Donald Tick, was spruced up with a renovated auditorium, new seats, carpeting, painting and restoration of the relief ceiling.

Past productions that have played the Hayes have included Next Fall; The 39 Steps; Slava’s Snowshow; Xanadu; Jay Johnson: The Two and Only; Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway; Bridge & Tunnel, starring Special Tony winner Sarah Jones; Latinologues; Jackie Mason: Freshly Squeezed; Golda’s Balcony, written by William Gibson and starring Tovah Feldshuh; Frank Gorshin in Say Goodnight, Gracie; By Jeeves; George Gershwin Alone; Dirty Blonde; Getting and Spending; The Last Night of Ballyhoo (Tony, Best Play); Rob Becker’s Defending the Caveman; Joan Rivers in Sally Marr and Her Escorts; Lynn Redgrave’s Shakespeare For My Father; Prelude to a Kiss; Artist Descending a Staircase; Romance, Romance; The Nerd; Corpse!; and Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (Tonys, Best Play and Best Actor).

During the 1980s three interesting shows played here: Ned and Jack; Faye Dunaway in Curse of the Aching Heart; and Solomon’s Child, an exposé of fanatical religious cults.

In 1977 Albert Innaurato’s Off-Broadway hit, Gemini, moved here and ran for an amazing 1,788 performances, making it the fifth-longest running straight play in Broadway history. Another 1970s hit: The Runner Stumbles.

From 1964 to 1974 this theatre was leased to Westinghouse Broadcasting and hosted the Merv Griffin and David Frost TV shows.

In the 1960s the theatre housed Tambourines to Glory, a gospel-music play by Langston Hughes and Jobe Huntley; the Paul Taylor Dance Company; Habimah, the National Theatre of Israel, which staged The Dybbuk, Children of the Shadow and Each Had

Six Wings; James Costigan’s Baby Want a Kiss, with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Costigan; and Frank Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize play The Subject Was Roses, which moved here.

From 1942–1959 this house ceased being a legitimate theatre and was known as the New York Times Hall and, later, the ABC Television Studio.

Highlights of the 1930s included Edward G. Robinson in Mr. Samuel; Elmer Rice’s The Left Bank; Honeymoon; One More Honeymoon; and Pre-Honeymoon by Anne Nichols, author of the legendary Abie’s Irish Rose. At this time the theatre’s name was changed to Anne Nichols’ Little Theatre.

In 1936 Sir Cedric Hardwicke made his U.S. debut in Promise, and the following year, Cornelia Otis Skinner entertained in her one woman show, Edna His Wife. A sparkling revue called Reunion in New York reunited a group of talented performers from Vienna.

Hits of the 1920s included O’Neill’s first Broadway play, the Pulitzer-winning Beyond the Horizon, which moved here from another theatre; The First Year, written by and starring Frank Craven; two Guy Bolton comedies, Polly Preferred and Chicken Feed; Wallace Ford and Nydia Westman in a huge hit, Pigs; Thomas Mitchell in Marc Connelly’s The Wisdom Tooth; 2 Girls Wanted; The Grant Street Follies; and Rachel Crothers’s witty Let Us Be Gay.

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“ENGLAND SWINGS” is presented in association with the Noël Coward Foundation, as part of the 2012 Noël Coward Festival and Exhibition, a city-wide celebration of Coward’s work, which includes the acclaimed exhibition STAR QUALITY: THE WORLD OF NOEL COWARD.  Visit www.noelcowardinnewyork.com

Pianist/vocalist Eric Comstock will direct and host the evening. Others slated to appear include the pianist/vocalist Billy Stritch, Algonquin headliner Barbara Fasano, tenor saxophone star Harry Allen, plus the first-call rhythm section of Neal Miner (bass) and Vito Lesczak (drums).

Comstock, creator of the Off-Broadway hit “Our Sinatra” and the revues “Singing Astaire” and “Made For The Movies”, says, “Coward’s songs, though loved around the world, have rarely been given an overtly jazz treatment, so this will be a unique program. Everybody knows ‘I’ll See You Again’ and ‘Mad About The Boy’, but there are plenty of other Coward tunes that work in a swing context.

“Annie Ross is the ideal person for this kind of evening, in that she’s a world-class actor, a member of jazz royalty, and from the British Isles. Andy Bey is perhaps our greatest living pianist/singer. Billy Stritch is the perfect combo of wonderful musicianship and show business at its most fun and swinging, and Barbara Fasano, also a great actor/singer, will find depth we didn’t recognize in the Coward material. In Harry Allen, we have a link to the tenor tradition of Stan Getz and Ben Webster, which is American music at its best.

“As for Coward (1899-1973), he succeeded as a playwright, stage and screen actor, director, producer and wit, while still leaving us hundreds of excellent songs for which he wrote both music and lyrics.”

 

“Jerry Frankel and I have worked with Michael on three previous productions, The Homecoming, The Pajama Game and Superior Donuts, and he has never missed a performance, and I understand from his team that he has never missed a performance in his career. So this is the kind of first we are reluctant to announce,” producer Jeffrey Richards stated. “He is currently in stable condition, he has a broken leg. Jerry and I look forward to working with Michael again on a future project.”

The role of Mitch Graham, a reporter from the Washington Post, usually played by James Lecesne, will be played by FRED PARKER.

JAMES LECESNE is making his Broadway debut in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Previously, he has appeared off-Broadway in Motherhood Out Loud, Boys in the Band, Word of Mouth (Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), Cloud 9 and One Man Band. His regional credits include I Am My Own Wife, Irma Vep (Hartford Stage). In addition to his acting work, he is also an author and activist, whose film Trevor received an Academy Award in 1994 for best short film. James co-founded The Trevor Project, a 24-hour suicide-prevention hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning teens.

FRED PARKER Broadway debut! Regional: Spring Storm, Mr. Marmalade, Our Town, The Glass Menagerie, As You Like It, Hamlet. Film: The Eves, From Mexico with Love, Plans. TV: “90210.”

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The critically-acclaimed production of Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN, which was originally scheduled to play through July 8, 2012, has been extended twice, now playing through Sunday, September 9, 2012. Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at Telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200.

Gore Vidal's THE BEST MAN has been nominated for a 2012 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play as well as a Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play nomination for James Earl Jones.

Here’s what the critics had to say:

“A CRACKLING REVIVAL!”

—The New York Times

“A KNOCKDOWN HIT WITH A TRILLIONWATT CAST!”

—The Wall Street Journal

“A STAR BEDAZZLED REVIVAL THAT GLISTENS WITH WIT!”

—New York Magazine

“RIVETING! A stellar cast…injects vitality, humor, and tension to the American circus of electing a president.”

—The Huffington Post

“THE BEST MAN WINS!”

—USA Today

“AN UNQUALIFIED WINNER! Truly one of the year’s best! Gore Vidal’s The Best Man is remarkably vibrant, gripping and witty. Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones are giving legendary performances.”

—NY1 News

“DELICIOUS! It’s like a greatest hits album on stage, and director

MICHAEL WILSON excitingly paces the play like a thriller.”

—Associated Press

“THE BEST FUN YOU’LL HAVE IN A THEATER THIS SEASON!”

—WOR Radio

“FUNNY, SUSPENSEFUL and BRIMMING WITH SCANDAL, THE BEST MAN

is a RED, WHITE AND BLUE MUST SEE HIT!”

—Fox 5 News

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A play about power, ambition, political secrets, ruthlessness and the race for the presidency, Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN is set at the national convention where two candidates are vying for their party’s nomination during the primary season. It’s an inside look at the dirt-digging, double-dealing, triple-crossing chicanery of presidential electioneering and what could be more fun in a presidential campaign season than these theatrical fireworks.

The production is directed by Drama Desk Award winner MICHAEL WILSON (The Orphans Home Cycle Part I, II and III, Dividing The Estate). The design team includes Tony and Drama Desk Award winning scenic designer DEREK McLANE (33 Variations, Anything Goes), Tony and Drama Desk Award winning lighting designer KENNETH POSNER (The Coast of Utopia, Part 2 – Shipwreck), five-time Tony Award nominated costume designer ANN ROTH (The Book of Mormon), Drama Desk Award winning sound designer JOHN GROMADA (Seminar, The Orphans' Home Cycle) and projection designer PETER NIGRINI (Fela!, 9 to 5: The Musical).

Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN is produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, INFINITY Stages, Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Barbara Manocherian/Michael Palitz, The Broadway Consortium/Ken Mahoney, Kathleen K. Johnson, Fifty Church Street Productions, Larry Hirschhorn/Bennu Productions, Patty Baker, Paul Boskind and Martian Entertainment, Wendy Federman, Mark S. Golub & David S. Golub, Cricket Hooper Jiranek, Stewart F. Lane & Bonnie Comley, Carl Moellenberg, Harold Thau, Will Trice.

Please visit www.thebestmanonbroadway.com for information.

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When acclaimed playwright-provocateur Neil LaBute turns his acid wit to affairs of the heart, one thing is certain…there will be blood! Passion, emotion, sexual negotiation, and infidelity all converge in this collection of recent one-act plays, each featuring a pair of lovers in crisis. A four-performance benefit event in the vein of LaBute’s Filthy Talk for Troubled Times staged at MCC in 2010, The Heart of the Matter is an attempt to comprehend the true nature of love (or at least the fallout it can leave behind). 

Tickets are now on-sale for this event, priced between $39 and $99, and may be purchased by visiting www.mcctheater.org or by calling (212) 352-3101.  The Thursday, June 14 performance will include an exclusive post-show reception with members of the company.  Specially-priced tickets for this celebration can be purchased by contacting the MCC Development Department at (212) 727-7722 ext. 232 or by visiting www.mcctheater.org.

MCC Theater – founded in 1986 as Manhattan Class Company – is committed to developing and producing new work that challenges artists and rewards audiences.  Our mission is carried out through an annual season of world, American, and New York premieres, literary development programs for emerging writers, and ground-breaking education programs that enable more than 1,200 New York City high school students to find - and use - their own unique voice each year through the creation and performance of original theater pieces.  Notable MCC Theater highlights include: the 2008 Tony Award-nominated Reasons to Be Pretty by Neil LaBute, The Pride, Fifty Words, the 2004 Tony-winning production of Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig;Rebecca Gilman’s The Glory of Living, Marsha Norman’s Trudy Blue, Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone, Alan Bowne’s Beirut, The Submission, winner of the inaugural Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for new American plays, and last season’s newly reworked and fully re-imagined production of Carrie, the musical.  Over the years, the dedication to the work of new and emerging artists has earned MCC Theater a variety of awards.

For a complete production history, visit www.mcctheater.org.

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Theatre World Awards’ producers Erin Oestreich and Mary K. Botosan announced today that this year’s presenters will include Theatre World Award winners Leslie Uggams, Tony Sheldon, David Alan Grier, John Rubinstein, Wesley Taylor and Lizbeth Mackay (with more presenters to be announced).  Ms. Uggams won her TWA in 1966 for Hallelujah Baby! and Mr. Sheldon was honored last year for his performance in Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Mr. Grier won his TWA in 1982 for The First; Mr. Rubinstein won in 1973 for Pippin; Mr. Taylor was honored in 2009 for Rock of Ages and Lizbeth Mackay won in 1982 for Crimes of the Heart.

Stacy Keach will present The Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence to Susan Pourfar.

The previously-announced 2012 THEATRE WORLD AWARD winners for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performances during the 2011-2012 theatrical season are:

Tracie Bennett (End of the Rainbow)

Phillip Boykin (The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess)

Crystal A. Dickinson (ClybournePark)

Russell Harvard (Tribes)

Jeremy Jordan (Bonnie & Clyde)

Joaquina Kalukango (HurtVillage)

Jennifer Lim (Chinglish)

Jessie Mueller (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever)

Hettienne Park (Seminar AND The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism & Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures)

(NOTE: This award is for two shows – Ms. Park made her debut both on and off-Broadway in the same season)

Chris Perfetti (Sons of the Prophet)

Finn Wittrock (Death of a Salesman)

Josh Young (Jesus Christ Superstar)

The winner of The 2012 Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence in the Theater is Susan Pourfar (Tribes)

The THEATRE WORLD AWARDS presentation on June 5th will be hosted by well-known theatre journalist Peter Filichia, with Barry Keating directing, and TWA event producers Mary K. Botosan and Erin Oestreich.

        First presented in 1945, the prestigious and much-loved THEATRE WORLD AWARDS are the oldest awards given for outstanding Broadway and Off-Broadway debut performances. The THEATRE WORLD AWARD winners are chosen by the Theatre World Awards committee, currently comprised of David Cote (Time Out New York and NY1), Joe Dziemianowicz (New York Daily News), Peter Filichia (The Newark Star-Ledger), Harry Haun (Playbill), Matthew Murray (Talkin’ Broadway), Frank Scheck (New York Post), and Linda Winer (Newsday). The accomplished stage performers who have won the prestigious Theatre World Award at the beginning of their careers include Meryl Streep, Rosemary Harris, Marlon Brando, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Anne Bancroft, James Earl Jones, Liza Minnelli, Alan Alda, Zoe Caldwell, Christopher Walken, Alec Baldwin, Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald, Al Pacino, Grace Kelly and so many more.

The Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence in the Theater honors an outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway performance. Last year the award went to Seth Numrich for his performance in War Horse. The Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence is chosen by the Trustees of The Dorothy Loudon Foundation, Lionel Larner, Executive Director, together with recommendations from the Theatre World Awards committee.  Ms. Loudon had the unique talent of being able to make audiences laugh and cry and most of all love her…from her Broadway debut in Nowhere to Go But Up (for which she won a Theatre World Award), to such hits as Noises Off, West Side Waltz, Ballroom, to her incomparable ‘Miss Hannigan’ in Annie for which she won the TONY.

        The Theatre World annual remains the definitive record of the American theatre season, including photos and statistics from Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, and regional companies, in addition to special sections dedicated to obituaries, long-running productions, and major theatrical awards. Theatre Worldis edited by Ben Hodges and Scott Denny, and published by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, a division of Hal Leonard Performing Arts Publishing Group.Theatre World Volume 67: 2010-2011, the most complete pictorial and statistical record of the American theatre season, is currently available at all major booksellers and online.

    The THEATRE WORLD AWARDS’ Board of Directors is: Barry Keating (President and Director), Erin Oestreich (Vice-President and Producer), Tabitha Falcone (Treasurer), Mary K. Botosan (Co-Secretary and Producer), Alden Fulcomer (Co-Secretary), Dale Badway, Kimothy Cruse, Tom Lynch (Founding Board member), Lisa Rothe and Stephen Wilde.  The THEATRE WORLD AWARDS Inc is a 501 (c)3 non-profit.

    The THEATRE WORLD AWARDS Board encourages theater lovers to “LIKE” the Theatre World Awards fan page on Facebook and follow us on twitter at @TWAwards.

    For more information about The Theatre World Awards (including a list of past recipients) visit www.theatreworldawards.org.

“We are thrilled to be able to once again share these pieces of Tony history with Broadway fans, both here in New York City, and those visiting from around the world,” said Heather Hitchens, Executive Director of the American Theatre Wing. “The Times Square Museum and Visitor Center, located right in the heart of Times Square, is the perfect place for us to celebrate the Tony Award legacy,” said Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League.

The 2012 Tony Award Showcase will include historic Tony memorabilia from the past 66 years including an actual Tony Award, an Audemars Piguet Clock from the Tony Awards Red Carpet and costumes from Tony nominated and winning shows including Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Porgy and Bess, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Sunset Boulevard, Phantom of the Opera, and many others, all of which are on loan from Theatre Development Fund's Costume Collection.

The 2012 Tony Awards will be broadcast in a live three-hour ceremony from the Beacon Theatre on the CBS television network on Sunday, June 10, 2012. The Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.  For more information on the Tony Awards, please visit www.TonyAwards.com.

Follow us on www.Facebook.com/TheTonyAwards and www.Twitter.com/TheTonyAwards.

ABOUT THE TONY AWARDS

The American Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing. At The Broadway League, Nick Scandalios is Chairman and Charlotte St. Martin is Executive Director. At the American Theatre Wing, Theodore S. Chapin is Chairman and Heather Hitchens is Executive Director. For Tony Award Productions, Alan Wasser and Allan Williams of Alan Wasser Associates are the General Managers. Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Entertainment are the Executive Producers of the 2012 Tony Awards. Mr. Weiss will also serve as Director of the 2012 Tony Awards.

IBM, an official information technology partner of the Tony Awards, develops, designs, and hosts the official Tony Awards website, www.TonyAwards.com.  Audemars Piguet is the presenting sponsor of the Tony Awards Red Carpet and Green Room.  United Airlines is the official airline of the Tony Awards.  Avis is the official rental car of the Tony Awards. InterContinental Hotels & Resorts is the official hotel partner of the Tony Awards, sponsor of the Creative Arts Awards and host of the Tony Nominee Luncheon, and Tony Eve Cocktail Party presenting the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre. Nexxus Salon Hair Care is the official beauty partner of the Tony Awards. Royal Caribbean International is the official cruise line partner of the Tony Awards. The New York Times is the official media partner of the Tony Awards.

ABOUT THE TIMES SQUARE MUSEUM AND VISITOR CENTER

The Times Square Museum and Visitor Center is the home of the "Times Square Story", featuring the New Year’s Eve Centennial Ball which stood atop One Times Square in 2007 and recreates the magical New Year’s Eve countdown. The newly renovated Museum also includes a free exhibit on historic Broadway, video highlights of Times Square’s past and present and a Fantasy and Desire exhibit featuring a restored “Peep-O-Rama” sign from 42nd Street’s last peep show. Visitors can also buy tickets to Broadway shows, make a wish at the New Year’s Eve Wishing Wall, take tours of the city from Gray Line New York, shop at the official Times Square store and get information on New York City’s many tourist attractions.

Nominated for 4 Tony Awards including “Best Play” (Bruce Norris), “Best Direction of a Play” (Pam MacKinnon), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play” (Jeremy Shamos), “Best Scenic Design of a Play” (Daniel Ostling), and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and Olivier Award, Clybourne Park is the wickedly funny and fiercely provocative new play about race, real estate and the volatile values of each.  Clybourne Park explodes in two outrageous acts set 50 years apart.  Act One takes place in 1959, as nervous community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification. 

Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2010 followed by a critically acclaimed pre-Broadway engagement at Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Under the direction of Pam MacKinnon, the highly praised original cast includes Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos and Frank Wood. 

The design team features Daniel Ostling (Scenic Design), Ilona Somogyi (Costume Design), Allen Lee Hughes (Lighting Design), and John Gromada (Sound Design). 

Clybourne Park is produced by Jujamcyn Theaters, Jane Bergère, Roger Berlind/Quintet Productions, Eric Falkenstein/Dan Frishwasser, Ruth Hendel/Harris Karma Productions, JTG Theatricals, Daryl Roth,  Jon B. Platt, Center Theatre Group, in association with Lincoln Center Theater. 

Tickets, which range from $30.00 to $127.00 (premium seating ranges from $137.00 to $199.00) are available via telecharge.com, by calling (212) 239-6200/(800) 432-7250, or at the Walter Kerr Theatre box office (219 West 48th Street). Groups of 10 or more can be purchased through telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6262 in New York or (800) 432-7780 outside the NY Metro area.  A limited number of $30.00 General Rush tickets are available the day of performances. Tickets can be purchased at the Box Office beginning at 10 am.

Praise for Clybourne Park

“Vital, relevant and ferociously smart!  A superlative production of Bruce Norris’s sharp-witted, sharp-toothed Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy.” 

-Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“Since America elected its first black president, the conversation on race has turned just as loopy as the hilarious and audacious Clybourne Park.”

- Frank Rich, New York Magazine

“A theatrical treasure!  Indisputably, Uproariously Funny!”

-Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly

“Funny as hell! The Walter Ker Theatre shakes with gales of laughter.”

-Elisabeth Vincentelli, New  York Post

“Darkly hilarious!”

-David Cote, Time Out NY

“A savagely funny and insightful time-bomb!”

-David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“A nerve-rattling comedy that makes you laugh, squirm and think.”

-Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News

“Terrific!  ‘Clybourne Park’ is everything you want in a play:  Smart, witty, provocative and wonderfully acted…”

-Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

 

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The event will begin at 6:30 PM with a VIP cocktail reception, followed by a 7:30 tribute event at the Samuel J. Friedman (261 West 47th Street). Immediately after the Friedman tribute event, a party will follow at Copacabana (268 West 47th Street).

Tickets for the event range from $40 to $500 and proceeds from the event will benefit Manhattan Theatre Club. For more information or to purchase tickets online, please visit www.manhattantheatreclub.com/events.

Under Meadow’s artistic direction, Manhattan Theatre Club has garnered hundreds of awards and the artists nurtured by her and the company have made MTC a world class theatre. Meadow has been MTC’s Artistic Director since 1972 and with Barry Grove, MTC’s Executive Producer and her producing partner of 37 years, she has accepted every major theatrical award on behalf of the company including Tonys, Obies, Lortels, Drama Desk Awards, etc. Meadow has directed dozens of new plays both on and off Broadway. Her Broadway directing credits include Margaret Edson’s Wit; Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories; the 2001 Tony Award-nominated production of Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife; Alan Ayckbourn’s A Small Family Business; and Donald Margulies’ The Loman Family Picnic. Her Off-Broadway directing credits include Alan Ayckbourn’s award-winning Woman in Mind and Absent Friends; the Obie Award-winning Ashes by David Rudkin; Busch’s Our Leading Lady; David Greig’s The American Pilot; Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias; Marsha Norman’s Last Dance; David Edgar’s The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs; Principia Scriptoriae; Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary; Biography; Simon Gray’s Close of Play; and Sally and Marsha.

Under her artistic leadership for the last three decades, MTC has produced five David Lindsay-Abaire plays including Rabbit Hole; six plays by Donald Margulies including Time Stands Still and Sight Unseen; Lynn Nottage's Ruined; nine plays by John Patrick Shanley including Doubt; two plays by David Auburn including Proof; nine plays by Terrence McNally including Love! Valour! Compassion! and Lisbon Traviata; five plays by Beth Henley including Crimes of the Heart; seven plays by Alan Ayckbourn including Woman in Mind and Absent Friends; Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together; Ain't Misbehavin'; and Ashes by David Rudkin.

This season, Meadow has produced four productions on Broadway, all of which have received Tony nominations: Terrence McNally’s Master Class (Best Revival of a Play), David Ives’ Venus in Fur (Best Play, Best Actress – Nina Arianda), Margaret Edson’s Wit which Meadow directed (Best Revival of a Play, Best Actress – Cynthia Nixon), and David Auburn’s The Columnist (Best Actor in a Play – John Lithgow).

BIOGRAPHY
Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) has been the artistic visionary and leader of Manhattan Theatre Club since 1972, creating work that has put the company at the forefront of the American theatre. Lynne has overseen hundreds of World, US and New York premieres; directed dozens of new plays on and off Broadway by America's and England's finest playwrights; and accepted every major theatre award, (Tonys, Drama Desks, Obies, etc.) on behalf of the company.

Some of the theatres where she has worked in addition to MTC include The New York Shakespeare Festival, the Phoenix Theatre, the Spoleto Festival and the O’Neill Theatre Center.

Lynne’s directing work includes: Margaret Edson’s Wit; Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories (with Linda Lavin and Sarah Paulson); the 2001 Tony Award-nominated production of Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife on Broadway (starring Linda Lavin, Michele Lee and Tony Roberts) at MTC, and in the U.S. national tour (with Valerie Harper); the Broadway production of A Small Family Business (with Brian Murray); Donald Margulies’ The Loman Family Picnic; the Obie Award-winning Ashes by David Rudkin; Charles Busch’s Our Leading Lady; David Greig’s The American Pilot; Neil Simon’s Rose’s Dilemma (with Mary Tyler Moore); Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias (with Douglas Sills); Three Sisters (with Dianne Weist, Sam Waterston, Christine Ebersole and Jeff Daniels); Golden Boy; Marsha Norman’s Last Dance (with JoBeth Wiliams); David Edgar’s The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs; Principia Scriptoriae; The Wager; Absent Friends (with Gillian Anderson and Brenda Blethyn); The Pokey; Eleemosynary (with Eileen Heckart); Vikings; Bits and Pieces; Blur (with Polly Draper); Biography (with Piper Laurie); Park Your Car in Harvard Yard (with Ellen Burstyn and Burgess Meredith); Captain’s Courageous (with Treat Williams); Artichoke (with Amanda Plummer); Catsplay (which transferred to the Promenade Theatre); Chez Nous; Simon Gray’s Close of Play and Sally and Marsha (with Christine Baranski and Bernadette Peters).

Some of the world and New York premieres produced by Lynne for MTC include, Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller musical; Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley (Pulitzer Prize); The Miss Firecracker Contest by Beth Henley (with Holly Hunter); Eastern Standard by Richard Greenberg; Putting It Together (with Julie Andrews); Playland by Athol Fugard (with Kevin Spacey); Pretty Fire by Charlayne Woodard; Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally; Sylvia by A.R. Gurney (with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner); Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire; King Hedley II by August Wilson; Proof by David Auburn (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play); Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies (Pulitzer Prize); Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play); Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play); Shining City by Conor McPherson; Translations by Brian Friel; Blackbird by David Harrower; LoveMusik, book by Alfred Uhry, songs by Kurt Weill; Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck; Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Pulitzer Prize); Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies; The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall; Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire.

Lynne is a graduate of Bryn Mawr, and attended the Yale School of Drama. She has taught at Yale, Fordham, NYU, etc. She has twice been nominated for Best Director at the Drama Desk Awards: in 1996 for Leslie Ayvazian’s Nine Armenians and in 1988 for Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind (with Stockard Channing). She is also the recipient of the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, the Manhattan Award from Manhattan Magazine, the Person of the Year from National Theatre Conference, the Margo Jones Award, the 2003 Mr. Abbott Award, The 2011 Lucille Lortel Award for Lifetime Achievement and The 2011 Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement.

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(Minneapolis/St. Paul) Following on the April 16, 2012, announcement of the Guthrie’s 2012-13 season, Director Joe Dowling today announced dates for productions in the upcoming season in the Dowling Studio, as well as further details of directing and casting.

The 2012-13 season in the Dowling Studio will include As You Like It, presented by The Acting Company in association with the Guthrie, running January 12—February 3, 2013, directed by Dan Rothenberg. As You Like It, Shakespeare’s comedy about young people in love who flee into the Forest of Arden and find themselves in a game of romance, lust and mistaken identity, represents a continuation of the artistic partnership between the Guthrie and The Acting Company, the prestigious touring classical company based in New York.

The next show of the Dowling Studio 2012-13 season will be the Guthrie presentation of a Pillsbury House Theatre production of Buzzer by Tracey Scott Wilson, directed by Marion McClinton (In the Red and Brown Water) and running February 8—March 3, 2013. An exploration of race in America through the prism of three young people living together in a neighborhood in the process of gentrification, Buzzer was a co-commission between the Guthrie and Pillsbury House Theatre and appeared at Pillsbury House earlier in 2012.

Next in the Dowling Studio will be a Guthrie presentation of a Mu Performing Arts production of R.A. Shiomi’s Yellow Fever, directed by Rick Shiomi (Yellow Face) and running March 8-24, 2013. Yellow Fever, a comedic mystery, takes place in the Japanese community of Vancouver and tells the story of a private investigator trapped in a web of politics and race while searching for the mysterious Cherry Blossom Queen.

Finishing the 2012-13 season in the Dowling Studio will be An Iliad, running May 4—26, 2013, a one-performer interpretation of the classical story by Homer adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, translated by Robert Fagles and directed by Benjamin McGovern (The Edge of Our Bodies). Dowling additionally announced that An Iliad will be performed by longtime Guthrie favorite Stephen Yoakam (The Birds, The Burial at Thebes).

Dowling also announced that the Guthrie’s production of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris in the McGuire Proscenium Stage from June 1—August 4, 2013 will be directed by Lisa Peterson (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Major Barbara). Clybourne Park, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 2012 Tony Award nominee for Best Play, deals with generations of race and class across the span of a half-century in a neighborhood in Chicago.

Single tickets for productions in the Dowling Studio range from $24 to $39 and go on sale August 10. For more information or to purchase tickets or season subscriptions, call the Guthrie Theater Box Office 612.377.2224 or toll-free 877.44.STAGE, 612.225.6244 (Group Sales) and online at www.guthrietheater.org.

The GUTHRIE THEATER (Joe Dowling, Director)was founded by Sir Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 and is an American center for theater performance, production, education and professional training. The Tony Award-winning Guthrie Theater is dedicated to producing the great works of dramatic literature, developing the work of contemporary playwrights and cultivating the next generation of theater artists. With annual attendance of nearly 500,000 people, the Guthrie Theater presents a mix of classic plays and contemporary work on its three stages. Under the artistic leadership of Joe Dowling since 1995, the Guthrie continues to set a national standard for excellence in theatrical production and performance. In 2006, the Guthrie opened its new home on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, the Guthrie Theater houses three state-of-the-art stages, production facilities, classrooms and dramatic public lobbies. www.guthrietheater.org

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(Minneapolis/St. Paul) Following on the April 16, 2012, announcement of the Guthrie’s 2012-13 season, Director Joe Dowling today announced dates for productions in the upcoming season in the Dowling Studio, as well as further details of directing and casting.

The 2012-13 season in the Dowling Studio will include As You Like It, presented by The Acting Company in association with the Guthrie, running January 12—February 3, 2013, directed by Dan Rothenberg. As You Like It, Shakespeare’s comedy about young people in love who flee into the Forest of Arden and find themselves in a game of romance, lust and mistaken identity, represents a continuation of the artistic partnership between the Guthrie and The Acting Company, the prestigious touring classical company based in New York.

The next show of the Dowling Studio 2012-13 season will be the Guthrie presentation of a Pillsbury House Theatre production of Buzzer by Tracey Scott Wilson, directed by Marion McClinton (In the Red and Brown Water) and running February 8—March 3, 2013. An exploration of race in America through the prism of three young people living together in a neighborhood in the process of gentrification, Buzzer was a co-commission between the Guthrie and Pillsbury House Theatre and appeared at Pillsbury House earlier in 2012.

Next in the Dowling Studio will be a Guthrie presentation of a Mu Performing Arts production of R.A. Shiomi’s Yellow Fever, directed by Rick Shiomi (Yellow Face) and running March 8-24, 2013. Yellow Fever, a comedic mystery, takes place in the Japanese community of Vancouver and tells the story of a private investigator trapped in a web of politics and race while searching for the mysterious Cherry Blossom Queen.

Finishing the 2012-13 season in the Dowling Studio will be An Iliad, running May 4—26, 2013, a one-performer interpretation of the classical story by Homer adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, translated by Robert Fagles and directed by Benjamin McGovern (The Edge of Our Bodies). Dowling additionally announced that An Iliad will be performed by longtime Guthrie favorite Stephen Yoakam (The Birds, The Burial at Thebes).

Dowling also announced that the Guthrie’s production of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris in the McGuire Proscenium Stage from June 1—August 4, 2013 will be directed by Lisa Peterson (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Major Barbara). Clybourne Park, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 2012 Tony Award nominee for Best Play, deals with generations of race and class across the span of a half-century in a neighborhood in Chicago.

Single tickets for productions in the Dowling Studio range from $24 to $39 and go on sale August 10. For more information or to purchase tickets or season subscriptions, call the Guthrie Theater Box Office 612.377.2224 or toll-free 877.44.STAGE, 612.225.6244 (Group Sales) and online at www.guthrietheater.org.

The GUTHRIE THEATER (Joe Dowling, Director)was founded by Sir Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 and is an American center for theater performance, production, education and professional training. The Tony Award-winning Guthrie Theater is dedicated to producing the great works of dramatic literature, developing the work of contemporary playwrights and cultivating the next generation of theater artists. With annual attendance of nearly 500,000 people, the Guthrie Theater presents a mix of classic plays and contemporary work on its three stages. Under the artistic leadership of Joe Dowling since 1995, the Guthrie continues to set a national standard for excellence in theatrical production and performance. In 2006, the Guthrie opened its new home on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, the Guthrie Theater houses three state-of-the-art stages, production facilities, classrooms and dramatic public lobbies. www.guthrietheater.org

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Featuring music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a book by Peter Duchan, choreography by two-time Tony nominee Christopher Gattelli, and directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, DOGFIGHT will begin previews on Wednesday, June 27 and officially open on Monday, July 16 at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theatre (305 West 43rd street).  For more information, please visit www.2ST.com.

It’s November 21, 1963.  On the eve of their deployment to a small but growing conflict in Southeast Asia, three young Marines set out for one final boys’ night of debauchery, partying, and maybe a little trouble.  But when Corporal Eddie Birdlace (Derek Klena) meets Rose (Lindsay Mendez), an awkward and idealistic waitress he enlists to win a cruel bet with his fellow recruits, she rewrites the rules of the game and teaches him the power of compassion. 

DOGFIGHT is based on the Warner Bros. film and screenplay by Bob Comfort.  DOGFIGHTis the winner of the 2011 Richard Rodgers Studio Production Award, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Costume and set design are supported by a grant from the Tobin Theatre Arts Fund.

DOGFIGHTwill feature scenic and costume design by David Zinn, lighting design by Paul Gallo, sound design by Fitz Patton, hair design by Josh Marquette, and make-up design by Ashley Ryan.  The music director is Bryan Perri.  Orchestrations are by Michael Starobin.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

ANNALEIGH ASHFORD has appeared on Broadway in Hair (Jeannie), Wicked (Glinda), Legally Blonde (Margot, original cast) and off-Broadway in Rent (Maureen).  She also appeared in the Chicago production and national tour of Wicked (Glinda).  Workshops/Readings: Kinky Boots, All New People, Carrie, Bring It On, Banana Shpeel Cirque du Soleil, Catch Me If You Can, Pal Joey, Black Suits.  Other New York: Feeling Electric, NYMTF 2005. Feature Films: Sex & the City, Rachel Getting Married. Television: “Baby Big Shots,” “Master of Sex,” “Smash,” “The Big C,” “Law & Order,” “Legally Blonde: The Musical” (MTV). Annaleigh was nominated for the Drama League and the Clive Barnes Award for her performance as Maureen in Rent.

BECCA AYERS’ Broadway credits include the original casts of The Addams Family, South Pacific at Lincoln Center, and the revival of Les Miserables.  She also appeared in the Broadway production of Avenue Q (standby for Lucy/Kate and Mrs. T/Bear).  Becca is a co-creator, songwriter and actor in the musical film, Clear Blue Tuesday, and she has several albums on iTunes with Bradley Dean Whyte and with her band, “baby goes bang.” Recordings include the revival cast recording of South Pacific and the soundtrack for Clear Blue Tuesday.  

STEVEN BOOTH has appeared on Broadway in Avenue Q and Glory Days. Off Broadway and regional credits include Spidermusical, Mint Theatre (Colin); Happy Days, national tour (Richie Cunningham); Glory Days, Signature Theatre in DC; Three Musketeers, North Shore Music Theatre; Avenue Q, Wynn Las Vegas Theatre; Pippin, Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre (Pippin); Hurricane, NYMF; Edges: A Song Cycle, Capitol Repertory Theatre.

DIERDRE FRIEL made her Broadway debut in Leap of Faith.  New York and regional credits include Doubt, Lighter, Masquerade, Over the Tavern, Cinderella, King Lear, Comedy of Errors, Richard III. Film and TV credits include “The Sopranos,” My Father’s Will, and Pretty Bird (Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee).

ADAM HALPIN appeared on Broadway in Glory Days and in the national tour of Rent with Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, as well as the show’s current off-Broadway revival.  Other NY credits include workshops/readings of Irma La Douce, Awesomer & Awesomer, White Noise, and three productions with the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Regionally, Adam has been seen at North Shore Music Theatre, Signature Theatre (VA) and Pittsburgh CLO, among others, and is also on the cast recording of A Little Princess (Ghostlight Records).

F. MICHAEL HAYNIE most recently appeared in the off-Broadway revival of Carrie.  His other credits include Band Geeks (Goodspeed); F**in’ Hipsters; We the People (TWUSA); Rocket Science (Playwrights Horizons); and 35MM (Urban Stages).  Film credits include the upcoming The Twylight Zones.

DEREK KLENA made his New York theatre debut as Tommy Ross in the recent off-Broadway revival of Carrie.  Regional credits include Hairspray (Link), Glory Days (Will), Happy Days (Richie Cunningham), Cinderella (Prince), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Joseph, IVTL Award), High School Musical (Troy), Big River (Huck, IVTL Award). Derek was a contestant sent to Hollywood Week in Season 9 of “American Idol.”

LINDSAY MENDEZ returns to Second Stage Theatre where she appeared in the world premiere of Everyday Rapture.  Broadway credits include Godspell, Everyday Rapture, and the 2007 revival of Grease (Jan).  Other credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost (directed by Alex Timbers), The Marvelous Wonderettes (West Side Theatre), Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (TRTC), Unknown Soldier (The O’Neill), 35MM (Urban Stages), The Trouble with Doug (NAMT), Band Geeks (NAMT), Rated RSO (The Kennedy Center, NYMF), Footloose (Sacramento Music Circus, Kansas City Starlight), Princesses (NAMT, Goodspeed Opera House, 5th Avenue Theatre), and Call Me Madam (Reprise!).  Lindsay can be seen and heard all over New York City singing jazz and contemporary music with her collaborator, jazz pianist Marco Paguia.

JAMES MOYE’s Broadway and Off-Broadway credits include Million Dollar Quartet, Ragtime, A Tale of Two Cities, The Full Monty, Urinetown, Happiness. National tours: The Drowsy Chaperone, Little Shop of Horrors, White Christmas.  Regional credits include Tinyard Hill (Theatreworks, SF Bay Theater Critics Award, Best Supporting Actor), 110 In The Shade (Signature Theatre, Helen Hayes Nomination, Best Supporting Actor), Meet John Doe (Goodspeed/Ford’s Theatre).  Film and TV credits include Fair Game, The Warrior and the Savior, “Royal Pains,” “Law and Order: C.I.”  Cast recording: Dream True, Songs of Ahrens and Flaherty.

JOSH SEGARRA was last seen as Mick in the Off-Broadway and Broadway runs of Lysistrata Jones.  He has appeared in Showtime's Emmy winning "Homeland" opposite Claire Danes, and was a series regular on "The Electric Company.”  Josh can be seen in numerous films including The Music Never Stopped, The Ministers, and The Narrows.  He co-starred in The Boys Upstairs at the Fringe Festival and originated the role of Brent in Fat Camp: The Musical at NYMF.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

BENJ PASEK and JUSTIN PAUL’s current projects include A Christmas Story (National Tour 2011, 5th Ave Theatre 2010) and James and the Giant Peach (Goodspeed 2010).  Other works include Edges (licensed by Music Theatre International, with over 150 productions worldwide from South Korea and Australia to South Africa and the Philippines), Sesame Street, Johnny & the Sprites (Disney TV series), Duck for President and If You Give a Pig a Pancake (Theatreworks USA).  In addition to the 2011 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre, which they received for DOGFIGHT, they have received the 2011 Sundance Institute Fellowship, 2011 ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, 2011 ASCAP Songwriters Fellowship Award, 2007-2008 Dramatists Guild Fellowship, 2007 Jonathan Larson Award, 2010 Fred Ebb Award Finalists, Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, and "50 to Watch" from Dramatist Magazine. They both received BFAs from the University of Michigan in Musical Theatre.

Book writer PETER DUCHAN co-wrote the screenplay for "Breaking Upwards," released by IFC Films in 2010. He also served as Associate Producer of the movie, which premiered at South by Southwest in 2009. He co-wrote a short, "Unlocked," an Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival, among others. His play, Lavender Scare, was presented as part of the Geva Theatre's 2011 Plays-in-Progress series. DOGFIGHT received the 2011 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Peter graduated from Northwestern University.

JOE MANTELLO is currently represented by Wicked and Other Desert Cities.  He has also directed The Pride, Pal Joey, 9 to 5 the Musical, November, The Receptionist, The Ritz, Three Days of Rain, The Odd Couple, Glengarry Glen Ross (Tony nomination), Laugh Whore, Assassins (Tony Award), Take Me Out (Tony Award), Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Design for Living, The Vagina Monologues, bash, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony nomination), Proposals, The Mineola Twins, Corpus Christi, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Blue Window, God’s Heart, The Santaland Diaries, Snakebit, Three Hotels, Imagining Brad.  Film: Love! Valour! Compassion! As an actor, he has appeared in The Normal Heart (Tony nomination), Angels in America (Tony nomination) and The Baltimore Waltz.  He has received Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Clarence Derwent, Obie and Joe A. Callaway awards. He is a member of Naked Angels and an associate artist at the Roundabout.

CHRISTOPHER GATTELLI’s Broadway choreography credits include Newsies (Tony nomination, Drama Desk nomination, Outer Critics Circle Award), Godspell, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 13, South Pacific (Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations), Sunday in the Park with George, The Ritz, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, High Fidelity. West End: Sunday in the Park with George. Off-Broadway: Altar Boyz (Lortel and Callaway Awards, Drama Desk nomination); Bat Boy: The Musical (Lortel Award); tick, tick...BOOM!; 10 Million Miles; Adrift in Macao; I Love You Because; How to Save the World....  Favorites: Silence! The Musical (Best Musical, Fringe '05), Chess with Josh Groban, Hair with Jennifer Hudson, "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" (resident choreographer).

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DOGFIGHT will be performed from June 27, 2012 through Sunday, August 12 on the following schedule: Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday – Saturday at 8pm, Wednesday and Saturday at 2pm and Sunday at 3pm.

The following exceptions will be made to the regular performance schedule:

Wednesday, June 27 – no 2pm performance

Sunday, July 1 – 2pm and 7pm performances

Wednesday, July 4 – 7pm performance only

Sunday, July 8 – 2pm and 7pm performances

Wednesday, July 11 – no 2pm performance

Sunday, July 15 – 2pm and 7pm performances

Monday, July 16 – 6:30pm performance (opening night)

Tuesday, July 17 – no performance

All evening performances Tuesday – Friday the week of July 23 will begin at 7pm.

Tickets are $80 and may be purchased by phoning 212-246-4422 or online at www.2ST.com.

$30 UNDER 30 YOUTH ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE - patrons age 30 and under may purchase a limited number of specially-priced $30 tickets in advance.  Proof of age must be shown at the box office.

A limited number of student rush tickets are $18 and are available one hour prior to curtain. 

Group tickets are available by phoning 212-246-4422. 

Box-office hours are Monday, 10:00am – 6:00pm, Tuesday 10:00am – 7:00pm, Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00am to 8:00pm, and Sunday, 10:00am to 3:00pm.

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ABOUT SECOND STAGE THEATRE

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, SECOND STAGE THEATRE produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America’s best contemporary theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman. 

The company’s more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 14 Lucille Lortel Awards, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.  In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theatre Uptown” series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre.  The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

Second Stage Theatre Uptown’s first production, Alena Smith’s THE BAD GUYS, directed by Hal Brooks and featuring Michael Braun, Roe Hartrampf, James McMenamin, Tobias Segal, and Raviv Ullman, begins previews May 22nd and officially open on June 4th.

SECOND STAGE THEATRE AT THE HELEN HAYES

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street.  With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions.  Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway.  The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city’s Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com

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More than two dozen dancers will take the stage at 7 pm and 9 pm at Whyte Hall's Brandon Fradd Theatre in Fire Island Pines, NY, for a collection of classic and new BROADWAY BARES numbers. The show will be followed by Bares' famous "rotation" where the dancers freestyle dance for donations. BROADWAY BARES: BEACH BURLESQUE will feature the Bares performers in a theatre setting with all patrons seated.

Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell is executive producer and creator of Broadway Bares. Michael Lee Scott directs BROADWAY BARES: BEACH BURLESQUE.

All tickets to BROADWAY BARES: BEACH BURLESQUEinclude free cocktails on the Whyte Hall deck a half-hour before curtain. Ticket prices are $100, $150 and $200. They can be purchased online at fipap.org or in the Fire Island Pines Harbor on Saturdays and Sundays 10 am to 1 pm.

BROADWAY BARES: BEACH BURLESQUEis a sexy tease for one of BC/EFA's annual signature events: BROADWAY BARES. This year's fairy tale-themed edition, BROADWAY BARES XXII: HAPPY ENDINGS, will feature 200 of New York's most delectable dancers who will take you to a land where rubbing a magic lamp reveals more than just a genie. Special celebrity guests, who will be sure to awaken even the sleepiest beauty, will be announced at a later date.

BROADWAY BARES XXII: HAPPY ENDINGS will be held Sunday, June 17 with two performances only at 9:30 pm and midnight at Roseland Ballroom (239 West 52nd Street in New York City).  Tickets can be purchased online at broadwaycares.org or by calling 212-840-0770 x268.  For more information and merchandise, visit broadwaybares.com.

Broadway Bares XXII: Happy Endings is presented by M·A·C VIVA GLAM and generously sponsored by United Airlines.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is one of the nation’s leading industry-based, nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. By drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community, since 1988 BC/EFA has raised more than $195 million for essential services for people with AIDS and other critical illnesses across the United States.

Broadway Cares awards annual grants to more than 400 AIDS and family service organizations nationwide and is the major supporter of the social service programs at The Actors Fund, including the HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative and the Al Hirschfeld Free Health Clinic.

For more information, please visit Broadway Cares online at broadwaycares.org, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/BCEFA or follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/BCEFA.

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www.broadwaycares.org
Follow Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS on Twitter @BCEFA or on Facebook. 

Follow BBB on Twitter @BBBway or on Facebook.
For the most up to date press releases visit our website.

Dozens of Broadway’s finest will perform including 2012 Tony-nominee Celia Keenan-Bolger (Peter & the Starcatcher), Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me), Nikki Renée Daniels (Porgy & Bess, Aida), Julie Halston (Anything Goes), Darius de Haas ( Rent, Marie Christine), Julia Murney (Wicked), Ripley Sobo (Once), The Broadway Boys, and founding performer Liana Stampur with Clinton Curtis, with more to be announced.

Seth Rudetsky will host and musical direct, and the show will directed by Daniel Goldstein, director of the current Godspell on Broadway.

Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, a longtime NYCLU member, is the honorary chairman for the event and will give opening remarks.

“We’re very fortunate to have so many talented performers generously support our work and celebrate the essential link between civil liberties and the arts,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “It will be an exciting evening of great music and laughs, all for a worthy cause.”

Proceeds from the show benefit the NYCLU’s youth programs, including its work with LGBT teenagers; its Teen Activist Project, which engages New York City teens as organizers and peer educators on civil rights and civil liberties issues; and its work to stop overly aggressive policing and zero-tolerance discipline in the city’s public schools.

VIP tickets and sponsorship packages, now on sale for $250 and up, can be purchased here.  Individual tickets, $100/$60, will be available starting May 21 and can be purchased three ways: Online at www.nyuskirball.org; by phone at 212.352.3101, Monday through Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., and 10:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; or in person at the Shagan Box Office located in the Center’s lobby at 566 LaGuardia Place. Regular box office hours are Tuesday–Saturday, from noon to 6 p.m. plus two hours prior to performance.

For more information about the show, including a complete list of performers, visit www.nyclu.org/broadway.

To see photos of last year’s concert, click here.

The Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is the premier venue for the presentation of cultural and performing arts events for New York University and lower Manhattan. Led by executive producer Jay Oliva (President Emeritus, NYU) and senior director Michael Harrington, the programs of the Skirball Center reflect NYU's mission as an international center of scholarship, defined by excellence and innovation and shaped by an intellectually rich and diverse environment. A vital aspect of the Center's mission is to build young adult audiences for the future of live performance.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is one of the nation's foremost defenders of civil liberties and civil rights.  Founded in 1951 as the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, we are a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization with eight chapters and regional offices and nearly 50,000 members across the state.  Our mission is to defend and promote the fundamental principles and values embodied in the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, and the New York Constitution, including freedom of speech and religion, and the right to privacy, equality and due process of law for all New Yorkers.

www.nyclu.org
www.twitter.com/nyclu
https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-Civil-Liberties-Union-NYCLU/106138222116

 

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     Directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman (Maple and Vine at Playwrights Horizons, The Thugs, Stunning, Naked Angels’ This Wide Night) in a completely new production, DETROIT will be presented as the first production of the theater company’s upcoming 2012/2013 Season.  The production will begin previews Friday, August 24 in advance of a mid-September Opening Night (date TBA) at the company’s Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street). The limited engagement is currently scheduled to play through Sunday, October 7.

     Amy Ryan returns to Playwrights Horizons for the first time since appearing in On the Mountain in 2005.  She made her Broadway debut in Uncle Vanya (Tony Award nomination) and appeared as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tony Award nomination).  She also starred in Neil LaBute’s The Distance from Here in London’s West End.  On film, for her acclaimed performance in Gone Baby Gone, she was recognized with Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, as well as National Board of Review and Broadcast Film Critics Association awards, among others.  Her other film credits include Win Win, Green Zone, Jack Goes Boating, Changeling, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Capote, Dan in Real Life, War of the Worlds, Keane and You Can Count On Me, as well as the upcoming The Tomb and the untitled Drake Doremus project. Her extensive TV appearances include her starring roles as Holly on “The Office,” Adele on “In Treatment” and Officer Beatrice ‘Beadie’ Russell on “The Wire.”

     David Schwimmer is a film, stage and television actor and director.  He makes his Playwrights Horizons debut and returns to the New York stage for the first time since his Broadway debut in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.  Well-known to TV audiences for his Emmy-nominated performance as Ross on the long-running hit comedy “Friends,” he’s also the co-founder of the Lookingglass Theatre Company of Chicago, recipient of the 2011 Tony Award for Regional Theater.  In addition to his extensive work with Lookingglass, his many stage appearances include the premieres of D Girl and Turnaround in Los Angeles, Glimmer Brothers at Williamstown Theatre Festival and Some Girls in London.  Other notable television and film appearances include  “Band of Brothers,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the upcoming “Web Therapy” (reuniting him with Lisa Kudrow), Madagascar 1, 2 (and the upcoming Part 3:Europe’s Most Wanted), Nothing But the Truth, Duane Hopwood, Big Nothing, Six Days Seven Nights, Apt Pupil, The Pallbearer and the upcoming The Iceman. 

     Somewhere in the suburbs of a mid-sized city, Ben (Mr. Schwimmer) and Mary (Ms. Ryan) welcome into their lives the rootless couple who move in next door.  But as this foursome bonds over backyard barbecues, the neighborly connection they find threatens to unravel the lives they’ve built and change them forever.  An ecstatic, dangerous new comedy, DETROIT exposes the nerves that live just under the surface of American life today.

     DETROIT had its World Premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in September 2010.  In his review of that production, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called it, “A terrific new play.  This scary-funny comedy speaks to the fractious, frightened American moment more perceptively than any play I’ve ever seen on a New York stage.  Hilarious and disturbing, DETROIT is a powerful, funny play.”  Chris Jones in The Chicago Tribune hailed it as, “A major new play.  Lisa D’Amour has penned a very provocative snapshot of the perilous moment.”  Steven Oxman of Variety raved, calling it “A smart and funny new play.  Convincing and compelling and tartly funny.  This may well be the most effective play yet produced about our current economic doldrums.”  And Time Out-Chicago called it “A biting new comedy of economic anxiety.”

     The production will feature scenic design by Louisa Thompson, costume design by Kaye Voyce, lighting design by Mark Barton and sound design by Matt Tierney.  Production Stage Manager will be Charles M. Turner III.

     Additional casting for DETROIT will be announced in the coming weeks.

     The performance schedule for DETROIT will be Tuesdays at 7PM, Wednesdays through Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2:30 PM & 8PM and Sundays at 2:30 PM & 7:30 PM.  Single tickets, $75, will go on sale to the general public beginning the week of July 23 and may be purchased online via www.TicketCentral.com, by phone at (212) 279-4200 (Noon-8pm daily), or in person at the Ticket Central Box Office, 416 West 42nd Street (between Ninth & Tenth Avenues).

     Playwrights Horizons’ season productions are generously supported in part by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. 

     Playwrights Horizons is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.  In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.

     Following DETROIT, the 2012/2013 Season will feature THE WHALE,  the New York premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Samuel D. Hunter, directed by Davis McCallum; THE GREAT GOD PAN, the World Premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog, directed by Carolyn Cantor; THE FLICK, the World Premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Annie Baker, directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold; THE CALL, the World Premiere of a new play by Tanya Barfield, directed by Obie Award winner Leigh Silverman; and FAR FROM HEAVEN, the World Premiere of a new musical featuring a book by Tony Award winner & two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg, music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel, lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie, based on the 2002 Focus Features / Vulcan Productions motion picture Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes, and directed by three-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif.

     For subscription and ticket information to all Playwrights Horizons productions, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200, Noon to 8 pm daily, or purchase online at the Ticket Central website at www.TicketCentral.org.

www.PlaywrightsHorizons.org

BIOGRAPHIES

Amy Ryan (Mary) returns to Playwrights Horizons for the first time since appearing in On the Mountain in 2005.  She made her Broadway debut in the 2000 production of Uncle Vanya, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play.  In 2005, she appeared as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, earning her second Tony nomination.  She also starred in Neil LaBute’s The Distance from Here in London’s West End.  On film, for her acclaimed performance in 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, she was recognized with Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.  Additionally, she won numerous Best Supporting Actress awards including those from the National Board of Review, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle and the L.A. Film Critics.  Her other film credits include Win Win, Green Zone, Jack Goes Boating, Changeling, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Capote, Dan in Real Life, War of the Worlds, Keane, You Can Count On Me, Bob Funk and The Missing Person. She will next be seen starring opposite Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones this fall in writer/director Drake Doremus’ yet-to-be-titled film produced by Indian Paintbrush and Jonathan Schwartz. Amy will also be seen starring in The Tomb for Summit opposite Sylvester Stallone, Jim Caviezel, 50 Cent and Vincent D’Onofrio. Amy’s extensive television work includes her starring portrayals as Holly on “The Office,” Adele on “In Treatment” and Office Beatrice ‘Beadie’ Russell on “The Wire.” Amy was raised in Queens, where she attended the High School of the Performing Arts.  She resides in New York City.

David Schwimmer (Ben) is a co-founder of the Lookingglass Theatre Company of Chicago, recipient of the 2011 Tony Award for Best Regional Theater.  He has acted in and directed many productions for Lookingglass including Trust, Our Town, West, The Master and Margarita, The Jungle, Eye of the Beholder, The Odyssey, The Idiot, Of One Blood and his and ensemble member Joy Gregory's adaptation of Studs Terkel’s book Race.  He starred in the premieres of D Girl and Turnaround in Los Angeles, Glimmer Brothers at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Some Girls in London and the revival of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial on Broadway.  This summer, Schwimmer will reprise his role of Melman by lending his voice to Madagascar 3:  Europe's Most Wanted, which will be released by DreamWorks and Paramount on June 8.  Schwimmer also recently completed production on Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman with Chris Evans, Winona Ryder and Michael Shannon, and reunites with Lisa Kudrow for an episode of “Web Therapy” on Showtime.  Other notable film and television credits include Nothing But the Truth, Madagascar I & II, Duane Hopwood, Big Nothing, “Band of Brothers,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Six Days Seven Nights, Apt Pupil, The Pallbearer and the hit comedy series “Friends,” for which he received an Emmy Award nomination.  His film and television directing includes “Friends,” “Since You’ve Been Gone,” Run, Fat Boy, Run, the HBO series “Little Britain USA” and Trust starring Clive Owen, Catherine Keener and Viola Davis.  He is on the Board of Directors of the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica, California.

Lisa D’Amour (Playwright) is a playwright and one half of PearlDamour, an Obie award-winning interdisciplinary performance company she runs with Katie Pearl.   Lisa’s plays have been produced by theaters across the U.S., including The Women’s Project, Clubbed Thumb, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, New Georges (all in NYC), Salvage Vanguard Theater (Austin, TX), Catastrophic Theatre (Houston, TX), ArtSpot Productions (New Orleans, LA) and Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis, MN).  Lisa collaborates on site-specific performances.  In 2008, Lisa created a performance for visual artist SWOON’s Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a flotilla of six boats created from salvaged materials that navigated the Hudson River, performing in riverfront parks from Troy, NY to New York City. Detroit, originally produced by Steppenwolf Theater Company, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.  In 2008, D’Amour was awarded the Alpert Award for the Arts in theater and in 2011, she received the Steinberg Playwright Award.  Lisa received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin and is a New Dramatists alumna.

Anne Kauffman (Director) won an Obie Award for her work on The Thugs by Adam Bock (SoHo Rep).  She previously worked at Playwrights Horizons on Jordan Harrison’s Maple and Vine and also collaborated with Mr. Harrison on the World Premieres of Maple and Vine (Humana Festival, 2011), Act a Lady (Humana Festival, 2006) and The Flea and the Professor (Williamstown, 2011).  Other New York credits include The Civilians’ You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents’ divorce (The Flea), This Wide Night with Edie Falco and Alison Pill (Naked Angels), Stunning by David Adjmi (Lincoln Center Theater 3), Dan LeFranc’s Sixty Miles to Silver Lake (SoHo Rep/Page 73), God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz (Vineyard/New Georges), The Loyal Opposition by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (NYTW), Hang Ten by Karen Hartman (Women’s Project), The Ladies by Anne Washburn (The Civilians), Dot (Clubbed Thumb) and Sides: The Fear Is Real (Culture Project). Regional work includes The Civilians’ You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents’ divorce (Williamstown), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Yale Rep), Becky Shaw (Wilma Theater, Barrymore Awards for Best Production, Best Director), Six Degrees of Separation with Tim Daly and Margaret Colin (Williamstown), Communist Dracula Pageant (American Repertory Theater), Have You Seen Steve Steven (13P), Doubt (Asolo Repertory Theater) and Typographer’s Dream (Encore Theater).  Anne is a 2010 recipient of the Lilly Award in Direction and a 2010 recipient of the Alan Schneider Director Award.  She is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an alumnus of the Soho Rep Writers and Directors Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Drama League of New York, a founding member of The Civilians and was a 2003-2004 New Dramatist Resident Director and a member of New Georges Kitchen Cabinet.  Anne received her MFA in directing from UCSD.

Playwrights Horizons is a writer’s theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work. Under the leadership of artistic director Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, the theater company continues to encourage the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. In its 42 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, including a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.”  Notable productions include five Pulitzer Prize winners: Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2011 winner), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George – as well as Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (three 2010 Obie Awards including Best New American Play), Bathsheba Doran’s Kin, Adam Bock’s A Small Fire, Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I, Melissa James Gibson’s This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist), Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie’s Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas’s Prayer For My Enemy and  Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp’s Kindness, Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, David Greenspan’s She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins, William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room, A.R. Gurney’s Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet.

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The production stars Grammy-winning international pop icon Ricky Martin as Che, Olivier Award-winning Argentinean actress Elena Roger making her Broadway debut as Eva Perón and Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris as Juan Perón. The cast also features Christina DeCicco as the alternate for Eva (Wed eve; Sat mat), Max von Essen as Magaldi and Rachel Potter as the Mistress. Directed by Tony and Olivier Award-winner Michael Grandage and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Rob Ashford, EVITAbegan previews March 12 and opened on April 5, 2012 at The Marquis Theatre (1535 Broadway).  This is the first new production of the seven-time Tony Award-winning musical since it debuted on Broadway over 30 years ago.

The cast of 36 also includes Ashley Amber, George Lee Andrews, Wendi Bergamini, Eric L. Christian, Kristine Covillo, Colin Cunliffe, Margot de La Barre, Bradley Dean, Rebecca Eichenberger, Melanie Field, Jennie Ford, Maya Jade Frank, Constantine Germanacos, Laurel Harris, Bahiyah Hibah, Nick Kenkel, Brad Little, Erica Mansfield, Emily Mechler, Isabela Moner, Sydney Morton, Jessica Lea Patty, Aleks Pevec, Kristie Dale Sanders, Timothy Shew, Michaeljon Slinger, Johnny Stellard, Alex Michael Stoll, Daniel Torres and Matt Wall.

The creative team includes Tony Award-winning Scenic and Costume Designer Christopher Oram (Red), Tony Award-winning Lighting Designer Neil Austin (Red), Olivier Award-winning Sound Designer Mick Potter (Woman In White), Wig and Hair Designer Richard Mawbey (Frost/Nixon), Projection Designer Zachary Borovay (Rock of Ages), and Music Supervisor/Director Kristen Blodgette (The Phantom of the Opera), Orchestrations are by Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Cullen (Sunset Boulevard), and dance arrangements are by David Chase (Billy Elliot).

The EVITA performance schedule is Monday at 8:00PM, Tuesday at 7:00PM, and Wednesday–Saturday at 8:00PM, with matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2:00PM.  At Wednesday evening and Saturday matinee performances, the role of Eva will be performed by Christina DeCicco (Glinda in Wicked; Sister Act).  Beginning September 2012, the performance schedule is Tuesday at 7:00PM, Wednesday–Sunday at 8:00PM, with matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2:00PM, and Sundays at 3:00 PM. Christina DeCicco will then perform the role of Eva during Wednesday and Saturday matinees.

Eva Perón used her beauty and charisma to rise meteorically from the slums of Argentina to the presidential mansion as First Lady. She won international acclaim and adoration from her own people as a champion of the poor, while glamour, power and greed made her the world’s first major political celebrity. 

EVITA tells Eva’s passionate and tragic story through Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most dazzling and beloved score, including “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “Buenos Aires,” “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” and “High Flying Adored,” together with “You Must Love Me,” the Oscar-winning hit from the film EVITA.

After researching the life of Eva Perón for many years, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber released EVITA in 1976 as a concept album with Julie Covington as Evita and it became a world-wide hit.  Soon after, the production debuted on stage in London's West End starring Elaine Paige and directed by Hal Prince.  The production transferred to Broadway and opened in 1979 starring Patti LuPone, who went on to win one of the seven 1980 Tony Awards the show earned.  A major 1996 film of the musical was made starring Madonna as Evita and Antonio Banderas as Ché.  Michael Grandage’s production of EVITA, which opened in 2006, took London by storm and garnered critical acclaim for the show and its leading lady, Elena Roger. 

TICKETS

Tickets range from $67-$142, and are on sale now. Purchase online or by visiting the Marquis Theatre Box Office at 1535 Broadway (entrance on 46th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue) in New York City.

www.EvitaOnBroadway.com
www.facebook.com/evitaonbroadway 

#EVITABROADWAY

“It is an honor to be invited to join the leadership of this outstanding training program,” Jenkins said. “The University of Illinois is, of course, one of the great international research universities, with a library system that towers above others in this country. I have long been aware of the fine education offered to aspiring theatre artists by the Department of Theatre, and I am extremely impressed with the quality of the students I have met. The talented, dedicated professionals who teach these students is a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of superb artists and scholars including the Tony Award-winning director Daniel Sullivan. The University’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is one of the most remarkable—and busiest—facilities to be found at any institution of higher education. I look forward to collaborating with KCPA Director Mike Ross and other members of the Board of Producers as we develop and present artistic works—and cutting-edge theatre artists—that have an impact far beyond our campus and lead us deep into the 21st century.”

Dean Robert Graves, of the College of Fine and Applied Arts, said, “Illinois is thrilled that Jeffrey Eric Jenkins has agreed to become the leader of its distinguished theatre program. Jenkins has enjoyed fine careers in both the professional and academic theatre worlds, has directed and published widely, and is a proven and innovative administrator of academic theatre-training programs.”

Jenkins took note of his 14-year career at New York University saying, “My colleagues and students in the Drama Department at the Tisch School of the Arts have helped to prepare me for the coming challenge. I am especially grateful to the four department chairs with whom I have served. Professors Una Chaudhuri, Kevin Kuhlke, Elizabeth Bradley, and Louis Scheeder all taught me many valuable lessons about leadership in the academy. Each of them, in his or her own way, mentored me as a colleague and all of them have become dear friends. In the serendipity that is a career in the theatre, it surprises me that I have worked for so long in one place. As a result, NYU will always feel like home, but I now have an opportunity to help make an artistic and educational home for the current and coming generations of artists and scholars.”

Jenkins also addressed the future of the Best Plays Theater Yearbook series, which currently has its nonprofit home in the NYU Department of English: “Although fallout from the 2008 economic restructuring caused delays in the production and publication of the Best Plays Theater Yearbook series, generous support from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Dorothy Strelsin Foundation, and the Jack and Mimi Amsterdam Foundation have ensured that the series will see at least three more volumes in print—with an electronic version still in planning.” Jenkins will retain oversight of the series as members of the editorial staff prepare material for coming volumes, and members of the editorial board take on additional duties to be announced at a later date.

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“Like our title character, we’re delighted to have found a home!” said producer Arielle Tepper Madover.   “I couldn’t be more thrilled that ANNIE will be back on Broadway ‘Playing the Palace’ in the heart of the theatre district and in a legendary Broadway theatre.”

 

ANNIE features music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and book by Thomas Meehan, based on the newspaper character “Little Orphan Annie” by Harold Gray.   The new production of ANNIE is directed by three-time Tony Award®-winner James Lapine and choreographed by Tony Award®-winner Andy Blankenbuehler. 

Eleven-year-old Lilla Crawford (Billy Elliot) will star as Annie, with Emily Rosenfeld as Molly, the littlest orphan; Tyrah Skye Odoms as Kate, the next-to-littlest orphan; Junah Jang as Tessie, the cry-baby orphan; Georgi James as Pepper, the toughest orphan; Madi Rae DiPietro as July, the quietest orphan and Taylor Richardson as Duffy, the biggest orphan.  Jaidyn Young will be the standby for the roles of Annie, Pepper, Duffy and July.  Richardson will understudy the role of Annie. 

Additional casting will be announced in coming weeks. 

Group tickets for ANNIE are now on sale.  Contact Nederlander Sales & Patron Services at 212-840-3890/800-714-8452 or email nygroups@nederlander.com for details. 

The original production of ANNIE opened April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre and went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, seven Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and seven Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Best Book (Thomas Meehan) and Best Score (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin).  The show was one of the biggest Broadway musical hits of the 1970s, running for almost six years and playing 2,377 performances. 

The score for ANNIE includes “Maybe,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” “Easy Street,” “I Don’t Need Anything But You” and the eternal anthem of optimism, “Tomorrow”. 

The creative team includes scenic design by Drama Desk Award-winner David Korins, costume design by Tony Award-winner Susan Hilferty, lighting design by two-time Tony Award-winner Donald Holder and sound design by Tony Award-winner Brian Ronan.  Music director is Todd Ellison.  Hair and wig design is by Tom Watson.  Casting is by Telsey + Company.  Animal training is by Tony Award-winner William Berloni.   

ANNIE will be produced on Broadway by Arielle Tepper Madover, Roger Horchow, Sally Horchow, Roger Berlind, Roy Furman, Debbie Bisno, Stacey Mindich, Nederlander Presentations, Inc., Jane Bergère/Daryl Roth and Eva Price/Christina Papagjika.

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www.AnnieTheMusical.com
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BIOGRAPHIES

Lilla Crawford (Annie) made her Broadway debut in 2011, playing Debbie in the closing cast of Billy Elliot on Broadway.   She was featured in a workshop production of Craig Wright’s Melissa Arctic.  She has also performed in 14 shows with YADA (Youth Academy of Dramatic Arts) in her native Los Angeles.

Emily Rosenfeld (Molly) is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut as Molly in this production of ANNIE.  She is an eight-year-old singer, actor and dancer who hails from Westchester, NY. Emily’s love affair with theater began when she stepped on the Star Kidz stage at the age of three. She continued performing at Random Farms Kids’ Theater; favorite roles include: Gretl in The Sound of Music, Dickon in The Secret Garden, Michael Darling in Peter Pan and Big Jule in Guys and Dolls. Emily recently appeared as Hendrika in the Off-Broadway Actor’s Fund benefit reading of Miracle on 34th Street, The Musical.  She also sings with the Broadway Youth Ensemble and enjoys creating works of art and writing original plays and music in her spare time. Emily is grateful to Amelia DeMayo, Gulnara Mitzanova, Renae Baker, Janine Molinari, Gail Pennington Crutchfield, her agent - David Doan at Generation TV and most importantly, her supportive and loving friends and family. This is truly a dream come true! Learn more about Emily at www.emilyrosenfeld.net.

Tyrah Skye Odoms (Kate) is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut playing Kate in ANNIE.  The seven-year-old New Jersey native has performed with the Maple Shade Community Alliance Summer Theatre Program, the MSHS Performing Arts Department and the Bridge Players Theatre.  Tyrah has even had the privilege of opening up for Diverse Pop Group!  In addition to her stage experience, Tyrah has been featured in several print campaigns and runway shows, such as New York Fashion Week.  She has previously studied ballet and jazz with the Marcia Hyland Dance Company.  Tyrah would like to send her love and thanks to Mom, Dad, Tyree and the rest of her family and friends.  Special thanks also go to the following people who have helped support Tyrah’s ambitions: Gina Amato, John Demchak, Katie McBurnie, Rose Young, Telsey & Company, Sabina (KRS) and Barry Kolker (Carson Org.).  Tyrah cannot wait to work with Tony Award-winning director James Lapine, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and the entire Broadway cast of ANNIE! 

Junah Jang (Tessie) is thrilled to make her Broadway debut at age nine.  She has performed at youth theaters: Seussical The Musical (Jojo), Annie (Molly), The Sound of Music (Gretl), Schoolhouse Rock Live! (Shulie). Thanks to Jill, Bob, Trent, Melissa and friends for support. Special thanks and love to Mom, Dad, Minoo, and family.

Georgi James (Pepper) 11 years old, played the role of Debbie in the Broadway production of Billy Elliot and was also seen on Broadway in A Tale of Two Cities.  She played Olive Hoover in the premiere of James Lapine and William Finn’s Little Miss Sunshine at La Jolla Playhouse. Recently, Georgi has been a proud part of the development of Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Fun Home, a musical based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. She was also part of the award-winning ensemble cast who performed Horton Foote’s nine-act play The Orphans’ Home Cycle at both Hartford Stage and Signature Theatre Company.  Georgi currently plays bass guitar at The School of Rock where she performs with their house band, playing Jersey Shore venues including the legendary Stone Pony. She is grateful to everyone at Telsey and Co., James Lapine, Mark Schneider, Arielle Tepper Madover and the entire creative team for this amazing opportunity. She sends love and thanks to her teachers Devin Ilaw, Steven Silverstein, Amelia DeMayo, ADA and Dance Molinari.  Love and a big thank you to her family and agent Barry Kolker for always supporting her. Georgi’s mom played an orphan 30 years ago in Broadway’s National touring company of Annie and is so proud to be following in her footsteps.

Madi Rae DiPietro (July) is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut as July in ANNIE.  Born and raised in San Diego, California, 12-year-old Madi Rae made her musical theater debut at the La Jolla Playhouse as a pageant girl in Little Miss Sunshine.  She has also appeared in the Lyceum Theatre’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in their holiday production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  An accomplished dancer, Madi Rae has trained in ballet, jazz, tap and lyrical dance as well as in musical theatre and choreography.  She made her television debut in the NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives” when she was six.  Since then, she has been featured in numerous commercials for Disney Resorts, Legoland, Walmart and Hasbro Toys.  When not performing, Madi Rae enjoys golf, swimming and skiing and is an aspiring artist.  She is excited to be living in New York City and to be a part of this amazing cast.

Taylor Richardson (Duffy, u/s Annie ) is excited to make her Broadway debut in ANNIE.   She is from Richmond, VA where she loves to read and write stories. Her most recent regional credit is as “Susan Waverly” in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.  Taylor has been dancing since age 3 with Ann Catherine Cross School of Dance and has won multiple dance titles and awards across the region.   She takes voice lessons with Cathy Motley-Fitch and plays piano and accordion.  She would like to thank her mom, dad, and little brother Sawyer for making the move to NYC and helping make her dream come true!

Jaidyn Young (Standby for Annie, Pepper, Duffy, July) age 11, is ecstatic to be living a dream come true, making her Broadway debut in her very favorite show!  Regional: Annie in Annie (Performance Riverside), Marta in The Sound of Music (3D Theatricals),Child Soloist at age 7 for Glory of Christmas (Crystal Cathedral), also in the National Merit film Voice in Silence as the lead role Abby. Thanks to all who have inspired and believed in me: Jodie Bowman at KSR, Telsey Casting, Jason Wooten, TJ Dawson, Roger Castellanos, Patrick Hediger, Tracy Berry, my friends and incredible family! Especially mom, dad, and my sister. www.JaidynStarYoung.com

Thomas Meehan (Book) won the 2001 Tony Award® for co-writing the book of The Producers with Mel Brooks, and then went on to win the 2003 Tony Award® for co-writing the book of Hairspray with Mark O’Donnell.  He received his first Tony Award® in 1977 for writing the book of Annie, which was his first Broadway show, and he has since written books for, among others, the musicals I Remember Mama; Ain’t Broadway Grand; Annie Warbucks and the American version of Bombay Dreams.  His most recent works are the Broadway musicals Young Frankenstein, for which he co-wrote the book with Mel Brooks; Cry-Baby, co-written with Mark O’Donnell; and Elf, co-written with Bob Martin.  Meanwhile, the summer of 2010 saw the limited-run premiere of Death Takes a Holiday, for which he co-wrote the book with the late Peter Stone to music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. Future projects include Rocky, for which he has written the book to lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. Other works in earlier stages of development include musicals based on the life of Charlie Chaplin, the movie Tootsie, and the movie Dave.  In addition, he is a long-time contributor of humor pieces, including “Yma Dream,” to The New Yorker; an Emmy Award-winning writer of television comedy; and a collaborator on a number of screenplays, including Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, To Be or Not to Be and the film version of The Producers.  He is also the co-author, with the poet J.D. McClatchy, of the libretto of 1984, an opera composed by Lorin Maazel, based on George Orwell’s classic novel, which had its world premiere in the spring of 2005 at London’s Royal Opera House and was performed in 2008 at La Scala, in Milan, and last year at the opera house in Valencia.  Mr. Meehan is a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild and a winner of the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre as well as a pair of London’s Olivier Awards.

Charles Strouse (Music) Charles Strouse’s music has been an integral part of American culture for over 40 years.  His first Broadway musical was the smash hit Bye Bye Birdie (written with long time collaborator Lee Adams).  It won him a Tony Award® for Best Score and paved the way for his next show All American (book by Mel Brooks).  In 1964, Golden Boy (starring Sammy Davis, Jr.) earned four Tony Award® nominations, and in 1966, Strouse went on to write the Broadway favorite It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Superman! (based on the popular comic strip). In 1970, Applause (starring Lauren Bacall) won him his second Tony Award®.  In 1977, he adapted another comic strip for the stage –

Annie – which went on to become a worldwide phenomenon and garnered Strouse yet another Tony (in addition to two Grammys).  Some of his other musicals include Dance A Little Closer (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), Charlie & Algernon (Tony nomination), Rags (Tony nomination) and Nick & Nora (Tony nomination).  Film scores include Bonnie & Clyde, There Was a Crooked Man, The Night They Raided Minsky’s and the animated All Dogs Go To Heaven.  He also wrote the theme song “Those Were the Days” for the groundbreaking television show “All in the Family.”  Strouse’s writing also extends into orchestral works, chamber music, piano concertos and opera.  His “Concerto America” premiered at The Boston Pops in 2004, and his opera Nightingale (starring Sarah Brightman) had a long and successful run in London’s West End.  A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Strouse studied under Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger. In 1977, he founded the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop in New York.  He is the recipient of the Richard Rodgers as well as the Oscar Hammerstein Award. He is also a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  His book, Put On A Happy Face: A Broadway Memoir was released in June 2008.

Martin Charnin (Lyrics) In 1970, Charnin secured the rights to the celebrated long-running Chicago Tribune comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” created by Harold Gray.  He ultimately entered into collaboration with Charles Strouse and Tom Meehan to turn the strip into an original Broadway musical.  He maintained the rights until 1976 when Michael Price and the Goodspeed Opera House produced Annie, which was subsequently picked up by Lewis Allen and Mike Nichols and brought to Broadway in April, 1977.  It played for 2,377 performances and won seven Tony Awards®, with Charnin as lyricist and director.  Charnin has directed 19 other productions of Annie including all of its first class national companies, three West End productions, and productions in Holland and Australia.  His last production was in 2005, celebrating Annie’s 30th anniversary.  He began his professional career in 1957, creating the role of Big Deal in the original Broadway company of West Side Story, and he sang “Gee, Officer Krupke” for 1,000 performances.  Since then, he has been the director, lyricist, composer, librettist or a combination of the aforementioned for over 125 theatrical ventures.  He has collaborated with Peter Allen, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Marvin Hamlisch, Peter Stone, Mary Rodgers and Alan Jay Lerner, as well as two musicals with Richard Rodgers, Two by Two and I Remember Mama.  His other Broadway productions include Hot Spot, The First, Lena Horne; The Lady and Her Music, Café Crown, A Little Family Business, The Flowering Peach, Nash at Nine and the off-Broadway productions of Upstairs at O’Neals, The No Frills Revue, Carnal Knowledge, Put It In Writing, Music, Music and in London, Bar Mitzvah Boy, Bless the Bride and The 9 ½ Quid Revue.  He conceived and directed The National Lampoon Show which ultimately became “Saturday Night Live”.  He has written for, or directed Fred Astaire, Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, Joel Grey, Ann-Margaret, Danny Kaye, Johnny Mathis, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Meatloaf, Bebe Neuwirth, Bernadette Peters, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gilda Radner, Chita Rivera, Liv Ullman, Lou Reed, Susan Sarandon, Joan Rivers, Jon Stuart, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, and Catherine Zeta Jones (who made her stage debut as “Molly” in his first London production of Annie in 1978).  He has conceived, written, and directed eight musical-variety television programs: Anne Bancroft in “Annie, the Woman in the Life of a Man,” “Annie and the Hoods,” (again with Anne Bancroft), “George M,” “'S’Wonderful, S’Marvelous, S’Gershwin,” “Cole Porter in Paris,” “Get Happy,” “Dames at Sea” and “The Annie Christmas Show”.  He has been nominated for, or received six Tonys, six Grammys, three Emmys, three Gold Records, two Platinum records, six Drama Desk Awards, The Peabody Award for Broadcasting, and Jay-Z’s album “Hard Knock Life,” which went triple platinum.  Now in the works are:  Softly (a musical with a score by the late Harold Arlen), Robin Hood (with Thomas Meehan and Peter Sipos).  This fall, he will direct the new pre-Broadway production of Two by Two starring Jason Alexander and write the lyrics for and direct Skin Deep, a new Broadway bound musical, about what happens to Cinderella's wicked mother and unattractive step-sisters after Prince Charming fits the Glass Slipper on Cinderella.  His other projects include the Time-Life double disc Annie 30th Anniversary production album, which also contains songs from Annie 2, “Rodgers & ...” a concert celebration of the music of Richard Rodgers and his six lyricists.  Mr. Charnin functioned as narrator of the piece, which presented some 70 Rodgers songs and opened the 2009 season at “Lyrics & Lyricists” at the 92nd Street Y.  In the Pacific Northwest, he has directed Shadowlands, Love is Love, Sleuth and is structuring a one-woman show for his wife and former Annie "Star-to-be" Shelly Burch.

James Lapine (Director) has worked with Stephen Sondheim on Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Passion.  He also recently directed Merrily We Roll Along for Encores, and Sondheim on Sondheim for the Roundabout Theatre Company. With William Finn he has worked on Falsettos, A New Brain, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the soon to be produced Little Miss Sunshine.   Other Broadway credits: The Diary of Anne Frank, Golden Child and Amour. He has written the plays: Table Settings, Twelve Dreams, Luck, Pluck & Virtue, The Moment When, Fran’s Bed and Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing.  For the NY Shakespeare Festival he has directed A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter’s Tale and King Lear. He has received 11 Tony nominations, winning 3 times. He has also won 5 Drama Desk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George. He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2011. For more information see JamesLapine.com.

Andy Blankenbuehler (Choreographer) won the 2008 Tony Award® for his choreography in the Tony Award-winning Best Musical In The Heights (also Lortel, Calloway, Outer Critics and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Choreography). Other Broadway projects include 9 to 5 (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics nominations), The People In The Picture and the revival of The Apple Tree. Other recent credits include The Wiz (City Center), Desperately Seeking Susan (West End) and the world premiere of Bring It On: The Musical, currently on tour. He has staged concert work for both Elton John and Bette Midler and has appeared as a guest choreographer on “So You Think You Can Dance”. As a performer, Mr. Blankenbuehler has danced on Broadway in Fosse, Contact, Man of La Mancha, Saturday Night Fever, Steel Pier, Big and Guys and Dolls. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Blankenbuehler resides in New York City, with his wife and two children, Luca and Sofia.

David Korins (Scenic Designer) Broadway: Chinglish, Godspell, Magic/Bird, An Evening with Patti Lupone & Mandy Patinkin, Lombardi, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, Bridge & Tunnel, Passing Strange and Motown (upcoming). He has designed shows for many Off-Broadway and regional theaters as well as several concerts for Kanye West. In 2013, he will be designing world premiere operas at the San Francisco Opera and the Santa Fe Opera Company. David is the proud recipient of a Drama Desk, a Lucille Lortel, two Hewes Design Awards and the 2009 Obie Award For Sustained Excellence in Design. davidkorinsdesign.com

Susan Hilferty (Costume Designer) has designed more than 300 productions for theatres across America and internationally. Her directorial collaborators include Athol Fugard (set, costumes, co-director), Michael Mayer, James Lapine, Robert Falls, Robert Woodruff, Joe Mantello, JoAnne Akalaitis, Garland Wright, Mark Lamos, Frank Galati, Des McAnuff, Sharon Ott, David Petrarca, Richard Nelson, Christopher Ashley, Kenny Leon, Laurie Anderson, Tony Kushner, Carole Rothman, Garry Hynes and Emily Mann. Upcoming and recent work: Rigoletto (Metropolitan Opera 2012/2013), Taylor Swift “Speak Now” World Tour.  Broadway: Wonderland, Sondheim on Sondheim, Spring Awakening (Tony nomination), Lestat (Tony nomination), Assassins, Into the Woods (Hewes Award, Tony nomination), Dirty Blonde. She chairs Graduate Design Department at NYU/Tisch. Her numerous awards include the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Wicked.

Donald Holder (Lighting Designer) Broadway: Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Leap Of Faith,  The Motherf***er with the Hat, Promises, Promises, Arcadia, Come Fly Away, South Pacific (2008 Tony Award®), Ragtime, Les Liasons Dangereuses, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gem of The Ocean, Movin’ Out, Juan Darien (all Tony-nominated), The Lion King (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards, Paris Moliere Award, London Olivier nomination), Cyrano de Bergerac (Henry Hewes Award), Radio Golf, The Little Dog Laughed, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Little Shop of Horrors, Prelude to a Kiss, The Boy From Oz, many others. Off-Broadway: Blood and Gifts, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Romeo and Juliet (Delacorte), Almost an Evening, A Man of No Importance, Birdie Blue, Observe The Sons of Ulster... (Lortel Award), Jitney, Saturday Night, Three Days of Rain, many others.  Television: “Smash” Season One:  NBC-Dreamworks.  Opera:  The Magic Flute (NY Metropolitan Opera), Two Boys (English National and the Met), Moby Dick (Dallas Opera, Opera Australia, San Diego Opera), Dark Sisters (Music Theatre Group and Philadelphia Opera Co), Grendel (Los Angeles Opera, Lincoln Center Festival, New York), many others. Mr. Holder has designed at resident theatres across the US.

Brian Ronan (Lighting Designer) has designed the sound for over twenty Broadway musicals and plays. Some recent designs include The Book of Mormon (Tony Award®), Anything Goes (Drama Desk), American Idiot, Promises, Promises, Next to Normal (Tony nomination), Grease, Curtains, Spring Awakening as well as Grey Gardens and The Pajama Game, which both earned Drama Desk nominations.  Off Broadway designs include Rent, Everyday Rapture, Saved, 10 Million Miles and Bug (Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards).  Regional designs include Giant (Dallas Theatre Center), Bonnie & Clyde (LaJolla), Dancing in the Dark (The Old Globe), A Christmas Carol (McCarter).  His career has spanned 25 years and taken him across America, Europe and Asia and has afforded him the opportunity to work with the most talented composers, directors, designers, actors, musicians and stagehands in the world for which he is eternally grateful.

Tom Watson (Hair and Wig Designer) is head of the wig and makeup department at the Metropolitan Opera.  He has designed wigs for more than 50 Broadway productions.  Current and recent Broadway designs include On a Clear Day..., How to Succeed..., Wonderland, House of Blue Leaves, Born Yesterday, The Addams Family, Million Dollar Quartet, Rock of Ages, Wicked, Promises, Promises, Elling, Mrs. Warren's Profession, South Pacific, Sondheim on Sondheim, A View from the Bridge and Sunday in the Park with George.

Todd Ellison (Musical Director) Broadway: La Cage aux Folles, Monty Python's Spamalot, Lestat, Amour, 42nd Street, Wild Party, On the Town, Once Upon a Mattress, How to Succeed..., She Loves Me, Cats, Starlight Express, Annie 2, Encores! On the Town and No, No, Nanette. Composed incidental music: A Class Act, Taller Than a Dwarf. International: Vienna Konzerthaus: Jerry Hadley, Dawn Upshaw, Dublin Film Orchestra, Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, Carnegie Hall: Jubilee. Has accompanied such stars as: Nicole Kidman, Barry Manilow, Natalie Portman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Meryl Streep. 

Telsey + Company (Casting) Broadway casting credits include Evita, Newsies, The Best Man, Magic/Bird, A Streetcar Named Desire, Godspell, Memphis, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Porgy and Bess, Sister Act, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Rock of Ages, Wicked, The Normal Heart, The Addams Family, Next to Normal, Rent, In the Heights, South Pacific, and Hairspray.  Film credits include the upcoming The Odd Life of Timothy Green and Friends with Kids as well as I Love You Philip Morris, Margin Call, The Other Woman, Main Street, Howl, Rachel Getting Married, Sex and the City 2, Sex and the City: The Movie, Across the Universe, Dan in Real Life, Pieces of April and Rent.  Telsey + Company has also cast several television projects, including the current series “Smash” for NBC, “A Gifted Man” for CBS and “The Big C” for Showtime.  Credits also include several national tours, off-Broadway productions, regional theatre productions, and commercials.  www.telseyandco.com

William Berloni (Animal Trainer) 2011 Recipient of the Tony Award® Honor for Excellence in Theater.  Mr. Berloni’s Broadway animal training credits include the original Sandy in Annie, Camelot with Richard Burton, Frankenstein, The First, Alice in Wonderland, Oliver, Anything Goes (at Lincoln Center), Nick and Nora, La Bete, The Wiz, the 20th and 30th Anniversary revivals of Annie, the Madison Square Garden production of The Wizard of Oz, Dinner at Eight (at Lincoln Center), Gypsy with Bernadette Peters, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Woman in White, Awake and Sing, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Legally Blonde The Musical, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Royal Family. He also trained a dog for Susan Stroman’s ballet Double Feature at the New York City Ballet. Mr. Berloni has trained animals for hundreds of Off-Broadway shows, including working at the New York Shakespeare Festival on nine different productions, regional theaters, tours, movies and television shows.  Recent films include Someday This Pain Will Be Useful starring Marcia Gay Hardon, Lucy Liu and Ellen Burstyn, Great Hope Springs starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones and Charlie Wilson’s War directed by Mike Nichols and starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.  His most recent television shows include Disney’s new television film “Frenemies,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “Sesame Street,” “Johnny and the Sprites," “Between the Lions,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Oobi,” Animal Planet’s “Wild on the Set,” “Dogs 101,” “Outrageous Animals” as well as featured stories on the Today Show, CBS Evening News and CBS Sunday Morning.  He was also a celebrity judge on MTV’s reality show “Legally Blonde, The Search for Elle Woods”. Ladies Home Journal profiled Mr. Berloni in their January 2010 edition and in January 2010, Dog Fancy Magazine included him as one of the “Top 40 Dog People You’ve Gotta Know”.  His animals have appeared for the White House for Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama.  As an author, he has written Sandy: The Autobiography of a Star published by Simon and Schuster, Doga: Yoga for Dogs by Chronicle Books and his latest book, Broadway Tails is published by Globe Pequot Press and available now in stores and online. Proceeds of that book will be donated to the Sandy Fund at the Humane Society of New York.  Mr. Berloni has received the ASPCA Humanitarian Award and the American Humane Association Craven Award for his work on Broadway. Mr. Berloni, his wife Dorothy and their daughter Jenna, live on a farm in Connecticut with twenty-two dogs, four cats, four horses, a pony, two llamas and a miniature donkey. Mr. Berloni is currently the Director of Animal Behavior for the Humane Society of New York and is involved in helping animals that need homes. Visit our Website at theatricalanimals.com.

ONCE has been nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In addition to the Drama League, ONCE has been named Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle, the Outer Critic Circle and the Lucille Lortel Awards.  The production has been nominated for five Drama Desk Awards.

ONCE features a book by award-winning Irish playwright & screenwriter, Enda Walsh (Penelope, Hunger, The New Electric Ballroom), the Academy Award-winning music and lyrics of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, direction by the acclaimed John Tiffany (Black Watch), movement by Steven Hoggett (Black Watch, American Idiot) and music supervision and orchestrations by Martin Lowe (Mamma Mia!).

The set and costume design are by five time Tony Award winner Bob Crowley (The Coast of Utopia, Mary Poppins), lighting design is by Tony winner Natasha Katz (Aida, The Coast of Utopia), and sound design is by Clive Goodwin.

The cast of ONCE features Steve Kazee as 'Guy' and Cristin Milioti as 'Girl.' Also in the company are David Abeles, Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis, David Patrick Kelly, Anne L. Nathan, Lucas Papaelias, Ripley Sobo, Andy Taylor, Mckayla Twiggs, Erikka Walsh, Paul Whitty, and J. Michael Zygo.

ONCE is the celebrated new musical based on the Academy Award-winning film. It tells the story of an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant drawn together by their shared love of music.  Over the course of one fateful week, their unexpected friendship and collaboration evolves into a powerful but complicated romance, heightened by the raw emotion of the songs they create together.  Brought to the stage by an award-winning team of visionary artists and featuring an ensemble cast of gifted actor/musicians, ONCE is a musical celebration of life and love: thrilling in its originality, daring in its honesty... and unforgettable in every way.

The original cast recording of ONCE is available via MASTERWORKS BROADWAY, a label of Sony Masterworks. Dowload from Amazon and iTunes.

ONCEis produced by Barbara Broccoli, John N. Hart Jr., Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G. Wilson, Orin Wolf, The Shubert Organization and Executive Producer Robert Cole, in association with New York Theatre Workshop.

Tickets for the Broadway production are now on sale via Telecharge.com or by phone at 212-239-6200.

www.oncemusical.com

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Cockfight Play” is not the title of the terrific, tense little comedy by Mike Bartlett that opened on Thursday night at the Duke on 42nd Street. Its real name, which is only one syllable, is unprintable here, and “Cockfight Play” is being used in advertisements in family newspapers.

Yet there is occasionally truth in even the subterfuges of advertising. And as it happens, the publicized title is an accurate description for the experience of this feisty, hypnotic and oddly energizing exercise in emotional carnage, which has been directed (by James Macdonald) and acted (by a four-member ensemble) with a brute focus that suggests to-the-death battles of penned animals.

-Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Click here to read the entire review.

TIME OUT NEW YORK

Bisexuality is the no-man’s-land of erotic identity: a shifting zone that can inspire distrust or even mockery from partisans in the homo or hetero camps. Often it’s considered a dodge by the self-deluded and semicloseted, or else it’s sanctioned by straight men to vicariously enjoy lesbian spectacles. Mike Bartlett’s Cock isn’t really about the bi lifestyle. Although John (Cory Michael Smith) begins an affair with W (Amanda Quaid) while briefly separated from M (Jason Butler Harner), the real theme is sexual power. John loves being loved, even if it drives his paramours into violent agonies.

-David Cote, Time Out New York

Click here to read the entire review.

NEW YORK POST

Never mind its provocative title: “Cock” is about love. Things get complicated as people fall in and out of it,
but this wonderful 90-minute show renders the emotional mess with great simplicity.

-Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post

Click here to read the entire review.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A cockfight is a contest between two gamecocks, often conducted in a circular arena called a cockpit. That partially explains the wry title and unusual staging of Mike Bartlett's edgy play, "Cock," but of course, there's more to it.  While much of the focus is on confrontations among characters in a love triangle, the thoughtful, Olivier Award-winning play, which premiered in London in 2009, is more deeply about the folly of forcing someone to limit his sexual identity.  The painfully funny, intense production that opened Thursday night off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street is crisply staged by James Macdonald, who also directed the London show.

-Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press

Click here to read the entire review.

When John and his boyfriend take a break, the last thing he expects is to suddenly meet the woman of his dreams.  Now he has a big choice to make.   

Tickets for COCK are available by calling The Duke on 42nd Street Box Office at 646-223-3010 or online at www.Dukeon42.org  Box office hours are Tuesday-Fridays from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

The performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm and 7pm.

Click here to watch a sneak peek at the production.

For more information about COCK, visit www.CockfightPlay.com.

About the organization: The New 42nd Street

Founded in 1990, The New 42nd Street is an independent, nonprofit organization charged with long-term responsibility for seven historic theaters on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. In addition to running The New Victory Theater, The New 42nd Street built and operates the NEW 42ND STREET® Studios a ten-story building of rehearsal studios, offices and a 199-seat theater named The Duke on 42nd Street for national and international performing arts companies. Since its opening on June 21, 2000, the NEW 42ND STREET Studios has been fully occupied by both nonprofit and commercial theater, dance and opera companies. With these institutions and the other properties under its guardianship, The New 42nd Street plays a pivotal role in fostering the continued revival of this famous street at the Crossroads of the World.

About the theater: The Duke on 42nd Street

The Duke on 42nd Street is an intimate 199-seat black box theater built and operated by The New 42nd Street. Since opening in 2000, the theater has been available on a rental basis to international and domestic nonprofit organizations to present their work. Companies that have presented at The Duke on 42nd Street theater include: Theatre for a New Audience; Playwrights Horizons; Lincoln Center Great Performers; The NYC Tap Festival; and 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Project. In October 2008, Lincoln Center Theater launched “LCT3” at The Duke on 42nd Street. NEW 42ND STREET presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street have included: Karole Amitage’s Armitage Gone! Dance; Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Rose Rage; Naked Angels and Dan Klores’s Armed and Naked in America; and Classical Theater of Harlem’s production of Langston Hughes’s Black Nativity. Notable NEW VICTORY® presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street include Joan McLeod’s The Shape of a Girl, Steppenwolf Theater Company’s The Bluest Eye and the smash hit, Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen, presented by The New Victory Theater in cooperation with The Under the Radar Festival.

www.CockfightPlay.com

 

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Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) in association with Don Gregory, is thrilled to present the new Broadway production of Mary Chase’s Harvey starring Jim Parsons (Elwood P. Dowd), Jessica Hecht (Veta Louise Simmons), Charles Kimbrough (William R. Chumley, M.D.), Larry Bryggman (Judge Omar Gaffney), Carol Kane (Betty Chumley), Peter Benson (E.J. Lofgren), Tracee Chimo (Myrtle Mae Simmons), Holley Fain (Ruth Kelly, R.N.), Angela Paton (Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet), Rich Sommer (Duane Wilson), Morgan Spector (Lyman Sanderson, M.D.) and directed by Scott Ellis. 

Performances of Harvey will begin on May 18th, 2012 on Broadway at Studio 54 (254 West 54th Street) with the official opening set for June 14th, 2012.  The limited engagement is scheduled to run through August 5th, 2012.

The design team includes David Rockwell (Sets), Jane Greenwood (Costumes), Kenneth Posner (Lights), Obadiah Eaves (Sound).

Two-time Emmy winner and Golden Globe® Award winner Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) returns to Broadway after his extremely successful debut in Larry Kramer’s 2011 Tony Award winning play The Normal Heart and received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Roundabout Theatre Company welcomes back many alumni including Jessica Hecht, having last been seen on their stage in After the Fall (2004) and Howard Katz (2006).  Larry Bryggman returns after appearing in Twelve Angry Men (2004) and Picnic (1994). Peter Benson returns after the 2006 Tony winning production of The Pajama Game. Holley Fain returns after the 2010 production of Present Laughter.

Tony Award nominee Scott Ellis is the Associate Artistic Director of Roundabout Theatre Company.  For Roundabout Theatre Company he has directed Twelve Angry Men, The Man Who Had All the Luck, The Boys From Syracuse, The Rainmaker, 1776, She Loves Me, Picnic, Company and A Month in the Country.

Harveywas first brought to the Broadway stage in 1944 and was directed by Antoinette Perry.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1944, and its initial run lasted for four years—1,775 performances.  James Stewart assumed the role of “Elwood” from Frank Fay in the 1944 production and originated the role in the 1970 production as well as the film adaptation in 1950.  Helen Hayes played “Veta” opposite Mr. Stewart in the 1970 production. 

Parsons stars as one of modern theatre’s most lovable characters, Elwood P. Dowd. Charming and kind, Elwood has only one character flaw:  an unwavering friendship with a 6-foot-tall, invisible white rabbit named Harvey.  In order to save the family’s social reputation, Elwood’s sister Veta (Jessica Hecht) takes Elwood to the local sanatorium. But when the doctors mistakenly commit his anxiety-ridden sister, Elwood — and Harvey—slip out of the hospital unbothered, setting off a hilarious whirlwind of confusion and chaos as everyone in town tries to catch a man and his invisible rabbit.

Ticket Information:

Tickets are available by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212)719-1300 or online at www.roundabouttheatre.org. Beginning Monday, April 2nd tickets can be purchased at the Studio 54 box office (254 West 54th Street).  Ticket prices range from $37.00-127.00

Performance Schedule Information:

Harveyplays Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8:00PM with a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinee at 2:00PM. 

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2011-2012 season features Marc Camoletti’s Don’t Dress For Dinner starring Ben Daniels, Adam James, Patricia Kalember and Jennifer Tilly, adapted by Robin Hawdon, directed by John Tillinger; Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit,directed by Moisés Kaufman; Mary Chase’s Harvey starring Jim Parsons, Jessica Hecht & Charles Kimbrough, directed by Scott Ellis. Roundabout’s Tony Award winning production of Anything Goes starring Stephanie J. Block & Joel Grey, directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, is currently playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. The 2011 Tony® Award winning Anything Goeswill set sail on a National Tour at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square in October 2012.  Following its opening in Cleveland, Anything Goes will cruise into more than 25 other cities during the 2012/2013 season.

Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2012-2013 season features Rupert Holmes’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood starring Chita Rivera, directed by Scott Ellis; William Inge’s Picnic directed by Sam Gold; Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet directed by Michael Longhurst, with Jake Gyllenhaal; Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife starring Bobby Cannavale, directed by Doug Hughes; Steven Levenson’s The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin directed by Scott Ellis.

Joshua Elias Harmon’s Bad Jews directed by Daniel Aukin is a world premiere production that launches the sixth season of Roundabout Underground following five critically acclaimed seasons of world-premiere productions since its premiere in 2007. 

www.roundabouttheatre.org
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For the most up to date press releases visit our Blog.

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The Drama League honored three outstanding theatre luminaries at this year’s awards ceremony:  Tony Award-winner Donna Murphy (Wonderful Town) presented eight-time Academy Award-winner, theatre and movie composer Alan Menken with the Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award in recognition of his contribution to the musical theatre;  Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein (Hairspray) presented stage, television and movie star Rosie O’Donnell  with the Unique Contribution to the Theatre Award for her continuing efforts in promoting live theatre;  and Tony-nominee Gavin Creel (Hair) presentedDrama League Directors Project alum and Tony-nominee Diane Paulus with The Founders Award for Excellence in Directing.

The Drama League gathered together a team of Broadway’s best to serve as Honorary Co-Chairs for the 78TH Annual Drama League Awards that included Nina Arianda, Christian Borle, Norbert Leo Butz, Rosemary Harris, Jeremy Jordan, Christine Lahti, Linda Lavin, Norm Lewis, Judith Light, Audra McDonald, Cynthia Nixon, and Blair Underwood.  The Honorary Co-Chairs served as ambassadors for The Drama League Awards and the excellence of the New York theatre season by welcoming the attendees of the Awards Luncheon to a cocktail reception before the ceremony.

In addition, The Drama League introduced the 2012 Fellows of The Drama League Directors Project:  Knud Adams, Amy Claussen, Vesselin Dimov, Shana Gozansky, Jess Jung, Swaine Kaui, Jesse Jou, David Mendizábal, Cat Miller, Patrick Walsh, and Christopher Windom. 

 

The Drama League Awards honor distinguished productions, performances, and exemplary career achievements in musical theatre and directing.  First awarded in 1922 and formalized in 1935, The Drama League Awards are the oldest theatrical honors in America. They are the only major theatergoer awards chosen by audience members — specifically, by the thousands of Drama League members nationwide who attend Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.  2012 Nominees were selected from over 170 productions.

2011-2012 DRAMA LEAGUE AWARDS WINNERS

 

DISTINGUISHED PRODUCTION OF A PLAY

Other Desert Cities

Lincoln Center Theatre

Andre Bishop, Artistic Director; Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer

DISTINGUISHED REVIVAL OF A PLAY

Death of a Salesman

Ethel Barrymore Theatre

Scott Rudin, Stuart Thompson, Jon B. Platt, Columbia Pictures, Jean Doumanian,

Merritt Forrest Baer, Roger Berlind, Scott M. Delman, Sonia Friedman Productions,

Ruth Hendel, Carl Moellenberg, Scott and Brian Zerlinger, Eli Bush, producers

DISTINGUISHED PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL

Once

New York Theatre Workshop/Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre

Barbara Broccoli, John N. Hart Jr., Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo,

Brian Carmody, Michael G. Wilson, Orin Wolf, The Shubert Organization,

Robert Cole, New York Theatre Workshop, producers

DISTINGUISHED REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

Follies

Marquis Theatre

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (David M. Rubenstein, Chairman;

Michael M. Kaiser, President; Max A. Woodward, Vice President), Nederlander Presentations Inc., Adrienne Arsht, HRH Foundation, Allan Williams, producers

DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE AWARD

Audra McDonald

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSICAL THEATRE

Alan Menken

 

UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEATRE

Rosie O’Donnell

FOUNDERS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN DIRECTING

Diane Paulus

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www.Dramaleague.org
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www.oandmco.com
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BACKSTAGE

On Sundays around 5pm, the theatre district is alive and abuzz with scores of hardworking actors who’ve just finished their workweeks with that final matinee before their day off. “Backstage” is a weekly Sunday evening event, from 5 – 7 p.m., where the theatre community can convene to relax and unwind - have a cocktail, enjoy the food of Chef Andre Marrero, and maybe get up and sing. This casual, social evening is a chance for us to welcome the theatre community for a few hours of fun and frolic at the end of an 8-show week. “Backstage” is hosted by three of Broadway’s funniest talents - Brooks Ashmankas (The Producers, The Ritz, Gypsy), Ann Harada (Smash, Avenue Q, Seussical, 9 to 5) and Susie Mosher (Hairspray), who’ll keep the evening rolling along with special guest performers and wise and witty repartee from the world of The Great White Way.

“Backstage” launches on Sunday, June 17th when Ann Harada will host special guest stars (TBA) from the cast of the hit NBC series, “Smash.”

All are welcome.  There will be no cover charge or drink minimum for “Backstage.”

NEW MONDAYS

54 Below is pleased to present a new series for composers called “New Mondays.” Celebrating the work of some of New York’s most exciting new songwriters for the musical theatre, the series also salutes some of Broadway’s most legendary talents, all debuting their newest work! Be the first to hear the hit songs from some of Broadway’s newest musicals directly from the composers (and their guest vocalists) themselves.  Upcoming events include:

Monday, June 4

David Zippel (City of Angels, The Goodbye Girl, Woman in White), Steve Marzullo (Somedays), Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk (The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown), with special guest vocalists Lisa Brescia (Mamma Mia!) Annie Golden (Hair, Assassins), Randy Graff (City of Angels, Les Mis), Terri Klausner (Sophisticated Ladies, Evita), Lindsay Mendez (Godspell, Kenita Miller (Xanadu, The Color Purple), Rebecca Naomi-Jones (American Idiot) and Darren Ritchie (Wonderland).

Monday, June 11

Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Addams Family), Katie Thompson (Giant) and Sam Willmott (Scarlet Takes a Tumble).

Monday, June 18

Henry Krieger (Sideshow, Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid), John McDaniel(“The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” Grease, Annie Get Your Gun), Farah Alvin (The Marvelous Wonderettes, Nine) and Lance Horne (First Things Last).

Monday, June 25

Laurence O’Keefe(Bat Boy, Legally Blonde), Jeff Blumenkrantz (Urban Cowboy, A Class Act), and Amanda Green (Bring It On: The Musical, High Fidelity).

Monday, July 9

Maury Yeston (Nine, Grand Hotel, Titanic, Death Takes a Holiday), Joe Iconis (The Black Suits), Brett Kristofferson (Insanities), Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days),

There will be an $18 cover and a two-drink minimum for “New Mondays”  events.

THE GREEN ROOM

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays after 10 PM, 54 Below patrons can enjoy the ambience of a late night lounge with live music, creative cocktails, and small food plates. Musicians scheduled to appear include:

Sean Harkness & Steve Doyle - June 5, 12, 19, 26

John Miller Quartet - June 6, 20, 27

The Barry Levitt Trio - June 7, 14, 21, 28

There will be no cover charge or drink minimum for “Green Room”

*  *  *

Theatre legend Patti LuPone will open the venue in June with a two week engagement; other Broadway stars previously confirmed include Christine Andreas, Michael Arden, Mx Justin Vivian Bond, Tituss Burgess, Ann Hampton Callaway, Liz Callaway, Brian d'Arcy James, Lea DeLaria, Tony DeSare, Christine Ebersole, Jackie Hoffman, Victor Garber, Megan Hilty, Linda Lavin, Jenifer Lewis, Darlene Love, Rebecca Luker, Marin Mazzie, Andrea Martin, Andrea McArdle, Julia Murney, Sherie Renee Scott, Leslie Uggams, Ben Vereen, and Michael Winther. Tickets are available through www.TicketWeb.com and www.54Below.com.

A few blocks from the heart of Times Square, 54 BELOW is designed by Tony Award winner John Lee Beatty and architect Richard Lewis, lit by Tony Award winner Ken Billington, and with sound by Tony Award nominee Peter Hylenski. Tony Award winner Scott Wittman serves as creative consultant and MAC Award Winner Phil Geoffrey Bond serves as director of programming.  Union Square Events, the events services business of Union Square Hospitality Group is consulting on food and beverage design as well as operations and the training of staff.  It is managed by Tony Award winning producers Tom Viertel, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, and Steven Baruch.  54 BELOW will feature up to three shows nightly and will have audio and video recording capabilities.  The capacity is 160.  The cover charge will range from $15-$70. 

54 BELOW is located at 254 West 54th Street. Tickets and information are available at  www.54Below.com.

54 BELOW is not affiliated with or connected to the Roundabout Theatre Company in any way.

54 BELOW

BROADWAY’S NIGHTCLUB, 254 West 54th Street

Rivera’s magical masterpiece finds Gabriela talking to the moon – played by a man in a Panama hat playing a violin on her refrigerator. When her husband Benito returns from war, the limits of love are tested, the desert comes alive like a surreal Dali painting, and Gabriela’s housecat dances with a wily coyote. In this comic drama, the moon hovers over all, offering haunting music and dreamlike wisdom. Appearing with WHAT’s seasoned actors will be the young, talented actors of Boston’s TC Squared Theater.
CAST
Mimi Augustin as Cat
Aniela Gonzalez as Gabriela
Michael Knowlton as Martin
Robert Najarian as Benito and Moon
Jesse Tolbert as Cayote
Caitlin Clouthier, Production Stage Manager/Assistant Director
Jamaica Jarvis, Assistant Stage Manager
Nick Dorr, Scenic Designer
Mary Fritz, Properties Designer
Nathan Leigh, Sound Designer
John Malinowski, Lighting Designer
Anne Miggins, Wardrobe Supervisor
Chris Page, Technical Director
Carol Sherry, Costume Designer

Aniela Gonzalez: From Audition to a Starring Role
Interview by director Dan Lombardo
Sometimes the right actor walks in the door of the audition room and magic happens. You have your leading lady. In the case of the casting the lead character, Gabriela, I had already had a casting session for non-Equity actors in Boston, and two full days of Actors Equity auditions in Wellfleet. I still hadn’t found just the right Gabriela. Then, a young actor called to ask if she could come in and read for the part. I’ll let Aniela tell the rest of the story.
Dan Lombardo: Describe what your audition was like.
Aniela Gonzalez: I had a wonderful audition experience, the kind actors dream of. Everyone was very friendly from when I first walked in through the door and you were so kind and welcoming that I instantly felt at ease. I performed a monologue and scene; you had me read another scene and soon after you said “I never do this but you have the part!” I was thrilled and relieved to hear those words after a long journey from Manhattan to Wellfleet and having cancelled a flight to Miami the day before just to go to the audition. Gabriela is a part I have been wanting to play since I first read and fell in love with References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot and I am grateful it’s being done in such a special theater.
DL: Tell me about your character, Gabriela.
AG:  Gabriela is a young woman from Puerto Rico, who lives alone most of the year in a desert that is part of an army town. She spends most of the year waiting for her husband to come home from war. She longs for a certain sense of beauty in her life and looks for it in the Universe, the stars, galaxies, and the moon. They take her far away from her lonely reality. Her cat and the moon keep her company until Benito comes home for a few hours just to take her to bed and leave again. This behavior has left her progressively more empty and frustrated throughout the years. She loves deeply, dreams passionately, and wants her marriage to be beautiful again.
DL: Why should everyone on Cape Cod leave the beach and rush to WHAT to see References to Salvador Dali…?
AG: If you haven’t read References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, I recommend you DONT READ IT!, come SEE it!, feel all the emotions, react to the characters, become a part of this world for a couple of hours and THEN read the play. These characters will carry you into their world, cuddle you and then spit you out. But that is the theater — it’s an experience worth leaving a day at the beach for.

. . .What are premonitions, hunches, Déjà vu,
and the little voices in your head?
That’s me –
whispering mightily in your ear,
hoping to give you a fighting chance in this hard carnivorous world.
— Moon

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater
"continually adventurous theater" (Boston Globe)
Julie Harris Stage
2357 Routte 6
Wellfleet, MA 02667
508-349-WHAT (9428)
www.what.org

Private Peaceful relives the life of Private Tommo Peaceful, a young First World War soldier awaiting the firing squad at dawn. During the night he looks back at his short but joyful past growing up in rural Devon: his exciting first days at school; the accident in the forest that killed his father; his adventures with Molly, the love of his life; and the battles and injustices of war that brought him to the front line.

Private Peaceful was inspired by a visit to Ypres where Morpurgo was shocked to discover how many young soldiers were court-martialled and shot for cowardice during the First World War.  A film of the same name, with the screenplay adapted by Reade, is due for UK release in the autumn. Private Peaceful received its world premiere at the Bristol Old Vic in 2004 prior to sell out runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2004. Then, produced by Scamp Theatre, it played three more sell out Edinburgh seasons in 2007, 2009 and 2011, as well as Trafalgar Studios in the West End in 2005 and 2007, and four hugely successful UK tours in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011. The production has also played off-Broadway, Hong Kong, The Dublin International Festival and the New Zealand International Festival.

Michael Morpurgo, the author of over 100 books, was Children’s Laureate from 2003-05.  He received both the Blue Peter Book of the Year and Children’s Book Award for Private Peaceful, the latter he also received for Kensuke’s Kingdom.  Morpurgo’s other novels include The Wreck of the Zanzibar, for which he won the Whitbread Children’s Novel Award, The Butterfly Lion, for which he won the Smarties Prize and Writers’ Guild Award, The War of Jenkin’s Ear and Why the Whales Came. Most recently Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, adapted for the stage has been performing to critical acclaim in the West End, on Broadway and in Toronto, and last year saw the release of the film directed by Stephen Spielberg.

Simon Reade has previously adapted Michael Morpurgo's Toro! Toro! for Salisbury Playhouse, The Mozart Question for Scamp Theatre’s UK tour, Twist of Gold for Polka Theatre and he wrote the BBC radio play and feature film screenplay of Private Peaceful . His other plays include Philip Pullman's The Scarecrow and His Servant for Southwark Playhouse, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for Bristol Old Vic for which he won the TMA Award, Pride & Prejudice for Theatre Royal Bath Productions, and Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children both for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The National Theatre presents Private Peaceful, a Scamp Theatre production in association with Poonamallee Productions, by arrangement with the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

The National Theatre’s award-wining production of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse is currently playing at the New London Theatre, booking to 26 October 2013.  War Horse is also playing on Broadway and in Toronto.  An Australian production will open later this year as well as an American Tour.  In autumn 2013 a UK Tour is due to commence.  The National’s One Man, Two Guvnors is currently booking at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 12 January 2013.  As well as the concurrent Broadway production, a UK tour will begin in October this year.  Private Peaceful will play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket whilst the current cast of One Man, Two Guvnors take a contractual holiday.

Listings Information

Address:                                Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4HT
Dates:                              18 - 29 September 2012
Performance schedule:         Tues 18 September 7.30pm
Wed 19 September 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Thu 20 September 7.30pm
Fri 21 September 7.30pm
Sat 22 September 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Mon 24 September 7.30pm
Tue 25 September 7.30pm
Wed 26 September 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Thu 27 September 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Fri 28 September 7.30pm
Sat 29 September 2.30pm and 7.30pm

Ticket prices:                     £10 - £25

Suitable for ages 8+

Box Office:                        National Theatre Box Office 
No booking fee
Telephone 020 7452 3000 
Online from www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Theatre Royal Haymarket Box Office

Booking fees apply
Telephone 020 7930 8800
Online from www.trh.co.uk

A box of old letters and a father’s dying wish leads Michael Kiriakos to dig up the buried memories of his hidden family history.  After meeting Rose, his father’s now-elderly, Armenian pen pal, Michael slowly learns of a past he never knew existed, one of exile, sacrifice and, ultimately, redemption.  Written by Alexander Dinelaris (Still Life), Red Dog Howls explores the horrors of human atrocities, the enduring strength of the human spirit, and how the choices we make as husbands, sons, wives, and daughters will—for better or worse—reverberate for generations.

New York Theatre Workshop, now celebrating its 29th season, is a leading voice in the world of Off-Broadway and within the theatre community in New York and around the world.  NYTW has emerged as a premiere incubator of important new theatre, honoring its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape our lives. In addition, NYTW is known for its innovative adaptations of classic repertory. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village neighborhood, NYTW presents three to five new productions, over 80 readings, and numerous workshop productions, for over 45,000 audience members.  Over the past 28 years, NYTW has developed and produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul, Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla, Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath, and Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher.  The 2002 remounting of Martha Clarke's seminal work, Vienna: Lusthaus and subsequent American tour was one of the longest-running productions in NYTW's history.  NYTW’s acclaimed productions of Once and Peter and the Starcatcher are currently enjoying Broadway runs, having garnered 20 Tony Award nominations, and Rent, which premiered at NYTW, is currently playing an off-Broadway revival.  NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies, and minority artist fellowships.  In 1991, NYTW received an OBIE Award for Sustained Achievement and in 2000 was designated to be part of the Leading National Theatres Program by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

For more information, visit www.nytw.org.

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AUSTIN PENDLETON has been seen on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank and Grand Hotel. He has appeared in the first New York productions of Oh Dad, Poor Dad..., Fiddler on the Roof, Hail Scrawdyke (Derwent Award), The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (Obie Award), The Sorrows of Frederick, Doubles, The Imposter, The Loop and Sophistry, and in the title roles of Off-Broadway productions of Hamlet, Richard III, Uncle Vanya, Keats and Jeremy Rudge. He is a playwright (Orson's Shadow, Booth and Uncle Bob), director (Spoils of War, The Runner Stumbles and Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes), teacher (HB Studio), and member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Ensemble. His film credits include “What's Up Doc?”, “Trial and Error,” “The Associate,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces,“ Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” “The Proprietor,” “Guarding Tess,” “The Fifteen Minute Hamlet,” “Catch-22” and “Amistad.” TV credits include “Fired Up,” “Frasier” and “Tracey Takes On.” He began his career, and has acted and directed many times, at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.  Recently, Mr. Pendleton directed “Bus Stop” at The Olney Theatre and “Golden Age” at the Philadelphia Theater Company. Austin Pendleton currently teaches acting at the HB Studio and directing at The New School, both in New York City. There is a documentary film in production on his life and work called  “The Austin Pendleton Project: Where The Work Is”.

In addition to the award ceremony and tribute to the guest of honor, the evening will feature live performances from members of The Active Theater, live musical entertainment, food and beverages. Proceeds from the event will benefit The Active Theater's upcoming 2012-2013 season.

The Active Arts Award honors exemplary achievement in the theater arts as well as a commitment to; and support of emerging artists and theater companies. The recipient is determined through a nominating process that includes The Active Theater staff, Board of Directors, and respected collaborators. "We are thrilled to present Austin Pendleton with the second annual Active Arts Award," says Nathaniel Shaw, Artistic Director of The Active Theater. "Mr. Pendleton has left an indelible mark on the American theater landscape and, in doing so, has positively influenced the community in which we work and create."

Tickets for The Active Theater’s Spring Gala are $100 and can be purchased at www.TheActiveTheater.com/events .

Nominated for ten Tony Awards including Best Musical, NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT features music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and a book by two-time Tony Award-winner Joe DiPietro, and stars two-time Tony Award-winner Matthew Broderick and four-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O’Hara. The critically acclaimed new musical comedy, directed and choreographed by three-time Tony Award-winner Kathleen Marshall, had its official opening on April 24, 2012 at the Imperial Theatre (249 West 45th Street).

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT features a veritable hit parade of iconic George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin songs, and some unknown gems in their catalog, including “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “I’ve Got to Be There,” “Sweet & Lowdown,” “’S Wonderful,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” Fascinating Rhythm,” “But Not for Me,” “Blah, Blah, Blah” and many more. The show follows Billie Bendix (Kelli O'Hara), a bootlegger who meets wealthy playboy Jimmy Winter (Matthew Broderick) on the weekend of his nuptials. Mayhem ensues.

In addition to Matthew Broderick as Jimmy Winter and Kelli O’Hara as Billie Bendix, the production also stars Academy Award-winner Estelle Parsons as Millicent Winter, Tony Award-winner Judy Kaye as Estonia Dulworth, Tony Award nominee Michael McGrath as Cookie McGee, Tony Award nominee Jennifer Laura Thompson as Eileen Evergreen, Chris Sullivan as Duke Mahoney, Robyn Hurder as Jeannie Muldoon, Stanley Wayne Mathis as Chief Berry and Tony Award nominee Terry Beaver as Senator Max Evergreen.

The cast also features Cameron Adams, Clyde Alves, Kaitlyn Davidson, Jason DePinto, Kimberly Faure, Robert Hartwell, Stephanie Martignetti, Barrett Martin, Michael X. Martin, Adam Perry, Jeffrey Schecter, Jennifer Smith, Joey Sorge, Samantha Sturm, Kristen Beth Williams and Candice Marie Woods.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT is the most nominated Broadway show of the 2011-2012 Broadway season. The ten Tony Award nominations include Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Joe DiPietro), Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical (Kelli O'Hara), Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical (Michael McGrath), Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Judy Kaye), Best Direction of a Musical (Kathleen Marshall), Best Choreography (Kathleen Marshall), Best Orchestrations (Bill Elliott), Best Costume Design of a Musical (Martin Pakledinaz), Best Sound Design of a Musical (Brian Ronan). The nine Drama Desk Award nominations include Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Kelli O’Hara), Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Judy Kaye), Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Michael McGrath), Outstanding Director of a Musical (Kathleen Marshall), Outstanding Choreography (Kathleen Marshall), Outstanding Book of a Musical (Joe DiPietro), Outstanding Costume Design (Martin Pakledinaz), Outstanding Orchestrations (Bill Elliott). The production has already received Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Judy Kaye) and Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Michael McGrath). The three Drama League Award nominations include Distinguished Production of a Musical, Distinguished Performance (Matthew Broderick), Distinguished Performance (Kelli O’Hara).

The creative team includes scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design by Peter Kaczorowski, sound design by Brian Ronan and orchestrations by Bill Elliott. The music supervisor is David Chase and the music director Tom Murray.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT is produced on Broadway by Scott Landis, Roger Berlind, Sonia Friedman Productions, Roy Furman, Standing CO Vation, Candy Spelling, Freddy DeMann, Ronald Frankel, Harold Newman, Jon B. Platt, Raise the Roof 8, Takonkiet Viravan, William Berlind/Ed Burke, Carole L. Haber/Susan Carusi, Buddy and Barbara Freitag/Sanford Robertson, Under the Wire/Jim Herbert, Emanuel Azenberg, The Shubert Organization.

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets for NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT are available through www.Telecharge.com, by calling 212-239-6200, and in person at the Imperial Theatre box office (249 West 45th Street). Tickets range in price from $136.50 to $46.50 (all prices include a $1.50 facility fee). Premium seating is available.

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For more information, visit www.NiceWorkOnBroadway.com
Follow NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT on Twitter: @NiceWorkBway or on Facebook.

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Click here to watch a sneak peek at the production.

“One of the most distinguished pieces of theatre to hit the London stage in the past year.  Arresting.”

The Observer

“Smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion.  Impressive.”

Evening Standard

“Compelling.  Written with toe-curling frankness, wry humour and gut-wrenching precision.  The hottest piece of new writing at the moment on the London stage.”

The Stage

COCK is produced by Stuart Thompson, Jean Doumanian and the Royal Court Theatre.  They are joined by William Berlind, Scott Delman, Dena Hammerstein, Jon B. Platt, Scott Rudin, Ted Snowdon, True Love Productions. 

The design team for COCK is comprised of Miriam Buether (Scenic and Costume design), Peter Mumford (Lighting Design) and Darron L West  (Sound Design).

When John and his boyfriend take a break, the last thing he expects is to suddenly meet the woman of his dreams.  Now he has a big choice to make.   

Tickets for COCK are available by calling The Duke on 42nd Street Box Office at 646-223-3010 or online at www.Dukeon42.org  Box office hours are:  Box office hours are Tuesday-Fridays from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

The performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm and 7pm.

For more information about COCK, visit www.CockfightPlay.com.

About the organization: The New 42nd Street

Founded in 1990, The New 42nd Street is an independent, nonprofit organization charged with long-term responsibility for seven historic theaters on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. In addition to running The New Victory Theater, The New 42nd Street built and operates the NEW 42ND STREET® Studios a ten-story building of rehearsal studios, offices and a 199-seat theater named The Duke on 42nd Street for national and international performing arts companies. Since its opening on June 21, 2000, the NEW 42ND STREET Studios has been fully occupied by both nonprofit and commercial theater, dance and opera companies. With these institutions and the other properties under its guardianship, The New 42nd Street plays a pivotal role in fostering the continued revival of this famous street at the Crossroads of the World.

About the theater: The Duke on 42nd Street

The Duke on 42nd Street is an intimate 199-seat black box theater built and operated by The New 42nd Street. Since opening in 2000, the theater has been available on a rental basis to international and domestic nonprofit organizations to present their work. Companies that have presented at The Duke on 42nd Street theater include: Theatre for a New Audience; Playwrights Horizons; Lincoln Center Great Performers; The NYC Tap Festival; and 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Project. In October 2008, Lincoln Center Theater launched “LCT3” at The Duke on 42nd Street. NEW 42ND STREET presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street have included: Karole Amitage’s Armitage Gone! Dance; Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Rose Rage; Naked Angels and Dan Klores’s Armed and Naked in America; and Classical Theater of Harlem’s production of Langston Hughes’s Black Nativity. Notable NEW VICTORY® presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street include Joan McLeod’s The Shape of a Girl, Steppenwolf Theater Company’s The Bluest Eye and the smash hit, Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen, presented by The New Victory Theater in cooperation with The Under the Radar Festival.

www.CockfightPlay.com

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Follow COCK on Facebook and Twitter

“Getting to perform at the Café Carlyle, following in the footsteps of women like Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, Christine Ebersole, Kelli O’Hara, and so many of my other idols, is nothing short of a dream come true,” enthused Ms. Osnes.

Ms. Osnes will perform Tuesdays through Fridays at 8:45PM and Saturdays at 8:45PM and 10:45PM.  There is a $65 music charge ($45, bar) for the Tuesday-Thursday performances, a $75 music charge ($45, bar) for the early shows on Friday and Saturday and a $65 music charge ($45, bar) for the late show on Saturday.  Dinner is served from 6:30PM.  For reservations call 212-744-1600. For additional information, visit www.thecarlyle.com.

The Café Carlyle is located in The Carlyle Hotel – 35 East 76th Street at Madison Avenue.

Biography                                                                                                                                                                                       

Laura Osnes starred in two Rodgers and Hammerstein productions this spring- the first NY revival of Pipe Dream for Encores! and a one night only concert of The Sound Of Music at Carnegie Hall. She was recently seen on Broadway as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (Tony Award Nomination) after originating the role at Asolo Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse (San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award- Outstanding Lead Female Performance in a Musical). Her other Broadway credits include Hope Harcourt in the Tony-winning revival of Anything Goes (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Astaire Award nominations), Nellie Forbush in Lincoln Center Theatre’s production of South Pacific and her Broadway debut as Sandy in the most recent revival of Grease, after having won the role on NBC's reality competition "Grease: You're The One That I Want." Many regional credits, including Kim McAfee in Broadway: Three Generations (Kennedy Center).  Television: HBO’s pilot “The Miraculous Year” written by John Logan and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, “Sondheim: The Birthday Concert” at Avery Fisher Hall (available on DVD), the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors Salute to Barbara Cook and the Las Vegas Smith Center Gala Opening that will air on PBS this fall.

Laura Osnes
(Photo: Nathan Johnson) 

www.oandmco.com
www.thecarlyle.com
www.twitter.com/oandmco

Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Academy Award® winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman, Obie Award winner Linda Emond as Linda Loman and Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, The Amazing Spider-Man) as Biff Loman.  For tickets, visit Telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200. 

DEATH OF A SALESMAN has been nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play, five Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Revival of a Play and three Drama League Awards, including Distinguished Revival of a Play.  The production won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revival of a Play and director Mike Nichols has been honored with a special citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle for his contribution to the theatre. 

DEATH OF A SALESMAN originally opened on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre.   Hailed as a masterwork of modern American drama, it won six Tony Awards, including Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the first play to ever win all three awards.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN also features Finn Wittrock as Happy, Fran Kranz as Bernard, Bill Camp as Charley, John Glover as Ben, Remy Auberjonois as Howard Wagner, Glenn Fleshler as Stanley, Stephanie Janssen as Miss Forsythe, Kathleen McNenny as Jenny, Elizabeth Morton as Letta and Molly Price as The Woman. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman returns to Broadway for the first time since his critically acclaimed, Tony-nominated performance in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night in 2003.  He also received a Tony Award nomination in 2000 for his performance in Sam Shepard’s True West.  His Off-Broadway credits include The Seagull at the NYSF/Delacorte Theatre (dir: Mike Nichols), Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Shopping and Fucking, Defying Gravity and The Author’s Voice.  As co-artistic director of the LAByrinth Theatre Company, he has directed productions of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Jesus Hopped the A Train, Our Lady of 121st Street, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and The Little Flower of East Orange, and also starred in and directed Jack Goes Boating.   He won the 2005 Academy Award and Golden Globe Award, among other honors for Capote.   His film credits also include Boogie Nights, Happiness, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, State and Main, Almost Famous, Cold Mountain, Charlie Wilson’s War (dir: Mike Nichols), Doubt (Academy Award nomination), Jack Goes Boating, Moneyball, The Ides of March and the upcomingThe Master, among others.  

Linda Emond’s Broadway credits include Life x 3 (Tony nomination) and 1776.  Off-Broadway, she has appeared inThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures and Homebody/Kabul, along with premieres of works by Craig Lucas, Yazmina Reza, Kander & Ebb, A.R. Gurney and Peter Hedges.  Her film work includes Julie & Julia, The Loop, The Missing Person, Stop-Loss, Trade, Across the Universe, North Country, Dark Water, The Dying Gaul andCity by the Sea.  TV credits include “Georgia O’Keefe,” “A Dog Named Christmas,” “American Experience: John & Abigail Adams,” and episodes of “The Good Wife,” “The Sopranos,” “Wonderland,” “Gossip Girl” and all four “Law & Order” series.

Andrew Garfield received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for his breakout performance as Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network and stars as Peter Parker in the summer 2012 release, The Amazing Spider-Man.   His other film credits include Lions for Lambs, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus andNever Let Me Go. TV credits include “Doctor Who,” “Freezing,” “Bash,” “Red Riding”.   Garfield has appeared on stage in England with the Royal National Theatre, Soho Theatre Company and Manchester Royal Exchange and makes his Broadway debut in DEATH OF A SALESMAN. 

Mike Nichols has been one of the leading directors of stage and screen for more than 40 years.  His Broadway directing credits include Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Real Thing and Spamalot, for all of which he was awarded the Tony for Best Direction. Film credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; The Graduate (Academy Award for Best Direction); Catch 22; Carnal Knowledge; Silkwood; Working Girl; Postcards From the Edge; Regarding Henry; The Birdcage; Primary Colors; Closer and Charlie Wilson’s War and for HBO “Wit” and “Angels in America.” 

The production features a recreation of the original ground-breaking and Tony Award-winning scenic design by Jo Mielziner, with costume design by Academy Award winner and five-time Tony Award nominee Ann Roth, lighting by five-time Tony Award-winner Brian MacDevitt and sound design by Tony Award-winner Scott Lehrer.   Original music is by Alex North. 

DEATH OF A SALESMAN is produced on Broadway by Scott Rudin, Stuart Thompson, Jon B. Platt, Columbia Pictures, Jean Doumanian, Merritt Forrest Baer, Roger Berlind, Scott M. Delman, Sonia Friedman, Ruth Hendel, Carl Moellenberg, Scott & Brian Zeilinger and Eli Bush. 

Tickets are available at Telecharge.com or by calling 212-239-6200. 

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www.DeathofaSalesmanBroadway.com
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As it has from the start, the evolution of Newsies continues to surprise.   Following a critically-hailed pilot production at Paper Mill Playhouse last fall, the show unexpectedly came to Broadway for a 12 week run.  Opening with ticket sales from all 50 states, the limited run proved so successful that it was extended another 10 weeks, through August 19th. Another round of critical praise following its Broadway opening and 23 major theatrical nominations – including eight Tony Award nods – followed.

“Ever since the Paper Mill Playhouse run ended six months ago, the audience has re-written the playbook for Newsies,” said Thomas Schumacher, Producer, Disney Theatrical Productions.  “We continue to be astonished by a passion for this show that is as heartfelt as it is widespread and find ourselves, once again, in the wonderful position of altering our plans to respond to palpable demand.”

The current cast is scheduled to stay with the production.

Newsies, features music by eight-time Academy Award® winner Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Sister Act), lyrics by Jack Feldman and a book by four-time Tony® Award winner Harvey Fierstein (La Cage aux Folles, Torch Song Trilogy). Produced by Disney Theatrical Productions, Newsies is directed by Tony nominee Jeff Calhoun (Big River revival) and choreographed by Tony nominee Christopher Gattelli (South Pacific revival). 

The Broadway company of Newsies features Jeremy Jordan as Jack Kelly, John Dossett as Joseph Pulitzer, Kara Lindsay as Katherine Plumber, Capathia Jenkins as Medda Larkin, Ben Fankhauser as Davey, Andrew Keenan-Bolger as Crutchie, and Lewis Grosso, and Matthew Schechter alternating the role of Les.

Set in New York City at the turn of the century, Newsies is the rousing tale of Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a ragged band of teenaged ‘newsies,’ who dreams only of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike for what’s right. 

Newsies is inspired by the real-life ‘Newsboy Strike of 1899,’ when newsboy Kid Blink led a band of orphan and runaway newsies on a two-week-long action against Pulitzer, Hearst and other powerful newspaper publishers. 

The Nederlander Theatre box office hours are Monday through Saturday 10am – 8pm and Sunday 10:30am – 7pm. Newsies will be performed on the following schedule through June 17th (with some exceptions): Monday at 7pm; Wednesday at 2pm & 7:30pm; Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm and 8pm; and Sunday at 1pm and 6:30pm.

Beginning June 18, Newsies will be performed on the following schedule: Monday – Wednesday at 7:30pm; Friday – Saturday at 8pm; Wednesday & Saturday at 2pm; and Sunday at 3pm.  There are exceptions the week of July 2 (prior to Independence Day), the week of October 1 (prior to Columbus Day), the week of October 29 (Halloween), the week of November 19 (Thanksgiving) and the weeks in and around Christmas.  Visit NewsiesTheMusical.com for details.

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PRISCILLA opened to critical acclaim on March 20, 2011.  PRISCILLA had its world premiere in Sydney in 2006 and subsequently wowed audiences and critics alike in Melbourne, New Zealand, London and Toronto in advance of its Broadway debut, becoming the most successful Australian musical of all time. The Brazilian production of PRISCILLA opened in March 2012 in São Paulo. The U.S. national tour of PRISCILLA will begin in Minneapolis at The Orpheum Theatre on January 8, 2013.

PRISCILLA stars Tony Award® nominee Will Swenson, Tony Award® nominee Tony Sheldon and Nick Adams as the trio of friends on a heart-warming, uplifting road trip of a lifetime who hop aboard a battered old bus searching for love and friendship in the middle of the Australian outback and end up finding more than they could ever have dreamed.

Featuring the most awarded costumes in Broadway history, PRISCILLA won the 2011 Tony Award® for Best Costume Design for Academy Award® winners Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner’s designs. The musical was also honored with three Best Musical award nominations from the Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award organizations. Olivier Award nominee Tony Sheldon received a Tony Award® nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in addition to Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League nominations, and was awarded the Theatre World Award for outstanding Broadway debut. Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner were also honored with 2011 Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Costume Design.

Adapted from the Academy Award® winning film The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, PRISCILLA is written by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott.  Direction is by Simon Phillips, choreography by Ross Coleman, musical supervision and arrangements by Stephen ‘Spud’ Murphy and set design by Brian Thomson and costumes by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner. Production supervised by Jerry Mitchell.  Lighting is designed by Nick Schlieper, sound design is by Jonathan Deans and Peter Fitzgerald and make up design is by Cassie Hanlon.

PRISCILLA is produced by Bette Midler; James L. Nederlander; Garry McQuinn, Liz Koops; Michael Hamlyn; Allan Scott; Roy Furman/ Richard Willis; Terry Allen Kramer; Terri and Timothy Childs, Ken Greiner, Ruth Hendel; Chugg Entertainment; Michael Buckley; Stewart Lane/ Bonnie Comley; Bruce Davey; Thierry Suc/TS3; Bartner/ Jenkins; Broadway Across America/H. Koenigsberg; M. Lerner/ D. Bisno/ K. Seidel/ R. Gold; Paul Boskind and Martian Entertainment / Spirtas-Mauro Productions / MAS Music Arts & Show; and David Mirvish.

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For more information, visit: www.priscillaonbroadway.com.
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Second Stage Theatre’s upcoming season will continue the company’s mission of producing bold new plays and musicals by American playwrights as well as second stagings of the best of contemporary theatre. 

The 2012-2013 season will kick off this fall with the world premiere comedy, Jon Kern’s MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award.  This provocative satire will be directed by Peter DuBois, who staged Second Stage’s popular and critical hits Becky Shaw, Trust and All New People. Previews will begin in mid-September prior to a mid-October opening. 

The fall will continue with the New York Premiere of this year’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning drama, WATER BY THE SPOONFUL, written by Quiara Alegría Hudes and directed by Davis McCallum.  Previews will begin in mid-December and the production will officially open in early January, 2013.   

Two additional productions are still to be announced. 

More detailed information on Second Stage Theatre’s upcoming season follows:

MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM

Winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award

World Premiere

By Jon Kern

Directed by Peter DuBois

Previews begin mid-September; opening mid-October

In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove comes MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, a provocative satire about a rogue group of 21st Century terrorists and their darkly comic misadventures.  As a young bomber develops feelings for his beautiful, secretive conspirator, he is torn between his duty and his heart. When his hipster neighbor accidentally gets caught up in the plans, circumstances spiral out of control. This world premiere is the winner of the 2012 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award.

JON KERN, a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in playwriting and the University of Chicago, is the 2012 winner of the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, the largest playwriting prize of its kind in the United States, for Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want To Kill Us and How We Learn To Love Them.  Jon recently joined the staff of the long-running hit television show, “The Simpsons,” and is a member of the Ars Nova Playgroup, the Civilians R&D Group, and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. He was awarded a Van Lier Fellowship in Playwriting from New Dramatists in 2010 and is an alumnus of the Youngblood writers’ group at Ensemble Studio Theatre.  Jon is a born and bred New Yorker.  His play We in Silence Hear a Whisper premiered in 2011, produced by Red Fern Theatre Company.

PETER DUBOIS returns to Second Stage where he directed Becky Shaw, Trust, and All New People. He also staged the West End production of All New People and the Almeida Theatre (London) production of Becky Shaw.  His other credit include Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theatre Company); Measure for Pleasure, Richard III, Mom How Did You Meet the Beatles, Biro (Public Theater/NYSF); Jack Goes Boating, View From 151st Street (LAByrinth Theater Company/Public Theater).  He has also staged works at American Conservatory Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, Humana Festival of New Plays, Manchester Opera House, Kings Theatre Glasgow.   He was the Associate Producer at The Public Theater/NYSF from 2003-2005 and was their Resident Director from 2005-2008.  He also served as Artistic Director of the Perseverance Theatre Company in Juneau, Alaska from 1997-2003.  Peter is currently in his fourth season as the Artistic Director of The Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. Peter’s productions have been on the annual top ten lists of The New York Times, Time Out, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Evening Standard, and the Improper Bostonian. 

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WATER BY THE SPOONFUL

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

New York Premiere

By Quiara Alegría Hudes

Directed by Davis McCallum

Previews begin mid-December; opening early January 2013

Elliot, a Puerto Rican veteran of the Iraq War, returns home to Philadelphia haunted by demons from the past, his family in flux, and his only career prospect at the local Subway sandwich shop.  When his mother’s online support group begins to overshadow his aspirations for the future, the real and online worlds – one forged by blood, another by survival – collide in this funny, urgent and timely 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner. 

WATER BY THE SPOONFUL is the second in a trilogy of plays that began with Hudes’ Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, a play about a young Marine coming to terms with his time in Iraq and his father's and grandfather’s service in Vietnam and Korea. The third play in the trilogy, The Happiest Song Plays Last, is scheduled to make its world premiere in 2013 at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Water By the Spoonful.  Her play, Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, was a Pulitzer Finalist, and her most recent work, The Happiest Song Plays Last, will premiere next season at The Goodman Theatre. Hudes wrote the book to the Broadway musical In the Heights, which premiered off-Broadway and earned the Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. In the Heights transferred to Broadway where it received the Tony Award for Best Musical, a Tony Nomination for Best Book of a Musical, and was named a Pulitzer Finalist. Hudes wrote the book and lyrics for a children’s musical, Barrio Grrrl!, which premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and toured nationally. Hudes was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she recently returned to receive a Resolution from the City of Philadelphia. Her first play was produced in the tenth grade by Philadelphia Young Playwrights, where she now serves as a board member and mentor to other young writers.  After graduating from public school, she received a B.A. in music composition from Yale and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown, where she studied with Paula Vogel.  She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

DAVIS McCALLUM returns to Second Stage Theatre where he directed the world premiere of Michael Mitnick’s Sex Lives of Our Parents as part of last summer’s Uptown Series.  He recently directed the world premiere of Gabe Kahane and Seth Bockley’s February House at the Long Wharf Theatre, as well as its subsequent New York premiere at the Public Theater. Other New York credits include Sam Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Partial Comfort; Drama Desk Nomination), Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb), Greg Moss’s punkplay (Clubbed Thumb), Chuck Mee’s Queens Boulevard (Signature Theatre), Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (P73; Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Henry V (New Victory), Jane Eyre (The Acting Company), and Rob Urbinati’s West Moon Street (Prospect Theater). Regonally, he has directed productions at the Guthrie, the Old Globe, Humana, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, Alliance, Chautauqua, the O’Neill, Playmakers Rep, Two River, and New York Stage & Film, among others. He also participated in the Drama League Director’s Project and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program, received a Boris Sagal Fellowship, and was a Princess Grace Honoree.

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ABOUT SECOND STAGE THEATRE

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, SECOND STAGE THEATRE produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America’s best contemporary theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman. 

The company’s more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 14 Lucille Lortel Awards, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.  In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theatre Uptown” series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre.  The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

Second Stage Theatre’s upcoming world premiere production of DOGFIGHT, featuring music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a book by Peter Duchan and directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, will begin previews on Wednesday, June 27 and officially open on Monday, July 16.

Second Stage Theatre Uptown’s first production, Alena Smith’s THE BAD GUYS, directed by Hal Brooks and featuring Michael Braun, Roe Hartrampf, James McMenamin, Tobias Segal, and Raviv Ullman, will begin previews May 22nd and officially open on June 4th.

SECOND STAGE THEATRE AT THE HELEN HAYES

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street.  With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions.  Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway.  The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city’s Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com

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“We’ve always said that the most gratifying part of producing this show is seeing the amazing audience reaction night after night,” Cohl and Harris said in a joint statement.  “It is mind-blowing that more than one-million audience-members have already walked through our doors, and we look forward to welcoming millions more.” 

SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark is Broadway’s most popular new show, and one of the most famous theatrical events in history.  In the past year, the production has been seen by 1 million audience members from around the world. It features music and lyrics by 22-time Grammy® Award-winners Bono and The Edge, direction by Philip William McKinley (The Boy From Oz),  and a book co-written by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger (Underneath The Lintel) and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comics, “Big Love”). Scenic Designer George Tsypin and Costume Designer Eiko Ishioka are winners of Outer Critics Circle Awards and were recently nominated for Tony® Awards for their work on SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark.

The world’s most recognizable super hero leaps off the comic book pages and onto the Broadway stage in SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark.  Peter Parker’s ordinary teenage life takes a turn for the extraordinary when he’s bitten by a  genetically altered spider and suddenly finds himself endowed with incredible superpowers.  Parker quickly learns that with great power comes great responsibility as he tries to juggle the demands of high school and home life, while battling the Green Goblin and his band of super villains as they try to take down New York City and destroy everything Peter holds dear – including the beautiful girl-next-door, Mary Jane Watson.  This high-flying groundbreaking, and history-making production brings this story – inspired by more than fifty years of Marvel comic books – thrillingly to life!

Tickets for SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark are priced from $79.50 - $159.50, and can be purchased online or at the Foxwoods Theatre box office (213 West 42nd Street), which is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, 12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. 

SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark now plays the following performance schedule: Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 p.m., and Sunday at 3:00 p.m.

 

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www.SpiderManOnBroadway.com 

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PROGRAM A

COLLABORATION WITH SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI: From the Pilobolus studio in Connecticut comes a new collaboration with the internationally renowned choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.  The result is a futuristic dance for six performers that takes place in a mirrored world somewhere between “Tron” and “Metropolis.”  Deep emotions punctuate the intoxicating rhythms of the machine in this emotional journey through a time that seems yet to come. 

SKYSCRAPERS: For this piece,  Pilobolus once again joins Trish Sie (co-creator of last year's Grammy-nominated Pilobolus/OK Go video and live dance, All Is Not Lost) to perform Sie's brilliant new OK Go video Skyscrapers as a work for the live stage.  Set against the gritty, saturated colors of LA's Eastside streets, Skyscrapers explores the melancholy, understated elegance of the tango as quintessential street dance, drenched in overtones of love, romance and loss. 

Other works in Program A are Gnomen, Duet and Megawatt.

PROGRAM B

AZIMUTH: The Pilobolus collaboration with MacArthur "Genius" Award-winning master juggler Michael Moschen turns the act of juggling on its side.  Uniting the underlying spirit of Pilobolus’ work—support, humanity, connection—with his own fascination with the emotional and physical properties that govern human interaction, Moschen investigates the geometries of the universe through objects that  roll in harmony with the dancers and the celestial machine.  Azimuth, an astrology term referring to the arc of the horizon, was choreographed by Renee Jaworski, Michael Tracy (both of Pilobolus) and Michael Moschen. 

This program also includes Pseudopodia, Korokoro, All is Not Lost and Sweet Purgatory.

ABOUT PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE

Pilobolus began in 1971, as an outsider dance company, and has evolved into a pioneering American arts organization of the 21st century. The company now revolves around three nuclei of activity: PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE, the umbrella for a series of radically innovative and globally acclaimed concert dance companies; THE PILOBOLUS INSTITUTE, unique educational programming for schools, colleges, and public arts organizations,  as well as a series of classes and leadership workshops for corporate executives, employees, and business schools; and PILOBOLUS CREATIVE SERVICES, a division specializing in a wide range of movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events.  The company is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and performs for stage and television audiences all over the world. 

MICHAEL MOSCHEN (Choreographer) is a juggler. He has created unique objects and manipulation techniques for Performance Theater for 30 years.  Using his self-taught creative process, he questions and explores what it is to be human.  Presently, he is completing a self-imposed challenge to create, from scratch, progressive physical skills and simple objects that celebrate each individual person’s ability to learn and share simple mathematics, music and physics.  Moschen is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.  

TRISH SIE (Creative Collaborator). With a background in modern dance, ballet, ballroom dancesport, and music, Sie conceptualizes, creates, choreographs and directs projects for film, television and the Internet.  She collaborated with OK Go to conceive and produce several of OK Go's music videos, including the Grammy-winning “treadmill video" and the “dog video.”

SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI’s (Choreographer) debut as a choreographer was in 1999 with Andrew Wale’s ‘contemporary musical,’ Anonymous Society.  Since then he has made more than 15 fully-fledged choreographic pieces and picked up a slew of awards, including the Fringe First award in Edinburgh, the special prize at the BITEF Festival in Belgrade, the promising choreographer prize at the Nijinsky Awards in Monte Carlo, the Movimentos award in Germany and the Helpmann award from Australia in 2007.  In 2008 Sadler’s Wells named him an Associate Artist and in 2009 the Alfred Toëpfer Stiftung conferred its Kairos prize to him in recognition of his artistic philosophy and his quest for cultural dialogue.  In 2008 and 2011 he was declared Choreographer of the Year by the dance magazine Tanz.  While Cherkaoui’s initial pieces were made as a core member of the Belgian collective, Les Ballets C. de la B. he also undertook parallel projects that both expanded and consolidated his artistic vision.  He has worked with a variety of theatres, opera houses and ballet companies, and from 2004–2009 Cherkaoui was based in Antwerp where he was an artist in residence at Het Toneelhuis.  Spring 2010 saw him reunited with co-choreographer Damien Jalet and Antony Gormley to make Babel(words), the third part of a triptych that began with Foi and Myth. Babel(words) recently triumphed at the 2011 Laurence Olivier Awards, winning best new dance production and outstanding achievement in dance for Antony Gormley.

THE JOYCE THEATER

The Joyce Theater Foundation, a non-profit organization, has proudly served the dance community and its audiences for three decades. Under the direction of founders Cora Cahan and Eliot Feld, Ballet Tech Foundation, Inc. acquired and The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. renovated the Elgin Theater in Chelsea.  Opening as The Joyce Theater is 1982, it was named in honor of Joyce Mertz, beloved daughter of LuEsther T. Mertz. It was LuEsther’s clear, undaunted vision and abundant generosity that made it imaginable and ultimately possible to build the theater. One of the only theaters built by dancers for dance, The Joyce Theater has provided an intimate and elegant home for more than 320 domestic and international companies. The Joyce has also commissioned more than 130 new dances since 1992. In 1996, The Joyce created Joyce SoHo, a dance center providing highly subsidized rehearsal and performance space to hundreds of dance artists, as well as special residency opportunities for selected choreographers to support the creation of new work. In 2009, The Joyce opened Dance Art New York (DANY) Studios to provide affordable studios for rehearsals, auditions, classes, and workshops for independent choreographers, non-profit dance companies, and the dance/theater communities. New York City public school students and teachers annually benefit from The Joyce’s Dance Education Program, and adult audiences get closer to dance through informative Dance Talks, Joyce Pre-Show gatherings, and post-performance Dance Chat discussions. The Joyce Theater now features an annual season of approximately 48 weeks with over 340 performances for audiences in excess of 135,000.

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Pilobolus will perform according to the following schedule at The Joyce Theater from July 16 – August 11: Monday – Wednesday at 7:30pm, Thursday and Friday at 8:00pm, and Saturday at 2:00pm & 8:00pm.    Tickets range in price from $10 - $59, and can be arranged by calling JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800 or online at Joyce.org.  NOTE: Ticket prices are subject to change.   The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street. 

PILOBOLUS at The Joyce Theater Schedule

            Week 1                 

Monday, July 16                       Program A                                   7:30 PM       

Tuesday, July 17                       Program A                                   7:30 PM       

Wednesday, July 18                  Program B                                   7:30 PM       

Thursday, July 19                     Program B                                   8:00 PM       

Friday, July 20                          Program A                                   8:00 PM       

Saturday, July 21                      Program B                                   2:00 PM       

Saturday, July 21                      Program A                                   8:00 PM               

            Week 2                 

Monday, July 23                       Program B                                   7:30 PM               

Tuesday, July 24                       Program B                                   7:30 PM               

Wednesday, July 25                  Program A                                   7:30 PM       

Thursday, July 26                     Program A                                   8:00 PM               

Friday, July 27                          Program B                                   8:00 PM       

Saturday, July 28                      Program B                                   2:00 PM       

Saturday, July 28                      Program A                                   8:00 PM               

            Week 3           

Monday, July 30                       Program A                                   7:30 PM       

Tuesday, July 31                       Program A                                   7:30 PM       

Wednesday, August 1               Program B                                   7:30 PM       

Thursday, August 2                  Program B                                   8:00 PM       

Friday, August 3                       Program A                                   8:00 PM       

Saturday, August 4                   Program A                                   2:00 PM       

Saturday, August 4                   Program B                                   8:00 PM                

            Week 4           

Monday, August 6                    Program B                                   7:30 PM

Tuesday, August 7                    Program B                                   7:30 PM

Wednesday, August 8               Program A                                   7:30 PM          

Thursday, August 9                  Program A                                   8:00 PM

Friday, August 10                     Program B                                        8:00 PM

Saturday, August 11                 Program B                                   2:00 PM

Saturday, August 11                 Program A                                   8:00 PM

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Leadership support for The Joyce Theater’s 2011–2012 season has been received from the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

MetLife Foundation is the official tour sponsor of Pilobolus and the lead supporter of accessible and inclusive programming at The Joyce Theater. 

The Joyce Theater’s Dance Presentation Program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Additional support has been provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund to encourage the performances of out-of-town companies at The Joyce Theater. 

Major support for The Joyce has been provided by Alphawood Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, First Republic Bank, The Hearst Foundations, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Fund for the City of New York, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and The Shubert Foundation.

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The Last Smoker in Americais a raucous and irreverent four-character musical comedy about a dysfunctional family struggling to survive in a world where smoking has recently been outlawed. Pam is having an impossible time trying to quit.  Her husband Ernie dreams of being a rock star and relentlessly practices his electric guitar in the basement.  Their teenage son Jimmy listens to so much rap music he’s convinced he’s black. Their nosy, anti-smoking zealot neighbor Phyllis lurks around trying to catch transgressors mid-puff. Will Pam kick the habit or fight for the right to light up as The Last Smoker in America? 

The musical received a developmental workshop production at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in the fall of 2009 where it extended and played to sold-out audiences.In the fall of 2010, The Last Smoker in America received its world premiere at CATCO (Columbus, Ohio), where additional performances were added due to popular demand.

The creative team includes Fred Lassen (music supervision), Charles Corcoran (sets), Michael McDonald (costumes), Jeff Croiter & Grant Yeager (lights), Bart Fasbender (sound), and Jay Binder (casting).  Roger Alan Gindi is the General Manager and Pamela Edington is the Production Stage Manager.

The producers for the New York run of The Last Smoker in America include Andy Sandberg, Whitney Hoagland Edwards, Michael Palitz, and Stephanie Rosenberg.

The Last Smoker in America will play the following performance schedule:  Mondays at 8:00 p.m., Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 2:30 p.m. & 8:00 p.m., Thursdays & Fridays at 8:00 p.m. and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. & 8:00 p.m.

Tickets priced at $85.00 go on sale on May 24, 2012 and will be available through Telecharge.com, or by calling 212-239-6200. For more information about the show, please visit www.lastsmoker.com.

Photo Caption:

John Bolton and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the 2010 CATCO production of The Last Smoker in America.  Photo credit: David Alkire.

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Bring It On: The Musical tells the story of the challenges and unexpected bonds formed through the thrill of extreme competition. With a colorful crew of characters, an exciting fresh sound and explosive dance with aerial stunts, this hilariously universal story is sure to be everything you hoped for and nothing like you expected. 

The entire cast of the hit touring production of Bring It On: The Musical will continue in their roles on Broadway.  Led by newcomer Taylor Louderman as Campbell and Adrienne Warren (Dreamgirls) as Danielle, the cast features Ryann Redmond (Back Stage Garland,  LA Ticketholder and BroadwayWorld Atlanta Award winner for her role in this production) as Bridget, Elle McLemore (Disney’s “Suite Life on Deck”) as Eva,  Jason Gotay (Broadway’s Rising Stars and Rent) as Randall, Ariana DeBose (Hairspray, “So You Think You Can Dance”) as Nautica, Gregory Haney (Memphis) as La Cienega, Neil Haskell (“So You Think You Can Dance”) as Steven, Janet Krupin as Kylar, Kate Rockwell (Legally Blonde) as Skylar and Nick Womack as Twig, Calli Alden, Nikki Bohne, Dexter Carr, Shonica Gooden, Haley Hannah, Rod Harrelson, Casey Jamerson, Dominique Johnson, Michael Mindlin, Adrianna Parson and Bettis Richardson.   The cast also features some of the nation’s most skilled competitive cheerleaders with over 25 national and 50 team titles in gymnastics and choreography. Those members include Antwan Bethea, AJ Blankenship, Danielle Carlacci, Michael Naone-Carter, Courtney Corbeille, Dahlston Delgado, Brooklyn Alexis Freitag, Keith Gross, Melody Mills, David Ranck, Billie Sue Roe, Sheldon Tucker and Lauren Whitt.

The design team includes scenic design by Drama Desk Award winner David Korins (Pee-Wee Herman Show), costume design by Andrea Lauer (American Idiot), lighting design by Jason Lyons (Rock of Ages), sound design by Tony Award winner Brian Ronan (Book of Mormon), video design by Jeff Sugg (Magic/Bird) and hair design by Charles G. LaPointe (Newsies).

Bring It On: The Musical premiered in a developmental production at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in early 2011 and launched a 13-city tour at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles on October 30, 2011, which will wrap up in Toronto on June 3, 2012. 

Tickets for Bring It On: The Musical will be on sale exclusively to Audience Rewards members from Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 10:00am through Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 11:59pm, at AudienceRewards.com. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Monday, May 21, 2012 at 10:00am at Telecharge.com (212-239-6200).

The performance schedule through August 5 is Monday and Tuesday at 8pm, Wednesday at 2pm & 8pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm & 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. There will be no performance on Sunday, July 15, Monday, July 16, Sunday, July 22 and Wednesday, August 1 at 2pm. Performances have been added on Thursday, July 12 and Thursday, July 19, both at 8pm.

Beginning Monday, August 6, the performance schedule is Monday and Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm & 8pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm & 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.

Beginning Tuesday, September 4, the performance schedule is Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm & 7:30pm, Thursday at 7pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm & 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.  For more information, visit: bringitonmusical.com

GIMME AN R-A-V-E !

“An intriguing collaboration among artists with serious Broadway cred.”

“Breathtaking displays of human fireworks. Bring It On had me regularly gasping at the human pyrotechnics.” "

-Charles Isherwood, New York Times

“BRING IT ON, INDEED. Smart writing that’s laugh out loud funny …crisp and poppy tunes… endless high-flying stunts.”

-Tanner Stransky, Entertainment Weekly

"CHEERWORTHY!   Bring It On is a very promising and affecting new musical.  TERRIFIC SONGS… gorgeous melodies, rappin' lyrics…. including the spectacular ‘It's All Happening’, the powerful ‘It Ain't No Thing’ and the witty ‘Might As Well Enjoy the Trip.’   A young, huge cast does remarkably athletic feats, which any person in your life will enjoy."

-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

 “Everything you wished for, nothing like you expected, exactly what you will love.”

-AOL.com

Bring It On: The Musical will introduce you to a world of razzmatazz that Las Vegas would envy, and sky-high gymnastics that could put Cirque du Soleil to shame.  It combines cutting-edge technology, a driving pop score and a cast of incredibly talented young people.

­-Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star

“A lot of musicals remind you of other musicals that you’ve seen, no matter how hard they insist that they’re unique. But Bring It On really does deliver something different: Cheerleading stunts that take your breath away. With an ensemble that includes about a dozen top cheerleaders from across the country, Bring It On offers more than songs and dances to entertain us. The cheerleaders fly high into the air, then come spinning down into the sure arms of their teammates with a rush of excitement (and maybe terror) that’s over almost at once — and then happens again. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen on the musical-theater stage.

-Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Thrills there are, aplenty.”

-Bob Verini, Variety       

“THE OLYMPICS OF MUSICAL THEATER. A jaw-dropping combination of cheerleading and show tunes. Airborne push-ups and human pyramids have replaced jazz hands and torch songs in this gravity-defying blast of energy.”

-Karen D’Souza, San Jose Mercury News

" Bring It On generates an immense, ultimately irresistible physical delight to the point where you might just want to stand and cheer for the sheer daring, skill and aerobic prowess of the performers."

" 'A' for Athelticism.”

-Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

“From the leads to members of the ensemble, this gang consistently delivers the goods in song, dance, even some neatly etched comic characterizations. With the gymnastics specialties thrown in periodically for good measure, it makes an impressive team effort whose vibrant spirit proves well-nigh irresistible. There’s no denying that Bring It On is going to leave a lot of people cheering.”

-Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle

"A smash-mouth cheerleading sensation, with dazzling choreography, standout performances…"

-Hoyt Hilsman, The Huffington Post

“Takes Musical Theatre to a whole new level.”

- ABC TV

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BONNIE & CLYDE has music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black, book by Ivan Menchell and music supervision/orchestrations/arrangements by John McDaniel.

The album was recorded in New York on January 2, 2012.  The album is produced by Wildhorn, McDaniel and David Lai. The Broadway Consortium (Van Dean and Kenny Howard) is the executive producer, along with Corey Brunish, Howard Kagan and Terry Schnuck. The liner notes include essays from the creative team, dozens of photos from the production and the complete lyrics. The track listing is below:

1. Prologue: How 'Bout A Dance

2. Picture Show

3. This World Will Remember Me

4. You're Going Back To Jail

5. How 'Bout A Dance

6. When I Drive

7. God¹s Arms Are Always Open

8. You Can Do Better Than Him

9. You Love Who You Love

10. Raise A Little Hell

11. This World Will Remember Us

12. Made In America

13. Too Late To Turn Back Now

14. That's What You Call A Dream

15. What Was Good Enough For You

16. Bonnie

17. Raise A Little Hell (reprise)

18. Dyin' Ain't So Bad

19. Dyin' Ain't So Bad (reprise)

20. How 'Bout A Dance (reprise)

21. BONUS TRACK: This Never Happened Before

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BONNIE & CLYDE, which starred Laura Osnes (2012 Tony nominee, Bonnie & Clyde, 2011 Drama Desk nominee, Anything Goes) and Jeremy Jordan (2012 Tony nominee, Newsies) as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, respectively,played its final performance on Friday, December 30th at 8:00pm at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

They were joined on stage by Melissa van der Schyff (Big River) as Blanche Barrow, Claybourne Elder (Road Show) as Buck Barrow, Joe Hart (The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public) as Sheriff Schmid and Louis Hobson (Next to Normal) as Ted Hinton.

The cast also features: Talon Ackerman, Rozi Baker, Leslie Becker, Mimi Bessette, Alison Cimmet, Daniel Cooney, Jon Fletcher, Kelsey Fowler, Victor Hernandez, Sean Jenness, Katie Klaus, Michael Lanning, Garrett Long, Matt Lutz, Marissa McGowan, Cassie Okenka, Justin Matthew Sargent, Jack Tartaglia and Tad Wilson.

-----

BROADWAY RECORDS is a new label dedicated to Broadway and Off Broadway cast recordings and is a division of the theatrical production and investment company, The Broadway Consortium.  The Broadway Consortium was co-founded by Van Dean and Kenny Howard.  Other Broadway Records releases include the Original Broadway Cast Recordingof Lysistrata Jones and Nick Jonas: Songs from How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.  The Broadway Consortium’s Broadway producing credits include Chinglish, Bonnie & Clyde, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Evita (2012).  West End: Master Class (2012).  Van’s credits also include Catch Me If You Can (Tony® Award nomination), ROOMS a rock romance (Outer Critics Circle and Helen Hayes Award nomination), Saint Heaven and Alive in the World.  Together, Kenny and Van executive produced the Grammy® nominated 2011 Broadway Cast Recording of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette.  Van also executive produced the Original Off Broadway Cast Recording of ROOMS a rock romance with Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger.  The general counsel for Broadway Records and The Broadway Consortium is Barry Miller.  www.BroadwayConsortium.com

 

FRANK WILDHORN (Composer) Multi-Grammy and Tony Award nominated composer/producer Frank Wildhorn's works span the worlds of popular, theatrical, and classical music. In 1999, Frank became the first American composer in 22 years to have three shows running simultaneously on Broadway: Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War.  Also for Broadway: Dracula and Victor/Victoria.  Frank produced Harlem Song the famed Apollo Theatre. International:  Cyrano, The Count of Monte Cristo, Carmen, Rudolf, Mitsuko, Never Say Goodbye, Camille Claudel, and Tears of Heaven. He currently has his own label deal (Soul Bear Records) with Sony Masterworks. International recording partnership, MWB (Music Without Borders), with MG-Sound/Vienna.  Frank served as music director for the Goodwill Games in New York City (1998).  He wrote the song “Gold”, the opening number for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Received the prestigious Charles Dickens Award from USC, where there is a scholarship under his name.  Among the artists who have recorded and performed Frank’s works: Whitney Houston (#1 international hit “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?”), Natalie Cole, Kenny Rogers, Sammy Davis, Jr., Liza Minnelli, Julie Andrews, Hootie & the Blowfish, The Moody Blues, Johnny Mathis, Linda Eder, Freddie Jackson, Trisha Yearwood, Stacy Lattisaw, Molly Hatchet, Blues Traveler, Trace Adkins, Patti LaBelle, Jeffrey Osborne, BeBe Winans, Amy Grant, Anthony Warlow, to name a few. Associate artist at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Upcoming: Havana.  Father to Justin Samuel and Jake Ryan.

JOHN McDANIEL (Music Supervision/Orchestrations/Arrangements) Television: “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” (two Emmy Awards), Friar’s Roasts ’99-’02, Tony Awards ’97-’00, A Rosie Christmas.  Broadway: Catch Me If You Can, Brooklyn (also Producer), Annie Get Your Gun, Taboo, Chicago, Grease, Patti LuPone on Broadway. Recordings as Producer: Annie Get Your Gun (Grammy Award), The Maury Yeston Songbook, Brooklyn, Taboo, The Journey Home (Malcolm Gets), John McDaniel at the Piano (Broadway, Christmas, Compositions and Live at Joe’s Pub).  Recent: Happy Days (national tour), nightclub debut of Tyne Dale, guest conductor at major symphony orchestras, including San Francisco and his hometown St. Louis Symphony.  

DAVID LAI (Music Contractor) is currently the conductor for Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera.  Music coordinator credits include South Pacific, Mary Poppins, Wonderland, The Woman in White, Riverdance and Jesus Christ Superstar. Record producer credits include West Side Story (Grammy); South Pacific (Grammy nom); Promises, Promises (Grammy nom), Elf; Wonderland; Grease; The Wedding Singer; and Allegro.

###

In 1994 Anthony Rapp was working at a New York Starbucks and about to audition for a new musical by a young guy named Jonathan Larson. This is where Without You begins. Rapp shares his audition for Rent, getting cast, rehearsals, and his view from the stage during the tribute performance on the night after Jonathan's tragic death. Without You also details Anthony's achingly beautiful relationship with his mother during this turbulent time. Featuring Anthony's own lyrics and melodies, stories adapted from his memoir, and the landmark songs of Rent, Without You is a valentine to the groundbreaking musical and celebrates all of our seasons of love.

Without You had its world premiere at Pittsburgh's City Theatre in 2008. Christopher Rawson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote, "A joyful, emotionally raw account. I wasn't exactly bawling at Without You, but I was certainly choking up, brushing back a tear, then doing it again a few minutes later. You don't need to know Rent to respond to the human story Without You embodies. Its music is appealing and poignant on its own. But to the extent that you do know Rent, the story widens into operatic impact."

Rapp's memoir Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (Simon & Schuster, 2006)—about his struggle to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family during his mother's battle with cancer—was a New York Times bestseller and is currently in its sixth paperback printing (and had nine hardcover printings). Upon its publication it received
rave reviews:

"Beautifully written . . . [Without You] shows that a life story truthfully
told can be stranger (as well as more touching) than fiction."

-- William Georgiades, New York Post

"No roar-of-the-crowd, smell-of-the-greasepaint scrapbook; it's a sprawling,
tear-streaked life story and unabashedly sentimental ode to his mother . . .
[Rapp's] voice is unpretentious and unfailingly honest."

-- Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly

"A moving, absorbing journal of life on stage and at home . . . Rapp here
makes an impressive debut as a writer, bringing a keen actor's sense of detail,
timing, and pathos to the page . . . he reaches a deep, affecting level of
personal expression."

-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A sensitive, heartfelt memoir . . . Absorbing, warm, and hopeful, the book
celebrates a man, his work, and a generation."

-- Publishers Weekly

"The tragic, compelling back story to Rent extends the book's appeal far beyond
the show's fans."

-- Web Behrens, Chicago Tribune

"Pitch-perfect . . . a book for anyone who has experienced great loss, [and]
for anyone who has survived and grown because of that loss."

-- David Weigand, San Francisco Chronicle

"As unblinking, unflinching and as unyielding as Larson's gritty Broadway
Bohemia."

-- Richard L. Eldredge, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A memoir roiling with personal revelation and uncensored emotion . . . Life
and death tumble through [Without You], jolting the narrative with hits of
passion, draping it in sorrow."

-- Christine Dolen, The Miami Herald

"[A] wrenching narrative . . . a moving tale of art, love and loss."

-- Thomas Leitch, Hollywood Reporter

Anthony Rapp has been acting and singing professionally since he was nine years old. He is best known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in Jonathan Larson's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Rent, for which he shared an OBIE Award with the rest of the cast. He reprised his role in Chris Columbus's film version opposite other members of the original cast. Rapp recently visited the role once more with original cast member Adam Pascal in a national tour of the show. His Broadway credits include the revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation. His Broadway debut was in Precious Sons with Judith Ivey and Ed Harris, for which he received an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination. His most recent stage appearance was in Second Stage Theatre's Some Americans Abroad. Film credits include Adventures in Babysitting, School Ties, Dazed and Confused, Six Degrees of Separation, Man of the Century, David Searching, Road Trip, and A Beautiful Mind (SAG Award nomination for ensemble). He has also appeared in Winter Passing, a film written and directed by his brother, Adam Rapp. On television, Rapp has appeared in "The Lazarus Man," "The X-Files," "The Beach Boys: An American Family," "Kidnapped" and "Law & Order: SVU." In 2000, he released his debut album, Look Around. He has performed his music in clubs and at colleges throughout the country.

Steven Maler is a freelance theater, opera and film director and the founding Artistic Director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC), which annually presents free productions of Shakespeare on the Boston Common.

The set design for Without You is by David Korins; lighting design is by Justin Townsend; sound design is by Gareth Owen; musical direction is by Dan Weiss; additional arrangements are by Tom Kitt. Without You is produced by Chocolate Factory Productions in association with Royal Family Productions.

Anthony Rapp - Without You

 

Venue: Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, Boston

Address: 525 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111

Dates: Tuesday 19th – Sunday 24th June 2012

Time: 20:00 Tuesday – Saturday + 16:00 Saturday, 18:00 Sunday

Ticket Prices: $60

Telephone Booking: 1-800-247-4360 (open 10:00 – 19:00, 7 days a week)

Online Booking: www.withoutyoutheshow.com

Tickets on Sale Now

 

Venue: E4 Cowbarn, Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue Number 300)

Address: Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL

Dates: Wednesday 1st - Sunday 26th August 2012 (previews 1-3 August, no show 13th August)

Time: 22:30

Ticket Prices: (Previews £8) £14 - £16

Telephone Booking: 0844 545 8282
(open 09:00 – 20:00, 7 days a week)

Online Booking: www.underbelly.co.uk

Tickets on Sale Now

 

Venue: Menier Chocolate Factory

Address: 53 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1RU

Dates: Wednesday 29th August – Saturday 15th September 2012

Times: Tuesday - Saturday 20:00, Saturdays & Sundays 15:30

Ticket Prices: £29.50

Telephone booking: 020 7378 1713 (open 09:00 – 22:00 Monday – Friday, 10:00 – 22:00 Saturdays, 12:00 – 18:00 Sundays)
Online booking: www.menierchocolatefactory.com
Tickets on Sale Beginning June 20
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EVER AFTER tells the story of Danielle de Barbarac, the daughter of a Nobleman in 16th Century France, who embarks on a series of adventures, standing up to her scheming stepmother, befriending Leonardo DaVinci and winning the love of the crown prince of France. This new musical sets the record straight on the fable of Cinderella, showing how a strong-willed, independent girl can make her dreams come true without the help of fairy godmothers, talking mice, or magic pumpkins.

Casting, dates and other creative team will be announced at a later date.

KATHLEEN MARSHALL (Director & Choreographer) is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony-nominated Best Musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, for which she is nominated for Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for direction and choreography, and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Tony-winning Best Musical Revival Anything Goes, for which she received 2011 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Awards for choreography and Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics nominations for direction. Also for Roundabout, Kathleen directed and choreographed The Pajama Game and choreographed Follies and 1776. Other Broadway credits include Wonderful Town; Grease; Boeing-Boeing; Little Shop of Horrors; Seussical; Kiss Me, Kate; and Swinging on a Star. Off-Broadway: Two Gentlemen of Verona (New York Shakespeare Festival), Saturday Night (Second Stage), Violet (Playwrights Horizons) and As Thousands Cheer (Drama Dept). City Center Encores!: Bells Are Ringing, Applause, Carnival, Hair and Babes in Arms; Artistic Director for four seasons. For ABC/Disney: “Once Upon a Mattress” and Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” (Emmy nomination). She has received two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Astaire Award, the George Abbott Award, the Richard Rodgers Award and the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts. Ms. Marshall is the Vice President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company.

ZINA GOLDRICH (Composer), along with lyricist Marcy Heisler, is the 2009 winner of the Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Songwriting. Currently, Ms. Goldrich is composing the score for The Great American Mousical with Heisler and bookwriter Hunter Bell.  Julie Andrews will direct the production at Goodspeed Opera House this fall.  She has earned a Drama Desk Nomination for Best Music for her score for the DR2 Theatre production of Dear Edwina.  She also composed the score for Junie B. Jones, which was twice nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award. Other scores include Allison Under the Stars, Adventures in Love and Snow White, Rose Red (and Fred), which premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2010 and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award. In addition to being a staff songwriter for Walt Disney Feature Animation, she has composed for various television shows including Wonderpets, Third and Bird, Johnny and the Sprites and Pooh’s Learning Adventures.  Ms. Goldrich studied under Jerry Goldsmith in the USC Scoring for Motion Picture and Television program. She is the recipient of ASCAP’s Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, the Seldes-Kanin Fellowship, a Jonathan Larson grant and numerous scholarships. On Broadway she played keyboards for Avenue Q, Bombay Dreams, Oklahoma and Titanic, where she also conducted.

MARCY HEISLER (Book and Lyrics) is co-recipient, with composer Zina Goldrich, of the 2009 Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Songwriting.  She is also the recipient of the 2012 Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre for most promising musical theatre lyricist. She earned a 2009 Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Lyrics for Dear Edwina and a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Junie B. Jones, Other collaborations with Zina Goldrich include The Great American Mousical, written with bookwriter Hunter Bell, directed by Julie Andrews, choreographed by Christopher Gattelli and designed by Tony Walton, premiering in November at Goodspeed Opera House. As a lyricist, Ms. Heisler has contributed songs for many Disney projects, including “Johnny and The Sprites,” “Pooh’s Learning Adventures,” and “The D Show.” She adapted new versions of 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and The Jungle Book for Disney Theatricals/MTI's Disney Kids series, and collaborated with composer Michael Picton on songs for Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus 137th Edition. Marcy Heisler has collaborated with composer Zina Goldrich since 1993, and they are past recipients of ASCAP's Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award and the Seldes-Kanin Fellowship.  

#         #         #

CARRIE opened Off-Broadway earlier this year, presented by MCC Theater and directed by Stafford Arima.  With a cast headed by Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson, CARRIE has been nominated for Best Musical Revival by the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and Off-Broadway Alliance.  Reflecting the musical’s strong showcase for women’s roles, both Ranson (as Carrie) and Mazzie (as her mother) also received multiple actor nomination accolades.  Mazzie and Ranson also lead the Off-Broadway Cast Recording, to be released by Ghostlight Records later this year.  A songbook folio based on the Off-Broadway production will be published by Imagem Music/Hal Leonard later this year as well.  The score includes several titles that have already become standards, including “When There’s No One,” and “Unsuspecting Hearts.”

CARRIE’s return to New York this spring marked nearly 25 years since the musical’s historic Broadway production.   Preceded by Stephen King’s debut 1974 novel and Brian De Palma's classic 1976 film, the stage musical had its world premiere as a co-production of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in February 1988; it transferred to Broadway later that spring, where it lasted for 16 previews and 5 performances before closing, taking on legendary status as one of Broadway's most controversial and short-lived productions.

Despite frequent entreaties from loyal fans (and a few unlicensed productions in the US and Europe), CARRIE was kept hidden from public view.  In 2009, the authors were approached by director Stafford Arima (Altar Boyz, The Tin Pan Alley Rag) whose passion for the piece led to this newly reworked and fully re-imagined version of the gripping story. The time period was reset to today, giving the story new relevance in its harrowing depiction of teen bullying.  

Both timely and timeless, CARRIE is the mesmerizing story of a young girl bullied by her peers in high school and mistreated by her fanatical mother at home. Carrie, however, learns she has special powers -- a discovery that leads to a devastating and unforgettable conclusion.

"I have known the authors of CARRIE for many years," says Ted Chapin, President of Rodgers & Hammerstein, "and it has been fascinating to watch as their relationship to the material continued to evolve.  When I saw this new version at MCC this year, I felt they had successfully walked the delicate line that a stage musical of this story requires -- and came out with an extraordinary and emotionally complex show that played like gangbusters.  I am thrilled that we are now representing the show and the score, and are able to make it available to theaters around the world."

In a joint statement, Cohen, Gore and Pitchford stated: "We couldn't be happier that our new version of CARRIE will at last be sent out into the world to continue its adventure and journey of resurrection.  We're especially proud that our musical of Stephen King's iconic fable -- with its emotionally driven narrative and strong contemporary resonances -- will be a part of a stellar catalog alongside the classics of Rodgers and Hammerstein."

While CARRIE is currently not available for licensing, theater organizations are welcome to sign up for our email newsletter, Show Business, where they can be the first to learn when it is released to customers.  For more information, visit our website, www.rnh.com, or follow us on Facebook (facebook.com/RodgersAndHammerstein), or Twitter (@RnH_Org) for updates. 

About R&H Theatricals

R&H Theatricals represents the stage performance rights to over 100 musicals by more than 200 writers. These include works by Rodgers & Hammerstein (including OKLAHOMA!, SOUTH PACIFIC and THE SOUND OF MUSIC), Rodgers & Hart (PAL JOEY, BABES IN ARMS), and Kern & Hammerstein (SHOW BOAT), as well as musicals by Irving Berlin (ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, WHITE CHRISTMAS), Andrew Lloyd Webber (CATS, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA), Adam Guettel (THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, FLOYD COLLINS), Kurt Weill (THE THREEPENNY OPERA, LADY IN THE DARK), such perennials as FOOTLOOSE, BIG RIVER and ONCE UPON A MATTRESS, and the longest-running revues in the history of  Broadway -- SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ -- and Off-Broadway -- I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE.  Recently added titles include IN THE HEIGHTS, ORDINARY DAYS, A CATERED AFFAIR, IT’S ONLY LIFE, [title of show], FACE THE MUSIC, REEFER MADNESS, ALTAR BOYZ, BERNARDA ALBA, MID-LIFE! THE CRISIS MUSICAL, and BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY. R&H Theatricals is an Imagem company:  www.rnh.com.

About Imagem Music

Imagem Music is the pop music division of the Imagem Music Group (André de Raaff, co-founder).  Home to the Elvis Presley catalogue as well as such talent as Ludacris, Phil Collins, Genesis, Anna Nalick, Steve Robson, Jens Gad, Temper Trap, Hesta Prynn, Bombay Bicycle Club and more, Imagem Music has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin and the Netherlands, and exclusive agents all over the world.  For more, visit:  www.imagem-music.com.  The Imagem Music Group is the world’s largest independent music publisher, which, in addition to its ever-expanding pop catalogues, is unique for its leadership role in classical music (Boosey & Hawkes) and musicals (Rodgers & Hammerstein). For more, visit: www.imagem.com.

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Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League, commented, "Each year, League members bring Broadway to nearly 30 million people in New York and on tour across the U.S. and Canada. We're pleased to present The League Awards to active members across the country whose accomplishments consistently impress us and our industry! The hard word and constant dedication of these outstanding people and companies enables The Broadway League to carry out our missions each and every day."

Outstanding Achievement in Presenter Management (Samuel J. L’Hommedieu Award) was given to TOM GABBARD of Blumenthal Performing Arts in Charlotte, NC for demonstrating excellence in management. (presented by Jeff Chelesvig)