NEW YORK (AP) — Simon & Schuster has named a former Amazon.com executive, Greg Greeley, as its new CEO. The publisher announced Monday that Greeley’s appointment is effectively immediately.

The 62-year-old Greeley succeeds Jonathan Karp, who announced last year that he was stepping down to head his own imprint at the company, Simon Six. Simon & Schuster, which celebrated its centennial in 2024, is home to Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and Bob Woodward and many other bestselling and prize-winning authors.

While Karp is a longtime editor and publisher, Greeley has a background in business and investment. He spent nearly 20 years at Amazon, where his positions included vice president of Amazon Prime. In 2018, he left to serve as president of Airbnb’s Homes division. More recently, he was president and COO of the biotechnology startup Opentrons and CEO of Thrasio, a consumer goods company.

“Greg Greeley is a talented and strategic leader with wide-ranging experience managing enterprises across physical and digital markets,” Richard Sarnoff, chair of the publisher’s board of directors, said in a statement. “His depth of expertise and avid love of books give us the confidence that he is the right CEO to take Simon & Schuster forward as it begins its next 100 years.”

Greeley will be running Simon & Schuster at a time of rapid change in the industry, with publishers, authors and agents debating the role of AI in the future of books.

“Simon & Schuster has played an enduring role in sharing and shaping human culture through books, and I’m honored to steward that mission for the next generation of authors and readers,” Greeley said in a statement.

Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, says she doesn’t pay much attention to celebrities. With one key exception: that time she first met Gloria Steinem.

“I was just starstruck,” Gbowee confesses to The Associated Press of the moment a mutual friend introduced her to the feminist icon. “Everyone knows of Gloria, regardless of which continent you come from.”

Steinem, for her part, protests that she’s not any more of a star than Gbowee. “She’s a GLOBAL celebrity,” the famed activist, now 91, says of Gbowee, 54, who won the Nobel in 2011 for her work promoting peace and women’s rights in Liberia.

In any case, their introduction two decades ago — via filmmaker and fellow activist Abigail Disney, who’d made a documentary about Gbowee’s peace movement — led to a strong friendship, separated by an ocean but fueled by shared commitment to social justice.

“Their spirits were in sync,” recalls Disney. “I said: ‘My work is done here. You guys do your thing.’”

Steinem smiles when repeating the phrase “sister-friend,” a term she says Gbowee invented: “It just expressed how we felt.” Now, the friendship — and that phrase — has led to something tangible and colorful: “Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together For All,” a picture book for kids. Dubbed “a journey of activism, sisterhood and friendship,” it’s both a joint biography and a call to a new generation to fight for equality.

With vivid illustrations by Kah Yangni, the two women trace their childhoods, young Steinem traveling the United States in a trailer with her antique-dealer father, over “miles of highways fruit stands, gas stations, diners,” and Gbowee in Liberia, “a land rich with timber, ripe with hopes for a new tomorrow.” They learn about injustice and inequality in their countries, and grow up to fight it — meeting as adults around a kitchen table.

The friends spoke in separate interviews — Gbowee from Liberia, and Steinem from her Manhattan brownstone — about their friendship, their book, and that kitchen table. Interviews have been combined and edited for length and clarity.

AP: The two of you live on different continents and have fought different sorts of battles. How did you get to know each other?

GBOWEE: Gloria and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Abby Disney, many moons ago. And from that time onward, I was like, “If I ever need to talk to you, can we? And it was “Yes, yes, yes.” And it’s been that way for a long time. When I was pregnant with my daughter (now 16), we had the baby shower at Gloria’s home.

STEINEM: I remember her as a kind of global, amazing figure who somehow from Africa to the U.S., through Europe, everywhere, is a unifying figure and unifying storyteller. …. I mean, she IS the movement. Look at her life. She’s an inspiration, whether we’re talking about an ecological global save-the-trees movement or about women’s equality.

AP: (To Gbowee) You’ve spoken about how a conversation with Gloria — at her kitchen table — influenced your decision to stick with the feminist movement at a time you were struggling, and ultimately inspired this book.

GBOWEE: It was our Easter Sunday conversation in 2009, where I was really feeling funky about being in the feminist movement. Did I want to stay? Did I want to leave? And she said to me, “One of the reasons you feel the way you’re feeling is because you need a sister.” She was telling me about how she had all these sisters from Alice Walker to different people she used to go on trips with, they didn’t need anything from each other, just to be there for each other. She said, “That’s the kind of person you need, that you can be very vulnerable with.” It was a beautiful conversation.

AP: What made you want to write the book together?

STEINEM: First of all, we wanted to communicate, to write, to somehow connect with each other despite the global distance. … I think that as children, we were interested in stories and were ourselves storytellers, as well as consumers of stories. We also had a relationship to the natural world, which perhaps is true for most children. Just a sense of kinship with trees and flowers and gardens.

GBOWEE: During the pandemic, I started writing a lot. Someone put me in touch with Scholastic and I sent a manuscript and they looked at it and said, “Let’s talk some more.” I raised the issue of wanting to collaborate with a few individuals. And once I said “Gloria,” they were like, “Do you know her?” I was like, “Of course I know Gloria!”

AP: (to Steinem) The two of you describe your childhoods in the book, and it’s striking to read that you weren’t introduced to regular school until you were about 10 years old.

STEINEM: Until the sixth grade. We lived in rural Michigan in the summertime … And in the wintertime, my father always put the whole family in a house trailer and we were working our way, buying and selling antiques and so on, to Florida or California. I think my family thought because I was always reading books in the back seat, that was enough.

AP: It doesn’t seem to have set you back.

STEINEM: Well, I’m probably still lousy at math.

AP: What age is this book directed at, and is it for girls?

STEINEM: (Laughing) I mean, it’s called “Rise, Girl, Rise,” but I think boys could tolerate that title, too. Girls have read “The Hardy Boys” for years and other boys’ books and felt connected.

GBOWEE: They say from age 11, but I would say I’d read it to my seven-year-old grandson. I would read it to my five-year old grandson. None of my kids have children, but I have daughters of the heart and they have children. So they’re my grandchildren. And that book is appropriate for them. The message of love and acceptance and everything else is something I want to pass on to them.

AP: (to Steinem) Your home seems to be the center of constant meetings of activists from around the world. What have you been discussing recently?

STEINEM: There’s a continuing series of meetings going on in my living room, sometimes initiated by me, sometimes by other people. We’re all certainly concerned with the political system in an electoral sense. And, you now, we live in a democracy that’s one of the few in the world that’s never had a female elected leader. That’s kind of ridiculous. I mean, we’re choosing from half the country’s talent.

PARIS (AP) — The celebrities came first, as they always do at the Paris runways.

After Oprah Winfrey stole the show in the opening stretch of the nine-day week, Naomi Watts and Kai Schreiber were at Balenciaga. Rooney Mara, Diane Kruger, Alexa Chung, Elizabeth Olsen and Yseult turned up at Givenchy.

Sarah Paulson and Tracee Ellis Ross watched Celine. Chappell Roan was at Vivienne Westwood and then at McQueen, where Myha’la and Sophie Thatcher were also there. Chanel was still to come Monday, and Louis Vuitton capping the season Tuesday.

But this week was about more than the front row.

Paris Fashion Week ’s biggest houses are in reset mode, and the designers leading them are trying to answer the same hard question: How do you dress people when the world feels dark, loud and unstable?

Three trends stood out

First came clothes built to shield: high collars, wrapped coats and strong tailoring.

Then came the silhouette: a sharper line, as designers moved away from years of oversized dressing and back toward shape.

The third trend was glamour that looked less polished. Hair was messier, makeup was smudged, clothes felt rougher and the mood was darker. Luxury no longer looked sealed off from real life.

Armor for anxious times

Balenciaga led the first trend.

In his second show, Pierpaolo Piccioli built the collection around darkness and the search for light, working with “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson on a set tied to the series’ return.

The mood pushed the collection toward unease.

On the runway, that became balloon bombers, cocoon backs, portrait collars and face-framing necklines that made the body look guarded.

Even the softer draped dresses kept that mood: these were clothes for a hard world.

Givenchy pursued a similar path and made it more personal. Sarah Burton’s third show felt like the one where her point of view clicked.

She was not proposing one ideal woman, but many women and many ways of being strong, with exact tailoring, strong coats, peplum hips, velvet, shearling and evening looks grounded in real life.

Burton’s collection was about how women put themselves back together in the world they are living in. That idea gave the clothes force. They were polished, but but still connected to it.

Junya Watanabe pushed the idea furthest, turning gloves, motorcycle gear and emergency blankets into couture-like forms.

McQueen did the same, with Seán McGirr talking about paranoia, perfection and the strain of always being seen. His slashed leather trousers, low-slung minis and chainmail-like textures suggested exposure, but also defense.

The new sharpness

The second big trend was silhouette.

After years of volume, slouch and oversized ease, Paris is moving back toward the body.

Celine made that shift most clearly. Michael Rider’s third outing felt like a designer settling into his idea.

He wanted clothes for living in. His coats and suits sat closer to the torso. His trousers kicked out in cropped flares. His menswear came in long, narrow overcoats that looked crisp rather than inflated.

Rider also suggested that the long dominance of oversized dressing may be breaking.

His version of sharpness was not stiff or nostalgic. It had ease, but it also had character.

Classic clothes came back with a little edge: smaller details, stranger proportions, a more exact line.

That made Celine a clear mood-setter.

Paris runways were after presence, just no longer through sheer size.

You could see that shift elsewhere, too. Burton relaxed the strict hourglass she established earlier at Givenchy, but she did not give up shape.

Piccioli used collars and cocoon backs to frame the figure rather than bury it. McQueen’s low-rise minis and neat boots pointed the same way.

The season’s line was stronger, cleaner and closer to the body. After years of volume, Paris was asking for something more exposed. Stand up. Be seen. Take shape.

Beauty with the cracks left in

The third trend was less polished glamour.

Designers still wanted beauty, but they wanted friction too.

At Westwood, Andreas Kronthaler staged grief, eroticism and disorder at once, speaking openly about loss while insisting on pleasure and play. On the runway, that became rough seams, smudged lipstick, lingerie codes, odd hats and an unfinished bride. It looked messy, sad, sexy and alive.

That appetite for imperfection ran through the week.

Rider evoked the messier inner lives beneath beautiful clothes.

Piccioli used shadow to keep darkness close.

Burton filled Givenchy with distinct female characters instead of one polished ideal.

Paris repeatedly rejected sterile luxury. Taken together, the strongest shows suggested a week less interested in escape than in resilience. The best designers were not trying to make the world disappear.

They were trying to arm women for it.

A public funeral Mass was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, following a weekend of private and public visitations. His burial will be private.

The trombonist, composer, arranger and singer born William Anthony Colón Roman died on Feb. 21. The cause was not publicly announced. His family said he passed away peacefully surrounded by relatives at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Bronxville, New York, just north of New York City. According to the official funeral program, he is survived by his wife of 49 years, Julia Colón Craig, their four sons William David (Rose) Colón, Adam Diego Colón, Alejandro Miguel (Nell) Colón, Patrick Antonio Colón, sister Isabell (Michael Johnson) Breston, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

“While we grieve his absence, we also rejoice in the timeless gift of his music and the cherished memories that will live on forever,” his family said in a statement.

The funeral was livestreamed at https://www.saintpatrickscathedral.org/ and YouTube.

The mass, readings and songs were held in both Spanish and English. Here are some highlights.

Loving tributes from family and friends

Diego Colón, one of Willie’s four sons, gave the first eulogy. “He left a giant shadow,” he said. “The whole world was changed by his music … those who truly knew him were changed by his love.”

Alejandro Miguel (Nell) Colón, another son, took over, saying that Willie Colón always dreamt of having his funeral at the famed St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We got it done,” he said.

Joking about his father’s political activism and support for law enforcement, he told the crowd that when he was a child, he used to tell people his dad was “half-singer and half-cop,” adding that the last thing he ate was a small piece of raspberry dark chocolate.

“Because of you, we all stand taller,” he concluded.

“I actually learned what the trombone was because of him,” Bishop Joseph A. Espaillat joked in his sermon, before adding that Colón was a son of the Bronx, or Puerto Rico, but “what is most important is that he is a son of God. And that’s why we’re gathered here today.”

“This is a very important moment,” he continued. “I hope all of you leave today with hope that this is not the end.”

Celebrating a lifelong legacy

Born in New York City’s Bronx borough, Colón produced more than 40 albums that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and collaborated with a wide variety of artists, including the Fania All Stars, David Byrne and Celia Cruz.

He was nominated for 10 Grammys and one Latin Grammy and was known for songs including “El gran varón,” “Sin poderte hablar,” “Casanova,” “Amor verdad” and “Oh, qué será.”

His manager, Pietro Carlos, wrote on social media that Colón not only changed salsa, but also “expanded it, politicized it, clothed it in urban chronicles, and took it to stages where it hadn’t been heard before.”

Colón was also a community leader who fought for civil rights, mostly in the United States. He further dabbled in politics, serving as a special assistant to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg. In 1994, he lost his challenge to then-U. S. Rep. Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary.

The pop culture star, advocate and entrepreneur Paris Hilton launched an initiative Monday to support female small-business owners impacted by disasters, a nationwide expansion of her philanthropic support for women entrepreneurs after the 2025 Los Angeles fires.

Hilton is donating $350,000 to kick-start the Back in Business Recovery Fund, with a goal to raise at least $1 million by the end of March.

“Women-owned businesses are really the heart of so many of these communities,” Hilton told The Associated Press. “I want to be able to lift up and support them, shine a light on them and really make a difference in their lives.”

The new initiative will be a partnership between Hilton’s social impact organization 11:11 Media Impact and GoFundMe.org, which is the philanthropic arm of the fundraising platform GoFundMe and will contribute $100,000 to the fund’s launch.

Hilton and those organizations deployed over $1 million in cash grants to 50 women-owned small businesses after the LA fires, which destroyed her own Malibu home.

Losing the home where she was raising her young children has been “very emotional,” Hilton said, and spurred her to think of other mothers who’d lost not just houses but income to support their families.

The grants of up to $25,000 went to owners of child care centers, bakeries, bookshops, dance studios and salons damaged by the Eaton fire, which devastated the community of Altadena. The money helped cover rent, payroll, replacing equipment and rebuilding.

One year later, 90% of the grantee businesses are still operating, according to the Pasadena Women’s Business Center, which also received a grant to provide technical assistance and mentorship to impacted enterprises.

Grant helped floral designer

The grantees included Renata Ortega, who ran her floral design company Orla Floral Studio from a converted garage next to the Altadena home she shared with her husband and three dogs.

Ortega was unsure how she would keep her business going after flames destroyed her house and studio space, including all her floral and event equipment.

“Nothing prepares you for that amount of loss,” she told The Associated Press. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to get back on my feet because it took me years to be able to come up with the inventory I had.”

She worried for the staff she employed and the flower market vendors who depended on her purchases, too.

The grant helped Ortega pay the deposit on a studio space and purchase a badly needed floral cooler. Orla Floral is now “booked and busy,” she said. She was able to keep her staff and is hoping to hire another employee soon.

She credits much of her recent growth to the grant. “It directly went into getting us back into business, but actually back and better than ever,” she said.

The support also gave Ortega a motivational boost as she faced rebuilding her home and livelihood simultaneously.

“You have to keep going and you have keep pushing and fighting forward,” Ortega told herself, “because if somebody like Paris Hilton notices your story and thinks you’re important, then you have to believe in yourself and also think that you’re important.”

Paris Hilton wanted to think bigger

Hilton supported grantees as a customer, too, proudly donning a catsuit from the apparel shop Crop It Like It’s Hot at the Coachella music festival and hiring food vendors like Carmela Ice Cream and Hot Shrimp Mami for her own parties.

Those relationships inspired her to think “think bigger” about a national initiative, Hilton said. So did her lived experiences as a woman, mother and entrepreneur.

“For so much of my career, I’ve been underestimated,” said Hilton, a great grandchild of the hotel magnate Conrad N. Hilton. “I’ve worked very hard to show people that there’s much more to me.”

While there are 14.5 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., a 39% share according to Wells Fargo, women, and especially minority women receive disproportionately less investment than men through venture capital and loan financing.

“They are the most undercapitalized and underresourced, and particularly if primary caregiving responsibilities are falling on them too, sometimes that leads to increased recovery burden,” said Rebecca Grone, director of 11:11 Media Impact.

Like the LA program, the Back in Business Recovery Fund will distribute unrestricted grants, partnering with some of the 150 local women’s business centers spread across the U.S.

Collaborating with the centers will help identify impacted women quickly and opens up access not just to cash, but to a community of business owners facing similar challenges, said Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of GoFundMe.org. “It’s really key to the success.”

Decisions on when to activate the fund will also be informed by reaching out to the women business centers to assess impacts, Brown Lierman said.

While the money will go to owners themselves, the impact is aimed toward the whole community, said Grone. Saving businesses can protect jobs and tax revenue, but it can also preserve the soul of communities, drawing displaced residents back home.

“You don’t want to come back if the community isn’t thriving, so as folks are rebuilding their homes, the things that are familiar and make a community feel like home are equally as crucial,” she said.

A YouTube series called “ Back in Business ” was also released Monday, highlighting some of the LA business owners. “I hope it really inspires others to want to donate and give back,” Hilton said.

Several of the LA grantees including Ortega will join Hilton Monday afternoon to ring the New York Stock Exchange closing bell, marking International Women’s Day, which was Mar. 8.

It will be one of her proudest moments, Hilton said, “showing the power of women when they come together.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Officers responded around 1:15 p.m. after a report of multiple shots fired at the home. They took someone into custody and also recovered a weapon, Los Angeles Police said.

No injuries were reported. Seven “assault rifle casings” were found at the home, police told CBS LA.

An LAPD official confirmed to CBS LA that the singer owns the home in LA’s Post Office neighborhood.

Police told CBS LA they believe a woman in her 30s shot at the home seven times from a car parked outside before driving away. The suspect’s white Tesla was found about eight miles away at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where she was taken into custody, CBS LA reported.

Police haven’t revealed if the singer, her husband, rapper A$AP Rocky, or any of their three children were home at the time of the shooting, according to CBS LA.

After adding another $42 million from international showings, the film celebrated an $88 million global launch in total, the biggest for an original animated film since “Coco” came out in 2017.

But it wasn’t all good news for big studio fare at the multiplex: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s R-rated reimagining of the Bride of Frankenstein story is flailing. A Warner Bros. release, “The Bride!” starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, debuted to an estimated $7.3 million from 3,304 domestic locations. It cost around $80 million to produce, not including marketing and promotion expenses.

The two movies were hardly competing with one another for viewers — one being a PG-rated family pic, the other an audacious, R-rated, genre-blending ride. “Hoppers” arrived to a slew of good reviews, while critical responses to “The Bride!” were mixed to negative and its audience scores weren’t much better.

“Hoppers” win was much needed for Disney and Pixar following last year’s “Elio,” which was Pixar’s worst opening ever. The studio’s only major successes lately have been sequels and franchises, while “Hoppers” is a win for original fare. It also opened higher than 2023’s “Elemental,” which eventually went on to become a sleeper hit (“Elio” did not).

“Hoppers” had a reported $150 million production budget and opened in 4,000 locations. Directed by Daniel Chong, the movie is about a 19-year-old environmentalist who infiltrates the animal world in the body of a beaver. It features the voices of Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm and Kathy Najimy.

“Hoppers” got a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 75% “definitely recommend” from PostTrak polling and an A CinemaScore, suggesting it should have a long and profitable run in theaters.

“This is a fantastic original film from the incredible team at Pixar, and it’s wonderful to see audiences coming out with their friends and families to enjoy it together,” said Alan Bergman, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, in a statement. He also congratulated the filmmaking team on “a tremendous launch.”

“The Bride!” had a bit of a bumpy path to theaters, with edits being made after reportedly poor test screenings. Its release date was pushed back from September, possibly to give it some space versus Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” which played in theaters last fall before hitting Netflix.

Men made up a slight majority of the audience for “The Bride!” at 53%. The movie currently carries a “rotten” 59% on Rotten Tomatoes and a lackluster C+ CinemaScore. Only 43% of that audience said they would “definitely recommend.”

And it doesn’t seem like international audiences will be much help: It made only $6.3 million outside of the U.S. and Canada, bringing its global debut to $13.6 million.

“Unfortunately, we came in light,” said Jeffrey Goldstein, who oversees domestic distribution for Warner Bros., in a text message. “We have a tailored approach to our slate, investing strategically in talent, IP and original storytelling. It spans genres and budget levels and allows us to back bold, distinctive filmmakers … and sometimes things just don’t work out.”

Warner Bros.’ other recent release, “Wuthering Heights,” meanwhile, has surpassed $213 million globally. And next week, the studio, which is staring down new ownership under Paramount, is expected to sweep the Oscars between “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners.”

“We’re coming off an incredible run of nine No. 1 openings in a row, and in an increasingly ‘risk-averse’ business like ours, we believe the business is better served with studios taking bold swings on originals like this one,” Goldstein said. “Even the 1927 Yankees had 44 losses that season.”

Paramount’s “Scream 7” landed in second place in its second weekend with $17.3 million, down a whopping 73% and bringing its domestic total to $93.4 million and its global total to $149.5 million. Sony’s “GOAT” came in fourth place with $6.6 million while “Wuthering Heights” rounded out the top five with $3.8 million.

“When there’s this many holdovers in the top 10, it says we haven’t had enough horsepower in the newcomers to really get things moving,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s head of marketplace trends.

But he anticipates that will change when the Ryan Gosling-led sci-fi adventure “Project Hail Mary” hits theaters on March 20.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Hoppers,” $46 million.

2. “Scream 7,” $17.3 million.

3. “The Bride!” $7.3 million.

4. “GOAT,” $6.6 million.

5. “Wuthering Heights,” $3.8 million.

6. “Crime 101,” $2.1 million.

7. “Send Help,” $1.6 million.

8. “I Can Only Imagine 2,” $1.5 million.

9. “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” $1.5 million.

10. “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castlee,” $1.3 million.

Two of the stars of the musical’s pre-Broadway run at Hartford Stage in 2016 will be appearing at the March 10 concert: Christy Altomare, who played Anya (aka Anastasia) and John Bolton, who played the con artist Vlad who tries to pass off Anya as the surviving member of the Russian royal family. Jake Levy, who was not part of the Hartford production but played Anya’s love interest Dmitry on the musical’s first national tour, will also be at the concert, as well as the show’s director, Darko Tresnjak, who was artistic director of Hartford Stage when “Anastasia” was produced there.

The concert is a fundraiser for Hartford Stage’s artistic and educational programs. Besides performances of songs from the show and anecdotes about the beginnings of “Anastasia” in Hartford, the evening features a dessert and champagne reception in the theater lobby.

The “Anastasia” musical was an adaptation of two Hollywood properties based on the (largely debunked) legend of a Russian princess who survived the revolution in which the entire royal family was slain. The stage show’s primary source was the animated film “Anastasia” from 1997, which is often mistaken for a Disney film but was in fact directed by independent animator Don Bluth and produced by 20th Century Fox. (Adding to the confusion, this “Anastasia” now streams on the Disney Plus channel.) Some elements were also lifted from a 1956 movie that starred Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner.

Most of the songs, including the Oscar-nominated “Journey to the Past,” came from the animated movie, but songwriters Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens — the team behind the Broadway shows “Once on This Island,” “Seussical the Musical” and “Ragtime” — also wrote new material for the stage show. Playwright Terrence McNally, who also worked on “Ragtime” and whose many hit stage plays included “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class,” thoroughly revamped the story, jettisoning key characters from the movies such as the villain Rasputin and a cartoon bat.

McNally died in 2020, and “Anastasia” was the final musical he completed. Among the other musicals McNally wrote the books for were “Kiss of the Spiderwoman,” “The Fully Monty” and “Catch Me If You Can.”

Hartford Stage got to develop “Anastasia” for Broadway for a number of reasons. Among them was that Tresnjak, the theater’s artistic director at the time, had been hired to direct the musical. Tresnjak’s breakthrough hit, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” had also been worked on at Hartford Stage prior to its Broadway success. Hartford Stage had a long history of sending shows to Broadway, though before Tresnjak’s tenure very few of them were musicals. Tresnjak left Hartford Stage in 2018.

The Hartford Stage run of the show was a genuine pre-Broadway tryout of the sort Connecticut was famous for in the 1940s and ‘50s. During the Hartford run, new songs were tested, the order of songs were changed, songs and scenes were cut or trimmed and whole numbers were rethought and restaged. Other changes were evident when the show opened on Broadway a year after the Hartford Stage run. Most notably, the song “Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart),” which was staged in Hartford to mimic the scene in the animated film, was completely redone in a sparser, sharper manner just days before the Broadway opening. The closing songs for both acts were also different on Broadway than they were in Hartford, and there were numerous smaller changes. Many more changes were made when “Anastasia” went on tour, including a significant shortening of the show’s length and a revised version of the turntable, which sped up the scene transitions on Broadway.

“Anastasia” ran for a solid two years on Broadway but it’s the show’s post-Broadway life that’s truly impressive. It toured in various forms for years. In Connecticut alone, the show visited The Bushnell, the Shubert Theatre, the Waterbury Palace and Foxwoods Resort Casino. There were either standing companies or lengthy tours in Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark, Italy and Australia, many of them happening in the last three or four years.

There are many shows that ran longer on Broadway or had more name recognition than “Anastasia” that have not had the same staying power.

Rights to perform the show have now trickled down to community theaters. One of the largest community theater operations in the state, Curtain Call in Stamford, has a production of “Anastasia” running from March 27 through April 18. The Opera House Players in Enfield did their own production last May. An hour-long “Youth Version” of the show, for schools to perform, is also available.

“‘Anastasia’ 10th Anniversary Concert: A Fundraiser for Hartford Stage” will take place on March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. $100-$250. hartfordstage.org.

The Courant spoke to three theater organizations in the state — Hartford Stage, TheaterWorks Hartford and Goodspeed Musicals — about how they each cast shows. Their stories have been enhanced with some of the countless tales recounted by actors and directors that have been shared over the years.

For its current production of the breakfast diner drama “The Counter,” TheaterWorks Hartford was looking for another project they could do with Tim DeKay, who co-starred in last season’s hit production of “Fever Dreams.” DeKay wasn’t sure the role was for him, so an informal reading of the script was held at the theater. TheaterWorks’ producing artistic director Rob Ruggiero asked Justis Bolding, who had recently moved to the Hartford area and served on the TheaterWorks board, to read the other main role in the script. There’s a third character in the play who appears for just one scene, so Ruggiero asked Erika Rolfsrud, who has been in half a dozen shows at the theater over its long history, to read the role.

The reading was a success. DeKay was able to hear himself in the role, and “The Counter” was confidently scheduled for the 2025-26 TheaterWorks season. When it came time to cast it, Ruggiero and DeKay had admired Bolding’s work in the reading so much that she was offered the part in the full production. Rolfsrud was asked to take part as well, as Ruggiero particularly liked that someone who had been in so many past shows at the theater could return during TheaterWorks Hartford’s 40th anniversary season. “The Counter,” which opened Feb. 12, has been extremely well received and its run has been extended through March 22.

For Hartford Stage’s long-awaited production of “Death of a Salesman,” director Melia Bensussen (who is also the theater’s artistic director) had some special themes she wanted to explore, so she reached out to an actor she remembered as a fellow student during her student days at Brown University, Peter Jacobson, to play Willy Loman. Jacobson has had a wealth of experience as an actor in the four decades since he was in school, including a regular role in the series “House,” but the connection with Bensussen was a big part of what got him this job. As Loman’s wife Linda, Bensussen enlisted someone she’d worked with numerous times before, Adrianne Krstansky. Her familiarity with Jacobson and Krstansky allowed Bensussen to leap into rehearsals more readily than if she were just getting to know her cast. Several other members of the cast, however, were new to her, drawn from open call auditions.

Open calls for actors

Open auditions, known in the regional theater realm as Equity Principal Auditions, are a reality of being a professional theater. EPAs are governed by the Actors’ Equity Union.

Zoe Golub-Sass, the associate artistic director of Hartford Stage, was the director of “The Cottage,” “Hurricane Diane” and “2.5 Minute Ride” in recent seasons. Tellingly, the casts for those three shows all came about in different ways. She had done a production of the one-person show “2.5 Minute Ride” in New York state with the same actor who was suggested to her by a colleague. When the opportunity to reprise the show in Hartford came about, she was eager to revisit it with the same performer at a different phase in their careers. With “Hurricane Diane,” its lead performer had reached out to Hartford Stage when they heard the theater was doing the play. The actor was unable to audition in person due to another project but “radiated a charm through the Zoom screen” that won them the role.

Golub-Sass said Hartford Stage’s casting process is dictated by the specific union agreement it has as a member of League Of Resident Theatres. The Equity rules can vary based on the size, potential or location of a given theater.

At Hartford Stage, Golub-Sass said, “First we write character descriptions, in collaboration with the show’s directors, about what the production will be like. We audition the whole season at once, then start on the individual shows.”

After the EPAs, Hartford Stage looks at actors who were submitted by agents. TheaterWorks Hartford’s Rob Ruggiero said “if you’re an actor, having an agent can give you a bit of a leg up. Agents submit ideas to the casting directors we work with.”

Casting directors are part of the process all along. Most regional theaters have maintained decades-long relationships with casting directors, who are duly credited in the theater playbills. One example of an agent submission that netted an actor a starring role was when the accomplished stage and screen actor Michael Gaston informed his agent that he would like to play the role of Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s drama “All My Sons.” When Hartford Stage announced it was doing the play, Gaston’s agent got in touch and the theater offered him the role, having already arranged for the movie star Marsha Mason to play to Keller’s wife Kate.

“We sit through 1,500 auditions a season,” said Adam Souza, the music director of Goodspeed Musicals. “We had 800 to 900 just for ‘Ragtime,” the season-opening show at the Goodspeed Opera House this past May. The Goodspeed’s variation on the EPAs is the ECC, or Equity Chorus Call, which specifically looks for performers for the chorus or ensemble in a musical.

Souza said at the ECCs, basically “whoever shows up, we have to see.” If an Equity union member does not appear for their scheduled slot at the ECCs or EPAs, the theater holding the auditions is asked if it is willing to see a non-Equity member at that time. Ruggiero said TheaterWorks always agrees to that and that everyone benefits from widening the process and seeing more actors.

Even when a theater already has a cast in mind, as with TheaterWorks’ “The Counter” or Hartford Stage’s “2.5 Minute Ride,” it still holds auditions, partly due to Equity’s insistence and partly to be prepared for emergency cast changes.

At some casting sessions, a wide range of people from the theater do the casting, plus casting directors and others might be there. “Who’s in the room depends on the call,” Souza said. “If it’s a musical call, to see how well they sing, the only person required to be there is me.”

Golub-Sass, Souza and Ruggiero all said that these “cattle call” auditions can be immensely helpful and that while they tend to be most helpful in filling small roles (or in Goodspeed’s case chorus or ensemble parts), lead roles have gotten cast from these auditions. The star of the Goodspeed revival of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” came from these auditions.

“The union requires us to do these calls, but they can be the most fun days,” Souza said. While there is often not a strict requirement to hold in-person auditions, Zoom calls and video submissions have become the primary way actors can get seen by those doing the casting, though all of the theaters the Courant spoke to insisted that live in-person encounters can be crucial. “Tapes allow us to see more people,” Golub-Sass said, “but it’s always good to have people in the room.”

Ruggiero agreed. “In person tells you a lot,” he said.

Theaters also hold local auditions for professional actors based in Connecticut. As a style concept, early in the development of the original piece “Circus Fire,” which will be staged later this year, TheaterWorks Hartford decided that it wanted to cast this story, based on a real-life tragedy that happened in Hartford, entirely with local actors. “We wanted to honor our connection to this community,” Ruggiero said. “I made the decision that I wanted everyone in that show to be Connecticut-based.”

In the regional theater where a whole season of shows can be announced at once, those involved in casting one show can have other shows in mind as well. This can be a boon to the auditioners. “People who come to that audition might not be right for that show but they may be right for a different show in the season,” Souza said. “We make a note of that.”

Nathan Darrow, who starred in Hartford Stage’s “Doctor Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” last year, came to the theater’s attention when he auditioned for William Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale.”

Needs can change from show to show. Goodspeed Musicals does new works but also reverent revivals of theater classics and re-workings of shows that need to be updated for modern times. “Ragtime” the first show of last season, “needed to be delivered in a full-voiced way,” Souza said. The first show of this season, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” needs “an appropriate rock sensibility.”

Directing the castings

Directors, who generally have the final say in casting, can work differently from each other, and their personal work methods may affect casting decisions. Souza said the famous New York director John Doyle, who directed the world premiere of “The 12” at Goodspeed two seasons ago, “treats auditions like job interviews. He’ll have long quiet conversations with the people auditioning for him. He wants to sniff out a vibe.” Some directors may build a show around certain key performers, while others will encourage an ensemble feel where everyone is of equal performance.

“As a director who’s worked at many theaters, I’d say it’s rare that an artistic director will insist that show’s director has to use someone,” Ruggiero said. “They make suggestions, and there are occasions where I’ve taken a job where a role is pre-cast, but generally I’m the one who decides the cast.”

Michael Wordly, the actor who played the key role of Coalhouse Walker in the Goodspeed production of “Ragtime,” had been wanting to play that role since he was a child. “Ragtime” was one of the first musicals he knew and made him want to be an actor. The show’s director, Christopher Betts, had worked with Wordly before and knew of his passion. “Finding someone who’s pre-loaded like that, or where there’s a pre-existing relationship with the director, can save time in rehearsals,” Souza said.

Theaters may also be thinking about whether cast members will get along with each other or are aware of the special nature of each theater. “Here at Goodspeed, you’ve got to come and live with us for three months,” Souza said. The theater is located in a small town a good distance from a major city and owns the properties where it houses its actors.

“We’re always asking ‘How do all these people fit together with this director?,’” Golub-Sass said.

Souza noted that when doing musicals with relatively small casts, all the performers have to be “true triple threats,” capable of acting, singing and dancing equally well. “In the past 30 years, the weight placed on the performer is pretty great.”

Goodspeed typically starts its casting process in December for all the shows in the season, which starts in April and runs through December. This year, the process started a little later because the director of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Tatiana Pandiani, was having a child in December.

One of the shows in the season, an adaptation of the Paul Gallico novella “The Snow Goose,” is a world premiere. This can make a difference at auditions since the performers won’t be familiar with new work. But there are other variables working in the favor of new work. In the case of “The Snow Goose,” Goodspeed has been deeply involved in the show’s development for years. Souza said he has been part of three presentations of it. There’s also a type of performer who embraces new works and knows how to approach such challenges.

Sometimes the people auditioning may have the wrong idea about a show. Those who saw audition notices for Goodspeed’s “Anne of Green Gables” a few years ago couldn’t be expected to know that this was a modern youthful take on the classic children’s book with LGBTQ overtones. When auditioning for the play “Hurricane Diane,” which Hartford Stage staged last year, it may not help to know that the play is loosely based based on Euripides’ “The Bacchae,” since it’s a frantic farce set in the 21st century, far from its Greek tragedy origins. When actors may be heading in the wrong direction stylistically in their auditions, theaters have an opportunity to suggest a change in approach.

The people doing the casting can also learn from unexpected interpretations. “There are times when we say ‘That’s not how it normally is, but why can’t it be that way?,’” Souza said. “Actors are endlessly surprising.”

As for star casting, it happens but often in unexpected ways. Ruggiero said situations like this are a good reason for budding directors to learn their trade at graduate school programs, because of the number of actors they meet and work with there.

Golub-Sass said that some established TV or movie or Broadway actors work in regional theaters because those theaters do shows “that are not being done in New York.” Ruggiero said TheaterWorks got Richard Dreyfuss to star in the play “Relativity” because the famed actor was “obsessed with Albert Einstein” and was specifically looking to play him.

In any case, Golub-Sass suggested that a celebrity name may not carry the weight it once did. “There’s a lot more media out there. I’ll mention what I think of as a famous name to someone else at the theater and they might have never heard of them.”

After the auditions happen, deep discussions begin. “My favorite part of the process is when you clear the floor, spread all the headshots on the floor and talk about it,” Souza says. “I might comment on the musicality. I sometimes offer a letter grade. But the final decision is the director’s.”

Each type of theater has its own special needs and processes and advantages. The Yale Repertory Theatre and the University of Connecticut’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre are both professional theaters affiliated with graduate theater programs at large universities. When casting shows, they like to make room for both student actors and illustrious alumni. The current Yale Rep production of “Rhinoceros” stars three accomplished Yale School of Drama grads: Reg Rogers, Elizabeth Stahlmann and Tony Manna, several current students in the drama school and several actors without a direct Yale connection. Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s current production of “Three Musketeers: 1941” is cast entirely with current students in UConn’s graduate and undergraduate acting programs.

Even when a cast appears to all set, the process may not be over. “You may lose someone to another job in the middle of a project,” Ruggiero said. “Or we may have been very clear about the money, but then they want more money and we can’t do it. Or you think you’ve got them and they suddenly say ‘no.’

“But everything happens for a reason,” Ruggiero said. “The universe usually has a way of working it out.”

Parking.

“If you come to Hartford and you don’t remember the parking — that it was such a good experience because it was insignificant and so little challenge — then it’s the event that is top of mind and not the parking,” Al Mannai, the new chief of the Hartford Parking Authority, said.

The appointment of Al Mannai comes as businesses in the downtown area see the cost and ease of access to parking as an obstacle in consistently attracting visitors who are considered essential to rebuilding the vibrancy of downtown.

The city-owned MAT Garage — with its entrances on Church and South Chapel streets — could play a more crucial role and will soon see $4.7 million in repairs, beginning as soon as this summer.

Al Mannai said she is focused on the authority’s traditional role of collecting revenue for city coffers, but she also has a broader vision of how parking can play a role in the city’s future economic development.

Al Mannai, who goes by the nickname “Kay,” has honed her vision since joining the authority in 2024, rising to chief financial officer and becoming interim CEO last fall.

As she takes the reins of the quasi-public agency, Al Mannai said a top priority is tackling much-needed renovations to the MAT Garage, which has suffered from deferred maintenance. The 950-plus space, 5-level garage is connected structurally to both 20 Church Street — the “Stilts” Building — and the Hartford Stage Co.

Al Mannai said she believes it essential that the city hold on to the MAT Garage, despite it eventually needing total repairs of $55 million, by one estimate. The garage, Al Mannai said, is already playing a role in revitalization.

“It’s one of the last garages that the city owns, but on top of that it’s a whole city block right downtown,” Al Mannai said. “So, you know, its key for the small businesses on Pratt Street. We constantly do events for them, or we’ll waive parking because we own it.”

Since 2010, the city sold two downtown parking garages — Morgan Street and Church Street — to the state for a total of nearly $40 million, the latter needing significant repairs. The sales came as the city was grappling with significant financial problems that eventually left it teetering on bankruptcy. In 2018, the state agreed to pay off $550 million of Hartford’s debt over 20 years.

The authority draws praise from downtown merchants for its efforts so far.

“Parking has always been such a hot conversation,” Rory Gale, longtime owner of the Hartford Prints! gift shop on Pratt, said. “I am hoping to get to a place where parking just feels so easy, so accessible, so affordable and that we are not seen as this place where you can’t find a parking spot or the parking out there is just so expensive.”

The city has invested $9 million in its Hart Lift storefront revitalization program, concentrating those efforts in and around Pratt Street. Those efforts have led to the opening or expansion of shops, restaurants and bars, with plans in the works for more.

The MAT garage — its name an acronym for Main and Trumbull, the two streets between which the garage spans — could play another key role in reshaping downtown’s image, Gale said.

“Using this city-owned asset, having the MAT Garage be that very visible, welcoming, gateway to Hartford,” Gale said.

In the downtown area, the parking authority controls 2,380 off-street parking spaces, including the MAT Garage, lots near Dunkin’ Park and at the main branch of the library. In addition, the authority oversees 1,800 on the street that are free after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays and Sunday.

“The Hartford Parking Authority is in a unique position to really make Hartford parking friendly in a way that we have never been before,” Gale said.

One option also could be a flat, $5 fee at the MAT Garage evenings and on weekends, Gale said.

‘Backbone of economic development’

Al Mannai brings a background in finance to her new post. She worked as a financial consultant, including at a firm advising on mergers and acquisitions. Some of her career was in Philadelphia, in the same state where she spent part of her childhood.

Al Mannai said she never expected her career to take a turn into parking management.

“There’s no school you go to for, like, ‘Oh, I want to be a parking professional,” Al Mannai said. “But as I got in here, I’m like, ‘This is interesting.’ We’re a revenue generator for the city. That’s pretty cool. But we are the backbone of economic development and the first and last impression for residents and people visiting.”

In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, parking revenue collected by the authority totaled $1.9 million, and is projected to remain relatively flat in the current fiscal year, according to financials provided by the authority.

Revenue from parking violations was $2.8 million in fiscal 2025, also projected to remain essentially flat in the current fiscal year, the authority said.

Al Mannai said the one-size fits all approach to on-street parking now may need to be reevaluated in a comprehensive way.

For example, Al Mannai recently worked with city officials to change the regulations along the south side of the block at the corner of Asylum and Main streets. A blanket two-hour limit was broken up into smaller increments of time, the shortest 15 minutes, because businesses there told Al Mannai they needed more turnover in parking, partly to support their ‘grab-and-go’ customers.

“Maybe when they did this parking infrastructure and they put up signs a number of years ago, maybe there wasn’t Lyft and Uber, Uber Eats,” Al Mannai said. “So, this is partnering with small businesses.”

AI Mannai said partnerships with other businesses and organizations are vital and a recent situation illustrates why.

On January 24, a sellout crowd for the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball match-up with Villanova at PeoplesBank Arena combined with a show at Hartford Stage combined to fill up the MAT Garage well ahead of the beginning of the play. The MAT Garage is go-to parking for Hartford Stage because it is discounted from $10 for events to $7. Traffic became snarled in and around the Church Street entrance to the garage.

“Some people were confused, some had mobility challenges that made it really hard,” Al Mannai said. “So, I called up LAZ, and I said, “Hey, I need a shuttle.’ They said, ‘I’ll send you one in 15 minutes.’ ”

Hartford Stage agreed to hold back the start of its play, “The Cottage,” so ticketholders could get in their seats and see the show from the beginning.

“Having partnerships like that is the goal,” Al Mannai said.

Al Mannai said she would push for combining of parking apps, with Hartford’s Woonerf and West Hartford’s two, PassportParking and Flowbird, in mind.

The parking authority also is evaluating the potential for extending “grace periods” for metered, on-street parking beyond the 5 minutes that is now in place. Al Mannai said she already added a 5-minute grace period before the meter starts running to head-off a ticket if a motorist is off paying at a kiosk.

“It takes you more than 5 minutes sometimes to walk to a kiosk, maybe I get a phone call, maybe I haven’t downloaded the app,” Al Mannai said.

While still interim CEO, Al Mannai began navigating city politics, lobbying for $1.3 million in city funds for the first phase of renovations to the MAT garage, winning the support of Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and the city council. The balance will be financed by authority repair and renovation funds.

Al Mannai also dug into the request by Arulampalam to terminate a parking contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.

The contract provided “visitor” parking on a city-owned lot behind the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building and Courthouse on Main Street, where ICE has a field office.

“The city of Hartford does not deem ICE personnel to be authorized as visitors of the city of Hartford,” Arulampalam wrote in a Jan. 27 letter to Al Mannai.

Al Mannai said the details of the termination are still being worked out.

The ‘red carpet’ treatment

The first phase of renovations at the MAT Garage was split in two because costs had risen significantly from earlier estimates, coming to about $9 million. The first part, at $4.7 million and beginning this summer, will tackle to deteriorating rooftop parking level. Water from rain and melting snow is penetrating the concrete, leaking to the floor below. Damage to one stairwell connecting the two floors is so severe that it was closed to use more than a year ago.

Because the garage was built in the 1980s, concrete was poured rather than delivered in pre-cast sections as its common today, making repairs far more expensive, Al Mannai said.

“The repairs have to be done here and they can’t piece it out,” Al Mannai said. “And the garage is attached to the infrastructure of the Stilts and Hartford Stage.”

The second half of the first phase is estimated to cost $4.3 million and will focus on the floor below where there is the most vehicle traffic entering and exiting. There is no timetable for this work because funds must be lined up. Eventually, all levels of the garage will need repairs, Al Mannai said.

While the big-ticket improvements can capture the most attention, Al Mannai said more modest upgrades at the MAT Garage can improve visitor impression.

When it was determined the lobby that opens to Trumbull Street needed a new floor, the authority added fresh paint and an outsized map — in collaboration with the Hartford Business Improvement District. The map includes QR codes for 33 destinations in the downtown area, from the Ancient Burying Ground and “Stegosaurus,” the sculpture by Alexander Calder between The Wadsworth and City Hall, to the Bushnell Park Carousel and Mortensen Riverfront Plaza.

“PeoplesBank Arena is right there,” Al Mannai said, in recent tour of the garage. “So a lot of people come through here — come, stay, do an extra thing. It orients them to where they are approximate to the garage. Because, if you don’t know and you come park here, how do you know Pratt Street is a block away? We know that, but not everyone does.”

Al Mannai’s has next set her sights on a drab walkway running from the first floor to a door near the entrance of Hartford Stage, a partnership with the performing arts theater. There will be stanchions possibly with velvet ropes with framed theater posters on the wall.

And on the floor? What else: a red carpet.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.