Kurt Peterson & Victoria Mallory Reunite On the NY Stage for the First Time in 40 Years: When Everything Was Possible

Kurt Peterson & Victoria Mallory,
Of the Original Casts of Follies and the Lincoln Center Revival of West Side Story,
Reunite On the NY Stage for the First Time in 40 Years:
When Everything Was Possible
A Concert (with comments)

Featuring New Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick

Introduction By Ted Chapin, Author of Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical “Follies”

ONE NIGHT ONLY: Sunday April 29th (7:30pm) at City Center

James William Productions and Stephenie Skyllas will present Kurt Peterson andVictoria Mallory in When Everything Was Possible, A Concert (with comments),for one night only, Sunday April 29th (7:30pm) at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues), as a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. They will be joined by a thirteen-piece band (Michael Rafter, Music Director), playing new orchestrations by Tony Award winner Jonathan Tunick. Larry Moss directs, with musical staging by Joshua Bergasse (“Smash”). Carolyn Wong will provide lighting design, with sound design by Leon Rothenberg and projection design by Telegraphicmedia.

The show will also feature images of stage photography from the era’s greatest photographers including Van Williams, Kenn Duncan, and others – many never before on public display. The concert, featuring songs from the shows they were in – including The Frog Prince, Aladdin, West Side Story, Dear World, Carnival, Dames at Sea, Follies, On the Town, A Little Night Music and Sondheim – A Musical Tribute - will have an out-of-town workshop/preview at the Triad Stage, in Greensboro, NC, in March.

This is the story of Victoria Mallory and Kurt Peterson in the present but also the story of New York, 1966 -’74, the last gasp of the golden age of the American Musical, when everything was possible.  Following their inner music, two kids came to the biggest city in the world and went to work. They didn’t want to be famous – they wanted to be good. Along the way they sang for Noel Coward, with Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein; hung out with Liz and Dick; sat in the Oval Office and the Apollo capsule; flew the Lunar Lander and crashed on the faux surface of the Moon. And in the summer of ’68, as the world flew apart, these two unknowns held court at the State Theatre at Lincoln Center, captivating audiences as Tony and Maria in West Side Story. Together with the talented gangs of Jets and Sharks they made a statement about the world’s bigotry and violence in a way that only words, music and dance can. They worked, lived, grew close, grew up, made mistakes and finally… parted. 36 years would pass until they would meet again, and they found they still had a few things left to say – and sing.

“How lucky we all are to have Victoria Mallory and Kurt Peterson back together again, and sharing their musical lives with us!  The personal story told and sung by these two talented artists will take some of us back, and introduce others to a rich era in not-too-distant history. Two young kids arriving in New York, who find careers that touch some of the legendary people and legendary shows, is only the beginning.  What happened, both professionally and personally, is quite remarkable,” said Ted Chapin, President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, and Chair of the American Theater Wing.

Tickets from $60 may be purchased online at www.nycitycenter.org, by calling CityTix at 212/581-1212, or at the Box Office (131 West 55th St.). Special VIP tickets are available for $150 and include a post-show reception with the cast & creative team. 

Victoria Mallory made her Broadway debut when Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein chose her to star as Maria in the first revival of West Side Story at Lincoln Center. She went on to play Lili in City Center’s revival of Carnival.  For Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim,Victoria originated the roles of Young Heidi in Follies and Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. She also re-introduced and first recorded Stephen Sondheim songs in Sondheim – A Musical Tribute and in An Evening of Stephen Sondheim at The Whitney Museum. Victoria has starred in the nation’s major theatres including Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh CLO, St. Louis MUNY Opera, Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars, Kansas City Starlight, Dallas Summer Musicals, Utah’s Pioneer Theatre, and the Irish Rep in NYC, in roles as diverse as Christine/Carlotta in Phantom, Magnolia in Show Boat, Kate in Kiss Me Kate, Marian in The Music Man, Lily in The Secret Garden, Sarah in Guys and Dolls, Maria in The Sound of Musicand Abigail in 1776. Television audiences know Victoria as the concert pianist, Leslie Brooks from the CBS daytime drama, “The Young and The Restless” and Dr. Denise Foxworthy on NBC’s “Santa Barbara.” Other TV credits include guest starring roles on “Everwood,” “Touched By An Angel,” “Promised Land,” the female lead in the made-for-television movie “The Unabomber,” and three CBS musical specials: “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “Aladdin,” and “After Hours.” She received an Emmy nomination for “Singin’, Swingin, and All That Jazz.”Victoria has been a professional director/choreographer for productions including The Wizard of Oz, Joseph…, Side by Side by Sondheim, and Yours, Anne, and choreographer for Oliver, Nuncrackers, Mr. Popper’s Penguins and A Village Fable. Victoria is a founding member and teacher at The Voice Studio. Most recently, she was seen in A Child’s Christmas in Wales at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Victoria is slated to star in the new Broadway musical, In the Summer of ’68, in 2013.

Kurt Peterson began his career when Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rodgers chose him to play Tony in the revival of West Side Story at Lincoln Center. On Broadway he starred opposite Angela Lansbury in Dear World and created the role of Young Ben in Stephen Sondheim’sFollies. Off-Broadway Kurt starred in Dames at Sea and By Bernstein, and appeared in the Town Hall productions of Knickerbocker Holiday, Music in the Air and I Married an Angel. Kurt starred opposite Patti LuPone in the Broadway-bound The Baker’s Wife. He also starred in the highly acclaimed Canadian premiere of Company and Rob Marshall’s production of Side By Side By Sondheim. Kurt was featured in the 75th birthday celebrations Wall to Wall Sondheimand Children & Art honoring Stephen Sondheim and has performed as a leading man in many productions around the country and in Europe. Kurt and his company, James William Productions (JWP), produced the acclaimed Sondheim–A Musical Tribute, the first celebration of America’s foremost composer/lyricist, helped launch the NY and London productions of Angela Lansbury’s Gypsy, produced the live tours of WPIX-TV’s classic children’s show The Magic Garden, and the National Tour of Rob Marshall’s innovative Side By Side By Sondheim. Recent projects include co-producing the New York productions and National Tour of the Stephen Schwartz family musical Captain Louie, the Off-Broadway production of the play Capture Now, directed by Larry Moss, and the BC/EFA benefit Alone At Last featuring the music of Ian Herman. JWP is currently represented by the Helen Hayes and Drama Desk Award winning play, Zero Hour, about theatre legend Zero Mostel, now touring the US andCanada.  In 2013 look for the new musical In the Summer of ’68. Kurt is the owner of New York City’s The Voice Studio, home to more than 300 students and some of Broadway’s greatest teachers and performers. For more information, visit www.jameswilliamproductions.com

Larry Moss (Director) began his career on Broadway in Drat! The Cat!, Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite, directed by Michael Bennett, So Long 174th Street, The Robber Bridgegroom, and I Love My Wife. After teaching at Julliard and Circle in the Square, he moved to Los Angelesand founded The Larry Moss Studio, where he directed and developed Pamela Gien’s The Syringa Tree, which won the Obie Award for Best Play, Drama Desk and Outer Circle Critics Awards, a Drama League Honor and a nomination for the John Gassner Playwriting Award.The Syringa Tree has played to sold-out houses worldwide. Moss also directed the TV adaptation. He developed and directed Bo Eason’s Runt of the Litter, voted one of the top ten plays of the year by NY Daily News and bought by Castle Rock to be made into a major motion picture. Moss directed Michael Raynor’s Who is Floyd Stearn; Richard Kalinoski’s Beast on the Moon; Jack Holmes’s RFK (Drama League Award); April Daisy White‘s Sugar; Richard Vetere’s How to Go Out on a Date in Queens; Richard Hellersen’s Dos Corazones (play and film); and the World Premiere of Jam, starring Clint Holmes. He did a workshop of John Osborne’s Epitaph for George Dillon in New York for the first time in fifty years in 2008. He directed Capture Now, I Love My Wife starring Jason Alexander, John Patrick Shanley’sBeggars in the House of Plenty, and Imagining Heschel.  He will be directing the films Relative Insanity, and Chiseled. Moss coached Sutton Foster in Broadway’s Anything Goes (Tony Award); Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets (Academy Award); Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cryand Million Dollar Baby (Academy Awards); Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile(Academy Award nomination); Hank Azaria in Tuesdays With Morrie (Emmy Award); Jim Carrey in The Majestic; Tobey Maguire in Seabiscuit; Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator(Golden Globe Award and Academy Award nomination); The Departed (Golden Globe nomination); Blood Diamond (Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination); Shutter Islandand Inception. Moss’s teaching career includes US, Canada and Europe; he is one of the master teachers on “Triple Sensation,” for CBC in Canada.  His book on acting, The Intent To Live, was released by Bantam Dell. 

Michael Rafter (Music Director) is involved in everything music. He wrote scoring and arrangements for Arthur (2011) starring Russell Brand, was the music supervisor for Broadway’s Everyday Rapture and worked on Sutton Foster’s National Tour. He was the Associate Music Supervisor for Jersey Boys Australian production and has traveled the globe with many Jersey Boys productions. Sutton Foster and Michael collaborated on her solo CD’sWish (2009) and Sutton Foster, Live at The Carlyle (2011). He also co-produced Norm Lewis’s solo CD, This Is The Life, and the recording of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Broadway show, Caroline, Or Change. Michael conducted Gypsy on Broadway starring Tyne Daly and won an Emmy Award for his music direction of Bette Midler’s TV version. Movie music credits include Music and Lyrics and Did You Hear about the Morgans? On Broadway, Michael has served as music director/conductor of Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Sound of Music, The King & I and Gypsy and did the arrangements for Swing and Sweet Charity. He was one of the 2 piano duos that played the Broadway revival of The Most Happy Fella. He has supervised Broadway and/or National tours of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Sunset Boulevard, The Sound of Music, and The Buddy Holly Story. Off-Broadway credits include Merrily We Roll Along andViolet. Michael was the music director/conductor for The American Songbook series at Alice Tully Hall, music director for “Broadway’s Best” on Bravo where he worked with such artists as Trisha Yearwood, Kevin Bacon, Joan Osborne, Mandy Moore, Cyndi Lauper, Darius Rucker, and Shawn Colvin. Michael is the co-founder of Destination Broadway, a summer theatre program for children 8-18 years old. Currently, he is working as music director/arranger for the upcoming revival of The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Joshua Bergasse (Musical Staging) is a NYC based teacher and choreographer and has been a member of the Broadway Dance Center Faculty since 1998. His credits as a choreographer include American Songbooks; Fascinatin’ Rhythm (Allen Room, Jazz @ Lincoln Center); The Face Of Tisch, Gala 2010 (Rose Hall, Jazz @ Lincoln Center); Bomb-Itty Of Errors (Off-Broadway); Captain Louie (Little Shubert, York Theater); BC/EFA’s Gypsy Of The Year Opener for 2007 and 2008 (New Amsterdam Theatre); Fame The Musical (National & International Tours); Solo Pido – Bianca Marroquin In Concert (Mexico City); West Side Story(Stratford Festival, Barrington Stage Company, Fulton Theatre, North Carolina Theatre);Carousel, The World Goes ‘Round (Barrington Stage); La Cage…, Beehive, Cagney (Riverside Theatre); Smokey Joe’s Cafe (AMTSJ, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Riverside); Tommy, South Pacific, Crash Nation (Cherry County Playhouse); The Baker Dances (Indiana University.) Joshua has performed in the Broadway and/or National touring companies of Movin Out, Hairspray, The Life, and West Side Story. Besides being on faculty at BDC, Josh is the artistic director for the Musical Theater Performance Project at BDC, and has been a guest artist at NYU, Marymount Manhattan College, Indiana University, James Madison University,Shenendoah University, Kean University, Creighton University and the University of California Satellite program. He’s toured with Manhattan DanceProject, West Coast Dance Explosion, and Tremaine. Joshua is currently represented by Stephen Speilberg’s television show “Smash!” which premieres February 6th on NBC starring Debra Messing, Megan Hilty, Katharine McPhee and Anjelica Houston.

Jonathan Tunick is the first orchestrator to have won a Tony Award®; indeed he is one of very few persons to have won all four major American awards in entertainment: the Grammy® (“No One Is Alone,” 1988), Emmy® (“Night of 100 Stars,” 1982), Tony® (Titanic, 1997), and Oscar® (A Little Night Music, 1977). Additionally, he has received Drama Desk Awards forPassion, Titanic, and Lovemusik, and has been showered with nominations: seven Tony® nominations for Best Orchestration (Marie Christine, Follies, Nine, Pacific Overtures,Lovemusik, 110 in the Shade, A Catered Affair) and eight times for the Drama Desk (Baby, Into the Woods, Captains Courageous, Saturday Night, Follies, Elaine Stritch At Liberty, The Apple Tree, A Catered Affair). In 1982 he was given a Special Award by the Drama Desk. Although Tunick has been associated most closely with Stephen Sondheim (Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods,Passion, Putting It Together, The Frogs), he has also worked with composers Charles Strouse (Dance a Little Closer, Nick & Nora), Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic), Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line), Michael John LaChiusa (Marie Christine), and many others. Tunick has orchestrated, re-orchestrated, or composed for nearly sixty stage shows, from Take Five in 1957 to the revival of Promises, Promises in 2010; thirteen films, from The Twelve Chairs in 1970 to Sweeney Todd in 2007 (including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, A Little Night Music, Fort Apache the Bronx, Endless Love, and Reds); and dozens scores for television.

Theodore S. Chapin is President and Executive Director of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. Currently he is Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Theater Wing. He has also been chairman of the Advisory Committee for New York City Center’s Encores! series since its inception, and serves on several boards including Goodspeed Musicals, Connecticut College, and City Center. He served as a Tony Awards nominator for two seasons, and is currently a member of the Tony Administration Committee. His career began as production or directorial assistant for the Broadway productions of Follies, The Rothschilds and The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, as well as Bernstein’s Mass at theKennedy Center, and Candide in San Francisco. As Associate to Alan Arkin, he worked on the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, Twigs starring Carol Burnett (CBS); and Neil Cuthbert’s The Soft Touch. He was Musical Director for the National Theatre of the Deaf’s production of Four Saints in Three Acts, and Producer of the Musical Theatre Lab. His book, Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical “Follies,” was published by Alfred A. Knopf, and in paperback by Applause Books.

Stephenie Skyllas (Producer) is an independent theatrical producer and general manager.  Her recent credits include producing The Chalkboard Trilogy for Up Theater Company andTales From The Tunnel Off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theater.  Stephenie spent five seasons at New York City Center as General Manager that included fifteen Encores!, threeEncores! Summer Stars (Gypsy with Patti LuPone; Damn Yankees with Sean Hayes & Jane Krakowski; The Wiz with Ashanti), A Gala Evening with Kristin Chenoweth and the Sondheim 80th Birthday Gala. Other NY credits include work at Roundabout Theatre Company, Richard Frankel Productions and Manhattan Theatre Club. Stephenie is a member of Essential Voices USA with whom she’s had the joy of singing at the 2011 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting with Neil Diamond (broadcast on NBC), Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, and recording “Mr. President” (featured on NPR). Stephenie and her company, Over~Sky Productions, also serve as general manager for When Everything Was Possible, A Concert (with comments).

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. BC/EFA awards annual grants to more than 400 AIDS and family service organizations nationwide and is the major supporter of seven 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, visit www.broadwaycares.org.

Mint Theater Announces Jann E. Leeming As New Board Chair

Drama Desk Award-Winning Mint Theater

Announces The Appointment of

Jann E. Leeming

As Chair of the Board of Directors

 

Mint Theater (Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director) today announced the appointment of Jann E. Leeming as Board Chair. “I am delighted and honored to be part of a partnership with Jonathan and the Mint Board of Directors to further the Mint’s vital and exciting mission.  My experience with this respected and energetic organization has taught me how important it is to recognize great playwrights of the past whose words have continuing relevance to the important issues of today,” Ms Leeming said.

“Jann is a dynamic leader and I am honored that she has consented to be our Chair.  I look forward to a fruitful partnership that I hope will continue for many years,” added Jonathan Bank.

Ms. Leeming has been a Board member since 2009, and served as Treasurer for the last year.  She also serves as a Senior Trustee (since 1980) of The Little Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by Royal Little to support education, the performing arts, preservation of wildlife and the environment. Previously, she was Chair of the Board of Directors (2006-’11) of the Women’s Project, having served on their Board since 2003. Jann has served on the Board of Directors of Celebrity Series of Boston, since 2003.

She has also donated her time as Trustee of The Boston Ballet, Trustee of Dance Umbrella, Trustee of The Wang Center for the Performing Arts; Trustee of The Mirror Repertory Company, Trustee of The Pine Street Inn (homeless shelter), Trustee of The Stowe School, Trustee of The Lyford Cay Foundation, Corporation Member of Babson College, and Founding Member of Harvard University’s Women’s Leadership Board.

As a venture capitalist, Jann served on the Boards of eight high technology companies. As President of Leeming Investment Company, she spent 2 years investing in companies owned and operated by women. Prior to that, she spent eight year as CEO and owner of ABOUT WOMEN, INC., consulting with Fortune 1000 companies on how to market their products and services more effectively to women. Jann co-authored Segmenting the Women’s Market, a resource book for companies selling products and services to women.

Jann was graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a BS in Psychology/Business and was graduated from Babson College with an MBA.  Jann is married to Arthur D. Little, her consulting partner in the golf course industry.

“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, 2011) hailed the Mint as the “resurrectionist extraordinaire of forgotten plays.

For more information about the Mint Theater, visit www.minttheater.org

Celebrate Black History Month Off-Broadway

Celebrate Black History Month Off-Broadway at Two of New York’s Biggest Hits:

The Devil’s Music – The Life and Times of Bessie Smith 

and 

Black Angels Over Tuskegee

February is Black History Month (also known as the African-American History Month). Two of Off-Broadway’s biggest hits serve to recognize the contribution of African-Americans in American culture and history: The Devil’s Music – The Life and Times of Bessie Smith and Black Angels Over Tuskegee.

The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, a musical by Angelo Parra, conceived and directed by Joe Brancato, stars Miche Braden as Bessie Smith, along with Aaron Graves, Jim Hankins, Keith Loftis, and Anthony E. Nelson, Jr.   The Devil’s Music opened June 22nd Off-Broadway at the St. Luke’s Theater (308 West 46th Street). 

Sexy and racy, blues singer Bessie Smith was the definition of a Red Hot Mamma and the most successful entertainer of her time. On the eve of her tragic death in 1937, Bessie takes center stage in The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith and tells the story of her amazing life and career, her loves and losses. Put your troubles aside and soak up the blues as Bessie Smith comes to life and sings the songs that made her so unforgettable, including “St. Louis Blues,” “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” 

The Devil’s Music  has been hailed by critics and audience alike:

“A Big Voice Full of Blues, Bawdy and Unapologetic: When Miche Braden plants herself at the front of the stage, shimmies a little and sings the blues, THE DEVIL’S MUSIC: THE LIFE & BLUES OF BESSIE SMITH finds its reason for being. As Bessie, Ms. Braden has the requisite big voice — she knows when to let it soar and when to keep it at an insinuatingly low simmer — and her committed performance gives you glimmers of what the bawdy-talking, hooch-swilling (she hates the store-bought stuff), unapologetically bisexual Bessie must have been like. Ms. Braden keeps THE DEVIL’S MUSIC consistently entertaining. ”  – The New York Times

“Miche Braden delivers a powerhouse performance, doing a brassy, melodic turn as a lusty, hard-drinking, irrepressible Bessie Smith, who was known as the “Empress of the Blues”. Braden fully comands the stage, sassing the audience and sashaying around like the hard-living prima donna Smith was. Joe Brancato’s artful direction and Braden’s charisma and honesty of emotion keep the energy flowing.”– Associated Press

“When Miche Braden sings — especially her soulful “St. Louis Blues” and the most heartbreaking rendition of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” you’re ever likely to hear — THE DEVIL’S MUSIC delivers a little bit of heaven.” - Time Out New York

“If there’s a heaven for entertainers, the gateway must be St. Luke’s Theatre. Miche Braden thankfully delivers in powerhouse fashion. Her rendition of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” is haunting, while “St. Louis Blues,” featuring a lascivious duet with her sax player, perfectly captures Smith’s notoriously earthy side. You’ll be a ‘Devil’s’ advocate!” - New York Post

BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE, Layon Gray’s acclaimed play is now in its second year at the Actors Temple Theater (339 West 47th Street).  Based on true events, six men explore their collective struggle with Jim Crow, their intelligence, patriotism, dreams of an inclusive fair society, and brotherhood as they become the first African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. Army Air Forces.  BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE goes beyond the headlines of the popular stories of the Tuskegee Airmen and exposes the men who exhibited the courage to excel in spite of all the overwhelming odds against them. In addition to being an official selection of the 2009 National Black Theater Festival, BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE recently won a 2009 NAACP Award for Best Ensemble and a 2009 Artistic Director Achievement Award for Best Play.  It was also presented at the 2009 National Tuskegee Airmen Convention in Las Vegas for over 30 chapters.  Original Tuskegee Airmen Ted Lumpkin, President of the Los Angeles Chapter, said, “I love this play.  It’s real and it reminded me of my times at Tuskegee.  [It's] a great show.” BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE recently did a special performance for the entire NY Jets team. Critics have been unanimous in their praise for Black Angels Over Tuskegee: 

“Uplifting! Inspirational! This show is also tough to resist. By the end, when the pilots overcame their obstacles and finally got up into the air to the swelling of music, tears welled up in my eyes.” – The New York Times

 “Dynamite performances!” – Time Out New York

“The characters are so realistic that the audience can’t help but be thoroughly moved!” – Associated Press

“Excellent ensemble acting keeps Black Angels Over Tuskegee soaring. Some plays teach, others celebrate, and a few simply entertain. Black Angels Over Tuskegee manages to do all three and one thing more: It inspires.” – Back Stage

“Stunning!” – Curtain Up 

Tickets for both shows, from only  $36.50,  are available at Telecharge.com or by calling 212/239-6200. 

INTAR To Honor Oscar Nominee Jose Rivera and US Senator Robert Menendez

INTAR

To Present Its First Annual Gala, Celebrating The Impact of Latino Theater

Honoring Oscar Nominee Jose Rivera and US Senator Robert Menendez

Featuring the Cuisine of Celebrity Chef Maricel Presilla

ALMA Award Winner Maria Canals-Barerra To Host

Tuesday February 7^th at the Manhattan Penthouse

 

INTAR, New York’s most acclaimed Latino theatre company, will celebrate its 46^th anniversary with a special Gala at the Manhattan Penthouse (80 5^th Avenue at 14^th Street) on Tuesday evening, February 7^th.

In addition to celebrating INTAR’s vital contribution to the arts internationally, the Gala will feature special awards to Academy Award-nominated screenwriter/playwright Jose Rivera and US Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. This special event will be hosted by  ALMA award winner Maria Canals-Barerra, with cuisine from Chef Marisel Presilla.

The celebration will kick off at 7PM followed by the dinner and awards ceremony.

INTAR, one of the United States’ longest running Latino theaters producing in English, works to nurture the professional development of Latino theater artists; produce bold, innovative, artistically significant plays that reflect diverse perspectives; make accessible the diversity inherent in America’s cultural heritage. Through an integrated program of workshops, productions of works in progress, and mainstage productions, INTAR continues to raise standards of theater arts.  INTAR brings to the public vital and energetic voices of both promising and accomplished Latino theater professionals, replacing stereotypes while giving expression to the diversity and depth of today’s Latino-American community.

Founded in 1966 to provide professional opportunities for Hispanic theatre artists, INTAR Theatre is the oldest Latino theatre company in the USA producing in English. Since its founding, INTAR has commissioned, developed and produced the works of award-winning playwrights, composers and choreographers such as María Irene Fornés, Gabriel García Marquez, Graciela Daniele, José Rivera, Eduardo Machado, Mario Vargas Llosa, Luis Santeiro, Tito Puente, Carmen Rivera, and Culture Clash, among others.  The company has produced more than 150 world premieres and 50 American premieres of new works in English by Latino playwrights, and INTAR has been the leading proponent of bringing American Latino playwrights’ work to the mainstream. INTAR productions and artists have garnered 6 Obie Awards, 3 AT&T On Stage Awards, 1 Tony Award nomination, 7 Princess Grace Awards, 5 A.C.E. (Association of Spanish Language Critics) Awards, and 2 HOLA Awards, among others. For more information on INTAR please visit their website, www.intartheatre.org

Tickets from $225 may be purchased online at www.intar.org or by phone at 212/695-6135.

 

BIOS 

Robert Menendez’s story is a quintessential American story. He grew up the son of immigrants in a tenement building in Union City and has risen to become one of 100 United States Senators. He has earned the reputation of a fighter for New Jersey families who puts their economic security and hometown security ahead of powerful special interests. A product of New Jersey’s public schools and a graduate of the state’s universities, Bob learned early on the importance of standing up for what’s right, no matter how powerful the opposition. He first entered public service as a 19-year-old college student when he witnessed shortcomings in the public education system and launched a successful petition drive to reform his local school board. He stood up to corruption in Union City as a witness against the political machine in a Federal trial.

He has served as a school board member, a mayor and a state legislator. Since 1993, he has been standing up for New Jersey families in Washington, where he rose to become the third-highest ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. After being elected to the U.S. Senate, Bob was soon appointed to be a member of the Senate leadership during his first term, serving as the Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee where he successfully retained Democrats’ majority in the U.S. Senate. Bob was sworn in to the Senate on January 18, 2006, having been appointed by New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine to fill the remainder of his term. Later that year, New Jerseyans elected Bob to serve a full six-year term as United States Senator. He currently serves on the Senate Committees on Finance; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; and Foreign Relations. Bob is also the Chairman of the Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development; and the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Global Narcotics Affairs. In Congress, Bob is working to make a real difference in the lives of New Jerseyans. That includes working to achieve economic security for families by creating jobs, promoting clean energy development, providing tax relief, investing in education, making health care more affordable, protecting consumers, and preserving Medicare and Social Security. Siding with hard-working New Jerseyans against powerful interests, Bob has helped author and enact legislation to make credit card contracts fairer and make the products we use every day safer. He has also championed legislation to support the production of clean energy and energy efficiency. He has helped secure federal funds for a new Mass Transit Tunnel across the Hudson River and created a program that has delivered $3.2 billion to cities, towns and counties nationwide for energy efficiency projects.

Bob has delivered tax relief, authoring the economic recovery package provision that protected 1.6 million middle-class New Jerseyans from an unfair tax hike under the Alternative Minimum Tax and enacting property tax relief legislation. With health care too often a strain on family budgets and the national economy, he used his Finance Committee seat to help craft reform legislation that makes quality health care more affordable for New Jersey families. Throughout his career, he has worked to improve schools so they prepare our children for a successful future and helped pass the law to make college more affordable for the next generation of leaders. Bob has been widely recognized for his leadership on promoting safe and healthy families. He has championed legislation to support mothers suffering from postpartum depression, help families overcome the challenges of autism, and educate kids about Internet safety. In the face of a national housing crisis, he sponsored legislation to help keep families in their homes, and make it easier for children whose families face foreclosure to stay in their schools. Bob believes we should honor our parents by making sure they can retire with dignity and has introduced legislation to make it easier for families to care for their aging loved ones. He has also been a leader in the fight to stop the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. After September 11, 2001, Bob earned national recognition for his leadership in reforming the country’s intelligence, security, and public health systems and for fighting to establish an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks on our country. He was a leader in the fight to successfully implement the 9/11 Commission’s national security recommendations, including the provision to ensure that high-risk states like New Jersey receive their fair share of security funding. He helped author legislative language that will ensure all cargo coming to U.S. ports is scanned. He led the successful drive to fully reopen the Statue of Liberty, and today, he is working to improve the security of our bus, rail and public transit systems. Bob voted against authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq. He has an extensive record of supporting our troops by consistently voting to give them the equipment they need, along with the quality medical care and education benefits they deserve—and he has been a strong advocate of a responsible foreign policy that only sends our servicemen and women into harm’s way when absolutely necessary. He was proud to vote for the largest funding increase for veterans’ programs in history. 
His first book, Growing American Roots, examines the deep influence of the Latino population on American society. Bob offers his unique perspective as one of only two Latino members of the Senate, and lays out his vision for how the Latino community can help America prosper.

José Rivera is a playwright and the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Oscar. Many of his plays have been produced across the nation and even translated into several languages, including The House of Ramon Iglesias, Cloud Tectonics, The Street of the Sun, Sonnets for an Old Century, Sueño, Giants Have Us in Their Books, References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot and Adoration of the Old Woman. In 2003, Cloud Tectonics was presented in the XLII Festival of Puerto Rican Theater, an event sponsored by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, in San Juan.  Rivera helped found the Los Angeles-based theater company, The Wilton Project.  Rivera contributed as a writer to the television shows “The House of Ramon Iglesias” (1986), “Family Matters” (1989), “The Jungle Book, Mowgli’s Story” (1998), “Night Visions” (2001) and in the “Harmony” segment of “Shadow Realm” (2002). He also co-created and co-produced the NBC-TV series, “Eerie, Indiana.” In 2002, Rivera was hired to write the screenplay for the film Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) by director Walter Salles. The movie, which was released in 2004, is based on Che Guevara’s diary about a motorcycle trip that he and Alberto Granado had, and how it changed their lives. In January 2005, Rivera became the first Puerto Rican to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film. His screenplay won awards from the Cinema Writers Circle (Spain) and from the Argentine Film Critics Association; it was also nominated for awards by the American Screenwriters Association, the Chlotrudis Awards, the Online Film Critics Society, and the Writers Guild of America. This work led Rivera to write and perform a play entitled School of the Americas which focuses on Che’s last few hours alive. The play starring John Ortiz as Che, imagines Che’s final conversations, mainly with a young and fairly naive female schoolteacher, in the one-room village schoolhouse where he is imprisoned before his execution. The play was featured in New York City 2006-‘07 and in San Francisco the following year.

Maria Canals-Barrera is a multi-talented actress who has showcased her talent across the board in entertainment. Maria is most commonly known for her starring role as the mortal mother of three teenage wizards, in the Emmy Award-winning series “Wizards of Waverly Place.”  The show aired its series finale on January 6^th, 2012 to an audience of 9.8 million, the series’ number one telecast ever. In August of last year, Maria hosted the 26^th annual Imagen Awards, illuminating the audience with her charismatic charm. Shortly after, she took home the 2011 NCLR Alma Award for Favorite TV Actress in a Supporting Role. Maria reprised her role in the Emmy Award-winning Disney Channel Original Movie “Wizards of Waverly Place The Movie,” for which she won an Imagen award for Best Supporting Actress – Television in 2010.  Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Canals-Barrera has also starred as Mitchie’s mom, Connie Torres, in the Disney Channel Original Movies “Camp Rock” and “Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam.”  A 2002 Alma Award-winner for her role in the television series “Brothers Garcia,” Canals-Barrera starred in the Telemundo series “Marielena” and “Corte Tropical” for Univision.  She was the Female Lead on “The Tony Danza Show,” and she’s had guest-starring roles on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “George Lopez,” “The Loop,” “Popular,” “Veronica’s Closet,” “Caroline in the City” and “Almost Perfect,” as well as recurring roles in “Beggars & Choosers” for Showtime and the critically acclaimed PBS series “American Family.”  Canals-Barrera is also the voice of “Hawkgirl” in the animated series “The Justice League” and was the voice of “Sunset Boulevardez” in Disney Channel’s acclaimed series “The Proud Family.” On the big screen, Maria most recently appeared in Universal Pictures’, “Larry Crowne,” directed by Tom Hanks and starring Hanks and Julia Roberts.  She can also be seen in “Master of Disguise” and “My Family / Mi Familia,” with Edward James Olmos, Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales. On stage, Canals-Barrera appeared at the Mark Taper Forum in “Changes of Heart” for which she received an Ovation Award nomination.  Her other stage work include roles in “Chilean Holiday,” “Hedda Gabler,” “A Touch of the Poet,” “Mixed Blessings,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “The Glass Menagerie.”  When Maria isn’t acting you can find her in Los Angeles where she resides with her husband and two children, playing the part of a real mom.

Maricel Presilla is a culinary historian specializing in the foods of Latin America and Spain. She holds a doctorate in medieval Spanish history from New York University and has received formal training in cultural anthropology. She has been a two-time James Beard Foundation Award Nominee for Best Chef, North East and once for Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic. Dr. Presilla has done considerable research on Latin American agriculture – with special emphasis on tropical crops, cacao and vanilla agriculture, and chocolate production. She is the president of Gran Cacao Company a Latin American food research and marketing company that specializes in the sale of premium cacao beans from Latin America. Her latest book is The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Chocolate with Recipes (Ten Speed Press, 2001). She has completed a comprehensive Latin American cookbook for W.W. Norton and has contributed articles for Saveur, Food & Wine, Food Arts, and Gourmet. She writes a weekly food column for the Miami Herald and is as comfortable sailing down the Orinoco to collect recipes in the field as she is cooking at Zafra and Cucharamama, her pan-Latin restaurants in Hoboken, New Jersey. Last year she opened Ultramarinos, a Latin American store and cooking atelier, also in Hoboken, NJ, where she sells Latin ingredients, prepared foods, premium chocolates and Blue Cacao, her own line of truffles with Latin flavors.

One more chance to catch Jackie Hoffman’s CHANUKAH CHAROL

Jackie Hoffman’s

A Chanukah Charol,

Inspired by Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol

Adds One More Performance to Accommodate the Overwhelming Demand

 Jackie Hoffman’s A Chanukah Charol, her new holiday-themed, pseudo-autobiographical, one-woman show inspired by Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol, co-written and directed by Michael Schiralli, will add one more performance on Sunday January 8^th, in order to accommodate the overwhelming demand for tickets.   Remaining performances are Monday, January 2^nd and now Sunday, January 8^th both at 7:30pm at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between Eighth & Ninth Avenues).

This all-new show has been met with an amazing response:

“You don’t need to wait that long to see a dynamic comic performer with a rubbery face and a gift for improvisation. Jackie Hoffman has carved out a fascinating career, with scene-stealing cameos on Broadway uptown in shows like The Addams Family and Xanadu; and hilarious solo shows downtown (and elsewhere) where her delightfully crabby personality roams free. Her new production, A Chanukah Charol represents something of a departure, since instead of a freewheeling cabaret it’s a scripted play, inspired by Patrick Stewart’s version of A Christmas Carol. It’s autobiographical and tells her story as a comedian forced to confront her past, present and future” - Jason Zinoman, New York Times

“The hilariously grumpy Jackie Hoffman is a throwback to the golden age of character comedy, when performers overflowed with larger-than-life personality. On her night off from The Addams Family, she kvetches the Dickens out of A Christmas Carol” – Adam Feldman, Time Out NY

“Jackie Hoffman Shakes Up Christmas!” – Marshall Heyman, Wall Street Journal

“HILARIOUS! The woman is a priceless storyteller, shtickmeister, and yenta… In toasting (and roasting) that eight-day holiday, she’s served up not only eight times the guilt, but that many times the laffs.” - Michael Musto, Village Voice

“The funniest event of the holiday season. Her bracing brand of angry humor is the cure for the severest cases of the doldrums… the best idea imaginable for making this endlessly told story new again. the panorama of wonder she paints with herself at the center keeps you floating on a cloud of levity for a full, all-too-brief hour.” – Matthew Murray, Talkin’ Broadway

Jackie Hoffman currently stars as Grandma in The Addams Family. Her other Broadway credits include Xanadu and Hairspray (for which she received the Theatre World Award). Off-Broadway she has been seen in Regrets Only, Pride & Joy, Book of Liz (Obie Award), Straightjacket, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and One Woman Shoe. Regional credits include Second City (Jeff Award), Sisters Rosensweig. Film: Extra Man, Dirty Shame, Garden State, Legally Blonde II, Kissing Jessica Stein, Mo’ Money, Robots, Queer Duck. TV: “30 Rock,” “One Life to Live,” “Starved,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Strangers with Candy,” “TV Funhouse,” “Conan,” “Soulman,” “Cosby.” Her solo shows have garnered her MAC and Bistro Awards. She can be heard on the CD “Jackie Hoffman: Live at Joe’s Pub” (where she is a frequent sell-out), as well as on the original Broadway cast recordings of Hairspray, Xanadu, and The Addams Family.

Remaining tickets are $35 with premium seats available at $55 (including a free drink).  Tickets may be purchased by visiting Telecharge.com or calling (212) 239-6200. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the New World Stages Box Office.  For more information, visit www.newworldstages.com.

Jackie Hoffman to Premiere A Chanukah Charol

Jackie Hoffman to Premiere

A Chanukah Charol,

Inspired by Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol

 

Three Performances Only at New World Stages

Time Out NY Lounge will present Jackie Hoffman’s A Chanukah Charol, her new holiday-themed, pseudo-autobiographical, one-woman show inspired by Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol. Michael Schiralli will direct.

Performances will be Sunday, December 11^th, Sunday, December 18^th, Monday, December 19^th at New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street (between Eighth & Ninth Avenues).

Time Out New York called Jackie “the funniest woman in America,” and the Village Voice hailed her as a mix of “Carol Burnett’s rubber face, Sarah Silverman’s outrage, Ethel Merman’s vocal throttle, and Gladys Kravitz’s world view.”

In her all new holiday show, this feisty Jewish woman examines her life when she is visited by the Ghosts of Chanukah Past, Present and Future, as well as Molly Picon, in Jackie’s latest search for the meaning of life and the quest for fame and glory.  [This needs to be funnier and more Jewish.  Any ideas from Jackie?]

The New York Times called her last solo show “savagely funny” and said “Ms. Hoffman’s acid-dipped acts are always a gurney (journey?  Or is this intentionally misspelled in the quote) worth taking.”

Jackie Hoffman currently stars as Grandma in The Addams Family. Her other Broadway credits include Xanadu and Hairspray (for which she received the Theatre World Award). Off-Broadway she has been seen in Regrets Only, Pride & Joy, Book of Liz (Obie Award), Straightjacket, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and One Woman Shoe. Regional credits include Second City (Jeff Award), Sisters Rosensweig. Film: Extra Man, Dirty Shame, Garden State, Legally Blonde II, Kissing Jessica Stein, Mo’ Money, Robots, Queer Duck. TV: “30 Rock,” “One Life to Live,” “Starved,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Strangers with Candy,” “TV Funhouse,” “Conan,” “Soulman,” “Cosby.” Solo shows have garnered her MAC and Bistro awards. She can be heard on the CD Jackie Hoffman: Live at Joe’s Pub (where she is a frequent sell-out), as well as on the original Broadway cast recordings of Hairspray, Xanadu, and The Addams Family.

Tickets will be $35 and premium seats available at $55 (including a free drink).  Tickets may be purchased by visiting Telecharge.com or calling (212) 239-6200.  Tickets may be purchased in person at the New World Stages Box Office.  For more information, visit www.newworldstages.com

Mint Theater Receives NEA Grant to Support the First Ever Revival of Love Goes To Press

Drama Desk Award-Winning Mint Theater Receives NEA Grant to Support the First Ever Revival of

Love Goes To Press

by Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowle

 

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Rocco Landesman today announced that the agency would award 863 grants to organizations and individual writers across the country. Mint Theater (Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director) is one of the recipients and will receive $30,000 to support the first-ever revival of Love Goes To Press by Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles. The Mint production, directed by Jerry Ruiz, will run from May 26 to July 22, 2012 at their home (311 West 43^rd Street).

Love Goes To Press is a sharp-tongued comedy about women war correspondents that debuted on Broadway in 1947.  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.  Hemingway’s play The Fifth Column, produced at the Mint in 2008, fictionalizes their romance.

Gellhorn could not have been flattered by Hemingway’s portrayal of Dorothy Bridges, the long-legged blond in his play, described as “lazy and spoiled and rather stupid….”  In 1946, Gellhorn had her revenge when she and Virginia Cowles decided on a lark to write a comedy about two female war correspondents covering WWII.  Their delicious 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.  From the outside he’s a beautiful, funny, fascinating man.”  The HBO film Hemingway and Gellhorn starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman is due to premiere in May 2012.

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 based. “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.

Just months before they sat down to write this play, Gellhorn was reporting from Dachau. She was one of the first journalists to enter the camp—an experience that changed her life forever.  The play was written as an antidote to “the heart-sickening cost of war… Everyone longed to laugh in the first cold winter of peace… Laughter was lifesaving escape,” Gellhorn wrote in 1995, when introducing the play for publication.

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. Recalling the hostility of the New York critics, Gellhorn wrote “Since they had not lived through real war, they found it tasteless, grotesque, practically wicked to make cheap jokes about any aspect of war. That was the end of the play.”

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.

“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 21^st, 2011) hailed the Mint as the “resurrectionist extraordinaire of forgotten plays

Complete Cast Announced for Keen’s PAINTING CHURCHES

Drama Desk and Obie Award-Winning Keen Company

Announces that 

Kate Turnbull 

Would Complete the Cast of 

Tina Howe’s Painting Churches

Directed by Carl Forsman

Kathleen Chalfant and Richard Easton To Star

The Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning Keen Company (Carl Forsman, Artistic Director/Damon Chua, Executive Director) today announced that Kate Turnbull would join Kathleen Chalfant and Richard Easton for Tina Howe’s Painting Churches, the 1983 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Keen Artistic Director Carl Forsman directs.

Performances will begin February 14^th, with Opening Night set for March 6^th. (Additional credits and design team will be announced shortly).

Kate Turnbull  made her Humana Fest debut with the premiere of Maple and Vine.  Other regional credits include The Matchmaker (Censterstage); Doubt (Portland Stage Company); and Measure for Measure, Two Gentlemen of Verona,Restoration Comedy,Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Old Globe). Off-Broadway she has been seen in Passion Play with Epic Theatre Ensemble.  Television: Guiding Light. M.F.A. from The Old Globe/University of San Diego.

Painting Churches premiered Off-Broadway on February 8, 1983 at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre, produced by Second Stage. It transferred to the Lamb’s Theatre where it ran for 206 performances. The play was filmed for PBS “American Playhouse” starring Sada Thompson, Donald Moffat, and Roxanne Hart.

In Painting Churches, we meet the Church family: Fanny (Chalfant) and Gardner (Easton). They are packing, about to move to a beach home on Cape Cod. Gardner is a poet and Fanny is from a “fine old family.” Their daughter Margaret, an artist who lives in New York, has arrived to help them pack and paint their portrait.

This will be the first New York revival of Painting Churches, the smash hit comedy from the author of Coastal Disturbances and Pride’s Crossing.  In his review in the New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, “In Painting Churches, her beautifully written play, Tina Howe has dramatized an illuminating connection between life and art. And like the best paintings, Painting Churches rewards repeated viewings.”

Keen Company continues their tradition of presenting plays that illuminate the challenge to live generously, and these two stories about children and parents will bring these themes to thrilling life. Keen believes that theater is at its most powerful when texts and productions are generous in spirit and provoke identification. Inspired by the works of early 20th Century American playwrights, Keen Company demonstrates that an earnest intent can still be sophisticated. We are unafraid of emotional candor, vulnerability, and optimism. Keen Company seeks to create a culture of artists, technicians, administrators and audiences who share a desire to invigorate the theater with productions that connect us through humor, heart and hope. “Keen Company’s first tremendous leap of faith was producing Tina Howe’s 42-character play Museum in our second season in 2002. I am honored to be able to bring Tina’s unique and hilarious voice back to our stage. Painting Churches is such a touching portrait of our effort to understand our parents, and Keen Company is thrilled to be presenting its first New York revival. We’ll endeavor to whip up enough chaos to delight Tina and her many fans,” said Forsman.

Kathleen Chalfant was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Featured Role for her role in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. Chalfant earned great acclaim for her performance as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s play Wit, receiving Outer Critics, Drama Desk, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards. For her performance in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, Chalfant won a second Obie Award. Most recently, Chalfant starred in the independent feature film, Isn’t It Delicious?

Tony Award winner Richard Easton’s Broadway credits include Elling, The Coast of Utopia, The Rivals, Henry IV, The Invention of Love (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League Awards), Noises Off, Exit the King, The Misanthrope, The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, Cock-a-Doodle-Dandy, Back to Methuselah, The Country Wife, School for Scandal. Off-Broadway, he has been seen in Entertaining Mr. Sloane; Bach at Leipzig; Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme; Waste; Hotel Universe; Give Me Your Answer, Do!; Salad Days. His London credits include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (with Uta Hagen), Death of Bessie Smith, Fagin in Oliver, Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Co. and four years at RSC. Film credits: Revolutionary Road, Henry V, Dead Again, and  Finding Forester. TV: Six years of BBC’s “The Brothers”; PBS’s Emmy-winning “Benjamin Franklin” (title role); and most recently, the HBO mini-series “Mildred Pierce.”


This limited Off-Broadway engagement at The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues) will begin February 14^th and continue through April 22^nd only, with opening night set for March 6^th. Performances will be Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Friday at 8pm; Saturdays at 2pm & 8pm; and Sunday matinees at 3pm.  Tickets are $59.75.  To purchase tickets, visit Telecharge.com or call 212/239-6200.

For more information visit www.keencompany.org.

 

TREATMENT ACTION GROUP To Present 2011 Research In Action Awards Honoring AIDS Activism

TREATMENT ACTION GROUP

To Present

2011 Research In Action Awards Honoring AIDS Activism

Sunday December 11^th At The Midtown Loft

Presenters Will Include Bravo’s Andy Cohen

Awards to Honor John Benjamin Hickey, Dr. Robert F. Siliciano & Dr. Polly Harrison “Weekend Today Show” Co-Anchor Jenna Wolfe Will Serve as Host

Treatment Action Group (TAG), one of the leading AIDS research advocacy organizations, will host its 15^th annual Research in Action Awards (RIAA), honoring individuals who have made a significant contribution in AIDS research and activism.  .

The 2011 Research in Action Awards will take place at the 11th floor Aerie of the MidTown Loft (267 Fifth Avenue at 29th Street) on Sunday, December 11^th (6:30 PM). Jenna Wolfe of NBC’s “Weekend Today” will serve as host.

TAG is proud to present its 2011 RIAA Awards to: Dr. Polly Harrison, Founder of the Alliance for Microbicide Development; John Benjamin Hickey, winner of the 2011 Tony Award for his role in “The Normal Heart, and co-star of the Showtime hit “The Big C;” and Dr. Robert F. Siliciano, Medical Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Professor of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Presenters will include Andy Cohen, Executive Vice President of Original Programming and Development, responsible for overseeing the network’s current development and production slate of over two dozen shows, including hits such as the Emmy and James Beard award-winning “Top Chef;” “Top Chef Masters;” “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” as well as New York City, Atlanta, New Jersey, and DC; “Kathy Griffin My Life On the D-List;” “The Millionaire Matchmaker;” “Million Dollar Listing;” “The Rachel Zoe Project;” “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover;” and “Flipping Out,” among others.  
 
In addition, Cohen is the host and Executive Producer of “Watch What Happens: Live,”

Founded in 1992, Treatment Action Group fights to ensure that all people living with HIV receive the necessary treatment, care, and information they need. Today, 25 years into this global pandemic, TAG remains the only organization in the world dedicated to AIDS research advocacy for better treatments, a vaccine, and cure for AIDS. TAG is the leading community activist science-based AIDS policy, research, and treatment advocacy think tank; TAG’s activism speeds up research on HIV basic science, treatment, prevention, and vaccines; hepatitis and tuberculosis (TB) coinfection; U.S. and global treatment access; and community empowerment. TAG leads and participates in activist coalitions in the United States and around the world to expand access to effective treatment for HIV and its most common co-infections. TAG catalyzes efforts to strengthen and expand research on HIV and related diseases so that people with HIV can live long and healthy lives. TAG’s ultimate goal is to accelerate research for a cure and a vaccine for HIV.

Tickets are available from $150 by calling 212-253-7922 or  online at www.treatmentactiongroup.org/riaa

Woodie King Jr’s New Federal Theatre Kicks Off Its 40th Anniversary Season with COOL BLUES

Woodie King Jr’s New Federal Theatre Kicks Off Its 40^th Anniversary Season with the Off-Broadway Premiere of Bill Harris’ COOL BLUES

Ed Smith Directs a Cast that Features Ezra Barnes, Stephanie Berry, Terria Joseph, Marcus Naylor, Maria Silverman &  Jay Ward

Off-Broadway Limited Engagement Begins March 10

Woodie King Jr’s New Federal Theatre will kick off its 40^th season by presenting the Off-Broadway premiere of Cool Blues by Bill Harris at their home at Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center/Recital Hall (466 Grand Street). Performances begin March 10^th with Opening Night set for Sunday, March 20^th Performances for this limited engagement  continue through April 3rd only. Ed Smith directs a cast that features Ezra Barnes, Stephanie Berry, Terria Joseph, Marcus Naylor, Maria Silverman and Jay Ward. Cool Blues will have set design by Anthony Davidson, costume design by Ali Turns, lighting design by Shirley Prendergast, and sound design by Bill Toles. Casting was by Lawrence Evans.

It is 1955. B is a black jazz musician so renowned and innovative that he only needs a single initial to identify him. We join him as he shows up unannounced to spend a fateful weekend in the apartment of, Baroness Alexandra Isabella von Templeton (Xan), one of the world’s richest women. His manner and his mood shifts are as mercurial as his music. His talent at deception and self defense as agile as his ability to charm. Questions of loyalty, love, privilege, and friendship are probed as the ghosts of B’s past and present demand answers. Xan vows to protect him at all costs, even if it means ignoring the advice of the doctor summoned to attend to him. Does B want to be saved? Can he be? Has he come to recuperate from recent disastrous events in order to soar into the world again, or has the burden of being a cutting edge spirt in the war against conformity and racial prejudice taken its ultimate toll?

Playwright Bill Harris is a professor of English at Wayne State University.  He formerly served as Curator of Living History, then Chief Curator at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.  While living in New York City during the 1980s, Harris was the Production Coordinator at both New Federal Theatre and JazzMobile. As a playwright, Harris has had innumerable successful productions of his plays nationwide. Acclaimed actors S. Epatha Merkerson, Abbey Lincoln, Guy Davis, and Denzel Washington have starred in various productions of his. His plays have been published in The National Black Drama Anthology (Robert Johnson:  Trick the Devil-which, in an adaptation for radio, won the 1997 Silver Medal for Drama awarded by the International Radio Programming organization); New Plays for the Black Theatre; Voices of Color; and African American Literature (He Who Endures). Plays published under his own name include Riffs & Coda published by Broadside Press, and Stories About the Old Days, published by Samuel French, Inc. His books of poetry are Yardbird Suite:  Side One, which won the Lotus Press poetry prize, and The Ringmaster’s Array, published by Past Tents Press. Most recently Harris researched and wrote Birth of A Notion; Or The Half Ain’t Never Been Told. .. , a poetic critique of 18^th century American history and popular cultural images of African Americans. The follow up volume of Booker T. & Them: A Blues will be published in 2012.  He also has two novels in the works.

Director Ed Smith is an award-winning director and educator who has directed at theatres around the country, and in Canada and the West Indies. His directorial credits are extensive with stellar reviews for many of his productions. Some of his major productions include, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Bluest Eye, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Piano Lesson, I’m Not Rappaport, and From the Mississippi Delta, for which he was the original director and nominated by AUDELCO as Best Director in 1989.  He was also awarded Best Director in 1991 by the St Louis Dispatch Awards for Soldier’s Play, and in 1993 for Fences, by the Buffalo Evening News. In 2000, he was awarded by Detroit’s Focus Awards for his direction of Our Town; it also won for Best Play. That same year, he was nominated Best Director by the Oakland Press Detroit for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. Ed directed Ossie Davis’ last play, A Last Dance for Sybil, which featured Ruby Dee and Earle Hyman and was produced by Woodie King, Jr. Ed has directed over a 100 plays and a few have been produced.  In 2009, Ed received the prestigious Lloyd Richard’s Director’s Award from the National Black Theatre Festival. He was the Artistic Director for the Jubilee Theatre in Fort Worth (2006-2010), the Associate Artistic Director for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Theatre (1993-1996), and was the Founder and Artistic Director of the Buffalo Black Drama Workshop (1970-1974). He was a full professor at SUNY/Buffalo from 1969-1994, and has taught at University of California, Florida State University, Mount Holyoke, and Wayne State University. He is presently adjunct at Texas Christian University, and was recently awarded by Jubilee Theatre, the “Edward Smith Scholarship” in Theatre. Additionally, Ed hosted a jazz radio program at WBFO-FM and WBER-AM in Buffalo, New York for over fifteen years and he grew up in Philadelphia as a BeBop Child.

Woodie King Jr. is the Founder and Producing Director of New Federal Theatre. Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre has presented over 200 productions in its 40-year history. Mr. King has produced and directed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in Regional Theatres, and in universities across the United States. He co-produced For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (first produced by NFT and Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre), What the Wine Sellers Buy, Reggae and The Taking of Miss Janie (Drama Critics Circle Award). His directional credits are extensive and include work in film as well as theater.

Performances of Cool Blues will be Wednesday through Friday evenings at 7:30pm, Saturdays at 3pm & 8pm and Sunday matinees at 3pm.

Tickets will be $25 and can be ordered through www.theatremania.com or by phone at 212/352-3101. For more information, please visit www.newfederaltheatre.org or call NFT at 212-353-1176.

Performances will be at Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center/Recital Hall, 466 Grand Street (between Pitt & Willett Streets). By subway: “F” train to Delancey Street; “M” and “J” train to Essex Street; or by “M14A” bus to Pitt Street.

ALTAR BOYZ hits 1500

Friday, October 3^rd Makes 1500 Performances for ALTAR BOYZ!

 

Ken Davenport and Robyn Goodman proudly announce that Altar Boyz, the acclaimed musical comedy at New World Stages, will play its 1500^th performance on Friday October 3rd. This makes it the  11^th longest running off-broadway musical ever – behind The Fantasticks, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, 3,672 Nunsense, Threepenny Opera, Naked Boys Singing, Forbidden Broadway, Little Shop of Horrors, Godspell,  Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and Forever Plaid.

Altar Boyz, the acclaimed musical comedy, winner of the 2005 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Off-Broadway, is the longest running new musical comedy to open in New York in years! Full of sharp parody, sinfully spectacular dancing, and irreverent humor, this spoof about a heavenly guy-group is adored by audiences and critics alike.  With an extraordinary mix of side-splitting songs “convincing enough to be played on MTV,” uncontrollable laughs and lighthearted fun, this award-winning and totally original new musical is “90 minutes of pure delight” that’s suitable for all ages and will have “the whole family laughing and singing along.”  Altar Boyz recently completed its First National Tour. Altar Boyz enjoyed its Asian premiere in Seoul, South Korea and its European premiere in Budapest. Productions will be opening shortly in Sydney Australia and the Philippines.

Altar Boyz also features Michael Kadin Craig, Neil Haskell, Ryan J Ratliff and Ryan Strand and is directed by Stafford Arima and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Altar Boyz has music & lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker with book by Kevin Del Aguila, based on a concept by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport. New World Stages is located at 340 West 50th Street, just west of Eighth Avenue. For more information, visit www.altarboyz.com or call 1 – 877- ABOYZ – 411.  For all the gossip on the BOYZ, visit www.altarholics.com 

Yossarian Lives!

Aquila Theatre Announces
John Lavelle to Star as Yossarian In Its
 World Premiere of
Joseph Heller’s CATCH 22,
Adapted & Directed By Peter Meineck
Part of Aquila’s 2008-2009 Off-Broadway Season at The Lucille Lortel Theatre

AQUILA THEATRE (Peter Meineck, Artistic Director) is proud to announce that John Lavelle will star as Yossarian in the World Premiere of the stage adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, adapted and directed by Peter Meineck.  Performances begin November 14th, with opening night scheduled for November 23rd. This limited engagement continues through December 20th. All performances will be at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker & Hudson Streets). For tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200. For more information, visit www.aquilatheatre.com
 
John Lavelle starred on Broadway in The Graduate. Off Broadway credits include The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta (TFANA), Burleigh Grimes (New World Stages), Rope (Drama Department), and Spatter Pattern (Playwrights). Regional credits include On the Razzle (Williamstown), Bell Book and Candle (Old Globe), Much Ado About Nothing (La Jolla) and The Merchant of Venice (Royal Shakespeare Company).  Film/TV: The Taking of Pelham 123, National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie, Can Openers, Porcelain and Diamonds, Frozen Impact, The Sandpiper, August, “Black Donelley’s”, “Law and Order,” “Guiding Light,” “All My Children,” and “Sixteen to Life.”

Peter Meineck explains, “Yossarian is one of the most iconic and elusive roles in American literature. Paul Newman spent a year studying the role, never to play it, Richard Dreyfus signed on for a pilot that was never made. Jack Lemmon, Eli Wallach, Anthony Quinn and Ben Gazzara all lobbied for the role that famously went to Alan Arkin for the 1972 Mike Nichols film. Brooklyn born John Lavelle inherently understands Heller’s biting, absurdist satire (Heller hailed from Coney Island) and will bring a new intensity, verve and clarity to Yossarian.  As modern day Milo Minderbinder’s play havoc with the stock market and contemporary Colonel Cathcart’s place the lives of our troops at risk for political gain this is the right time for Catch-22 to be seen on stage. We are all greatly looking forward to seeing Yossarian live again.”

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is a modern American classic. The term itself has entered the language as a description of a ridiculously cyclical situation. The book by Joseph Heller was first published in 1961 and immediately caused a huge furor in the literary world. In 1971, Heller himself created a play based on his best-selling novel. Since then, Catch-22 the play has not received a professional production. Aquila feels this is a work by one of America’s great creative geniuses, and it deserves to be seen. Yossarian is a bombardier on a B-25, based on a small island off the coast of Italy in 1944. He starts to question the futile and ridiculous administration of his air base and seeks a way to preserve his life when the whole world around him seems to be going mad. Like a modern-day Achilles, Yossarian protests with powerful and often hilarious results. Catch-22 tackles huge things with rich metaphors, boldly drawn characters and near-impossible situations. It is a work of great theatricality with superb language and a sense of dark surrealism. Heller dares to examine the very philosophy of war and what it does to the humans that fight them. For a whole new generation of Americans, Yossarian Lives!
Peter Meineck has directed and/or produced over 40 productions in NY, London, Holland, Germany, Greece, Scotland, Canada, Bermuda, and the US in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the ancient Stadium at Delphi, Lincoln Center, and the White House. Peter has published several volumes of translations of Greek plays including Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which won the Lewis Galantiere Award for Literary Translation from the American Translators Association, Sophocles’ Theban Plays (with Paul Woodruff) and Philoctetes and Ajax and Aristophanes’ Clouds, Wasps & Birds. He has also written several literary adaptations for the stage including The Man Who Would Be King, Canterbury Tales, The Invisible Man, in addition to Catch-22. He also acts as a mythological advisor, most recently to Will Smith on I Am Legend.

The Aquila Theatre Company was founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck and has been based in New York City since 1999. Aquila’s mission is to bring the greatest theatrical works to the greatest number. Aquila presents a regular season of plays in New York, at international festivals, and tours to approximately seventy American towns and cities a year. Aquila also provides access to excellent theatre for people in under-served rural and inner city communities. The Aquila performance approach is a technique developed by Peter Meineck that combines text and physical action based in a theory of theatrical unity. The technique is aimed to create an aesthetic environment where the performer can create and recreate a role in a consistently changing theatrical atmosphere. Aquila Theatre broadens the classical cannon, collaborates across the performing arts, deepens a commitment to artistic excellence, teaches and exchanges idea and embraces new technology. 

13 Opens!

NYMF To Honor Robyn Goodman; Original AB Cast to Reunite!

New York Musical Theater Festival Announces

Fifth Season Awards Gala To Honor Robyn Goodman

Sunday, November 2^nd

Featuring appearances by

Stephanie D’Abruzzo (Avenue Q), Robert Lopez (Avenue Q) & Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Finding Nemo), Lin-Manuel Miranda (In The Heights) and The Original NYMF casts of [title of show] & Altar Boyz (Ryan Duncan, Cheyenne Jackson, David Josefsberg, Andy Karl, and Tyler Maynard)

And Producer Kevin McCollum as Master of Ceremonies

 

The New York Musical Theater Festival will honor producer Robyn Goodman at its fifth Anniversary Season Awards Gala on Sunday, November 2^nd at The Hudson Theatre (145 West 44th Street). The winners of The NYMF 2008 Awards for Excellence, which will be announced later this month, will also be honored at the gala.

 

Robyn Goodman produced Avenue Q, In the Heights (Tony Awards for Best Musical), Metamophoses, A Class Act, Steel Magnolias, Barefoot in the Park, High Fidelity on Broadway. Off-Broadway credits include Bat Boy; tick, tick…BOOM!, Our Lady of 121st Street; Red Light Winter and Altar Boyz. Co-founder of Second Stage Theatre, Goodman was its artistic director for 13 years; she is currently artistic consultant to the Roundabout, where she curated Speech and Debate at the Underground Theatre. 

 

Special appearances and performances will include a reunion of the original NYMF cast of Altar Boyz (Ryan Duncan, Cheyenne Jackson, David Josefsberg, Andy Karl and Tyler Maynard), as well as Gary Adler (Altar Boyz, Avenue Q), Stephanie D’Abruzzo (Avenue Q), Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Finding Nemo: The Musical), Kevin McCollum (producer, Avenue Q, In The Heights), Lin-Manuel Miranda (In The Heights), and the current casts of Altar Boyz, [title of show] and the award-winning NYMF 2008 shows.

 

Events of the Evening

6:00pm   Cocktails & Silent Auction

7:00pm   Dinner

8:30pm   Awards Presentation & Performance

10:00pm   VIP After-Party at Trattoria Dopo Teatro

 

Tickets

Champion Tables of 10: $5,000 | Champion Tickets: $500

(includes preferred seating and admission to the VIP After-Party with the artists)

Supporter Tables of 10: $3,750  | Supporter Tickets: $375

Artist Sponsor Tickets: $200

(covers the cost of dinner for one of the award winners)

 

To purchase tickets, call (212) 664-0979 x13 or email gala@nymf.org

www.NYMF.ORG

 

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) celebrates its fifth year with 24 full productions, a dance series, a developmental series, concerts and special events. Since its inception in 2004, this three-week annual festival has premiered more than 160 new musicals – many of which have gone on to award-winning productions in New York, in regional theaters and on tour in 38 states, and nine countries worldwide. NYMF 2004 hit Altar Boyz has played well over 1,000 performances Off-Broadway and spawned two National Tours; fellow NYMF alum [title of show] recently opened to rave reviews at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway; Nerds is coming to Broadway this Spring; and Off-Broadway audiences will soon see My Vaudeville Man.  Hailed as “the Sundance of Musical Theatre,” NYMF exists to revitalize one of America’s greatest art forms by discovering, supporting and promoting new musical theater artists, producers, and projects, and by introducing a diverse audience to the vibrancy of contemporary musical theater.  Widely regarded as the essential source for new material and talent discovery, NYMF is the flagship program of The National Music Theater Network, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.  The 2008 Festival season was presented in association with BroadwayWorld.com, Production Resource Group and TheaterMania.com, and was supported by amNewYork, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, BroadwayBox.com, BroadwayInsider.com, Frank & Camille’s Fine Pianos, HX Magazine, Jossip.com, King Displays, Queerty.com, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, Metromix.com, The New York Blade, Next Magazine, Panasonic Astrovision, Tekserve, TheMENEvent, VOGA Italia, and The Zipper Factory. NYMF is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

 

 

The Glass Cage Extends Again at Mint Theater!

The Glass Cage by J.B. Priestley Extends Again!
Drama Desk Award-Winning Mint Theater Presents US Premiere
Due to Popular Demand, Another Week Added – Now Running Through November 8th

The Drama Desk and Obie Award-wining Mint Theater Company kicks off their 2008-2009 season with the American Premiere of J. B. Priestley’s The Glass Cage, and is proud to announce that performances will continue through November 8th.

Lou Jacob directs a cast that includes Gerry Bamman (Nixon’s Nixon), Chet Carlin, Chad Hoeppner, Aaron Krohn (The Farnsworth Invention), Robin Moseley, Saxon Palmer, Jeanine Serralles (The Misanthrope, NYTW), Sandra Struthers-Clerc, Fiana Toibin (Long Day’s Journey…, Broadway), and Jack Wetherall (The Elephant Man, “Queer as Folk”).

“J.B. Priestley keeps being rediscovered,” writes the London Times, because “he’s never really gone away.”  In the mid-1990s, New York audiences thrilled to Priestley’s prescient modernity in An Inspector Calls on Broadway and Dangerous Corner (adapted by David Mamet for the Atlantic Theater).

Now Mint Theater Company presents the American premiere of his 1957 masterwork, The Glass Cage. Priestley’s drama of “fears, prejudices, hypocrisies and lies” was first brought to light in 2001 when his son Thomas recommended it for a reading as part of a Priestley Festival. A full production followed in 2007 at the Royal Theatre, Northampton—the first in fifty years. “J.B. Priestley’s The Glass Cage at the Mint is wondrous,” writes Peter Filichia in Theatremania, “one of those terrific plays where you know immediately who the good and the bad guys are from the very beginning, only to be not so sure as the play steamrolls along.”

The Glass Cage is a taut drama about the danger old family wounds left unattended. “The wealthy and sheltered McBane’s of Toronto, in J. B. Priestley’s brilliant drama from 1957, are a smug, spoiled, straitlaced bunch, and they’re certain that their three young relatives, coming to visit for the first time, will be savages, like their Indian mother, and drunkards, like their dissolute father. And they’re right: the visitors are as hot and wild as fire, and they come with a plan to do great harm. In this fully relevant revival, the performances by Saxon Palmer and Jeanine Serralles, as two of the three young people, pop like bright flowers.” (The New Yorker)

“Splendidly staged by Lou Jacob with a near-perfect cast,” writes Time Out New York.  The ensemble seems to love spending time inside a masterful drama. For us in the audience, the feeling’s mutual”

All performances will take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43rd Street. For more information, you can also visit www.minttheater.org

 Please note: A special matinee will be added on Wednesday, November 5th at 2 PM.

Grace Gummer Makes Her New York Debut

ELECTRIC PEAR PRODUCTIONS
Brings A Stunning And Disturbing New Swiss Play
To New York For Its US Premiere:

THE SEXUAL NEUROSES OF OUR PARENTS

By Lukas Bärfuss Translated by Neil Blackadder
Directed by Kristjan Thor


To Coincide, The Wild Project Will Present An Exhibit of Photos From
 The Kinsey Institute’s Archive

Electric Pear Productions (Melanie Sylvan and Ashlin Halfnight, Co-Executive Producers) will present the US premiere of The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents by Lukas Bärfuss, translated by Neil Blackadder at The Wild Project (195 East Third Street, between Avenues A & B) for a limited run, beginning November 6th through 22nd. Opening night is set for Tuesday, November 11th. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by phone by calling 212-352-3101 or online at www.electricpear.org.

Discover one of Switzerland’s most willful and stimulating playwrights. Following a smash run in London, Electric Pear brings a stunning and disturbing new Swiss play to New York for its US premiere. Rising star Kristjan Thor, named one of New York Magazine’s “Most Likely to be Famous Before 30,” directs Bärfuss’ US debut of The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents which has been called “Horribly compelling” by the Times UK, “taboo-busting” and “This in-yer-face piece sticks in-yer-mind” by Time Out London and the London Evening Standard says, “This show makes a splash.”

Grace Gummer will make her NY theatrical debut as Dora, who, after ten years on tranquillizers, emerges with an insatiable sexual appetite that pits her against a secret and deviant adult world. Not your normal coming of age story. Not your everyday sexual awakening. Completing the cast are Laura Heidinger, Kathryn Kates (“Seinfeld’), Max Lodge, Charlie Mitchell, Jim Noonan and Peter O’Connor (Kidstuff).

The design team includes scenic design by Moza Saracho’s who also is co-costume designer with Kylie Ward; original music and sound design by Joel Bravo; lighting design by Sabrina Peric.

To coincide with Electric Pear Productions’ US Premiere of The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents by Lukas Bärfuss, The Wild Project gallery is pleased to present a small selection of photographs on loan from the Kinsey Institute archive.

The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents is sponsored by the Consulate General of Switzerland.

 
Electric Pear Productions, founded by Ashlin Halfnight and Melanie Sylvan, is a non-profit theater company committed to deepening the scope of the American performance landscape by supporting, creating and showcasing both:
Ø    Original American plays of superior quality and originality
Ø    Cross-genre and cross-border collaborative projects for the stage
The goal of the company is to be a cultivator, backer and presenter – a true hub – of original and persuasive creative endeavors that find their base in the live theatrical experience, but pull together influences and inspirations from the world at large.
Each season the company produces two new plays, one collaborative international piece, and one cross-genre composition.

The Sexual Neurosis of Our Parents
November 6–22
Press nights November 8, 9, 10 & 11 at 8pm
 The Wild Project (195 East Third Street, between Avenues A & B)
by Lukas Bärfuss; Translated by Neil Blackadder
Directed by Kristjan Thor
Starring Grace Gummer
All shows 8pm
Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by phone by calling 212-352-3101 or online at www.electricpear.org

MY VAUDEVILLE MAN!, A New Musical, Begins Performances November 7th

A SON BORN TO TAP DANCE…

A MOTHER HELL-BENT ON STOPPING HIM!

                        

The York Theatre Company And Melanie Herman, The Folks Who Brought You The Musical Of Musicals (The Musical!), Present The Off-Broadway Premiere Of The Acclaimed NYMF Show

MY VAUDEVILLE MAN!, A New Musical

Performances Begin November 7^th

The YORK THEATRE COMPANY (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director) and Melanie Herman, who produced The Musical Of Musicals (The Musical!), are proud to announce the Off-Broadway Premiere of My Vaudeville Man!, a new musical based on the life of legendary eccentric tap star Jack Donahue. My Vaudeville Man! had its world premiere at last year’s NY Musical Theatre Festival under the title Mud Donahue and Son. Performances will be at The Theatre at Saint Peter’s (54th Street just east of Lexington Avenue) beginning November 7^th.  Karen Murphy and Shonn Wiley star.

My Vaudeville Man! has a book by Jeff Hochhauser, music by Bob Johnston, and lyrics by Johnston and Hochhauser, based on Jack Donahue’s Letters of a Hoofer to his Ma.  Lynne Taylor-Corbett will direct and choreograph with Shonn Wiley serving as co-choreographer. My Vaudeville Man! will have scenic design by James Morgan, costume design by David Toser, and lighting design by Mary Jo Dondlinger. Douglas Oberhamer will serve as Musical Director. 

My Vaudeville Man! is the story of a boy born to dance and the mother who fought to keep him home! Karen Murphy (most recently featured in the new musical 9 to 5 in LA) and Shonn Wiley (recently seen in No No Nanette at Encores!) star in a musical based on the life of legendary eccentric tap dancer Jack Donahue (played by Ray Bolger on film) and his mother—who fights to keep her son off the wicked vaudeville stage. This “Pitch Perfect Musical” (NYTheatre.com) was first seen in York’s Developmental Reading Series. As Mud Donahue & Son, it was the break-out hit of last season’s NY Musical Theater Festival, tap-dancing its way into the hearts of audiences and critics alike.  York and producer Melanie Herman—the team behind The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) — reunite to bring you what Talkin’ Broadway proclaimed “a tour de force.”

Karen Murphy makes a dynamic impact in every avenue of entertainment she performs: on Broadway (All Shook Up, the Tony-Award winning 42nd Street and Titanic, A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden, King David at the opening of the New Amsterdam Theatre), Off-Broadway (Zombie Prom – in which she won both Dramalogue and Encore Awards, Jerry Herman’s Showtune, Forbidden Broadway, L’Amour, the Merrier! and Hysterial Blindness), or her favorite – cabaret (The Rainbow Room with Steve Ross), Dramalogue award-winning Torch Goddess, and her Bistro-Award winning show for her NY debut.

Shonn Wiley’s recent credits include No, No, Nanette (Tom, Encores!); Hot N’ Cole (Westport Playhouse); Candide (New York City Opera).  Broadway:  Dracula (Jack Seward); 42^nd Street (Revival); Never Gonna Dance (Workshop).  Off-Broadway: Saved (Playwrights Horizon); Stairway To Paradise (Encores!); Thrill Me (York); The View From Here (cast album); All Singing, All Dancing I  (“The Inappropriate Medley” with wife, Meredith Patterson).  Regional credits include Ragtime; Secret Garden; Little Night Music; Big River; I Love A Piano; Forever Plaid; Camille Claudel; Brigadoon; Crazy For You; Footloose.  TV & film appearances include “The Guiding Light” and the upcoming feature films Tiny Dancer, Red Hook, and Confessions Of A Shopoholic.

Bob Johnston and Jeff Hochhauser’s credits include Anne & Gilbert, written with Nancy White, based on the novels by LM Montgomery, which just completed its third summer on Prince Edward Island as well as in Ontario at the Thousand Islands Playhouse; Theda Bara & The Frontier Rabbi, which was produced at the York. It has also had productions Off-Broadway, in Chicago, Hollywood, FL and at the Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes NY.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett is known for her work in theatre, dance and film.  She was nominated for two Tony® Awards and a Drama Desk for direction and choreography of Broadway’s Swing! and for two American Theatre Wing Star Awards for its National Tour.  She also choreographed Broadway’s Chess and Titanic. Off Broadway, she directed Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi, Marie Jones’s Women on the Verge… at Irish Arts, Darlene Love:  Portrait of a Singer at the Bottom Line, 20th Century Pop at the Rainbow and Stars, and was the original director of the Korean import, Cookin’ at The Minetta Lane.  She also directed Your Simone at The Culture Project and Boxes and Asking For It at the New York International Fringe Festival.  Regional shows include Tintypes (Hartford Stage and The Old Globe), Opal (George Street Playhouse and The Lyric Theatre), Flight of the Lawnchair Man (Goodspeed Opera House), Hats in Chicago, and Girl’s Room starring Donna McKechnie and Carol Lawrence soon to open Los Angeles.  She has been commissioned to create dance pieces for New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Company, Pacific Northwest Ballet and numerous companies throughout the world.  She is the resident guest choreographer of The Carolina Ballet.  Broadcasts of her work have been seen on “Live From Lincoln Center”, “Live from the San Francisco Opera House” and on UNCTV. Her films include Footloose, My Blue Heaven, Vanilla Sky and Bewitched.  Most recently she and her work, “Chiaroscuro” were featured in Water Flowing Together, a documentary on Jock Soto of the New York City Ballet shown on PBS.   In the summer of 2005, she directed a multi-million dollar project for Disney in China, currently playing in the largest indoor theatre in Asia. Upcoming projects include Wanda’s World Off Broadway and Tarzan for Theatre of the Stars. Ms. Taylor-Corbett has staged benefits for The Hunger Project, worked with Rosie’s Broadway Kids, been honored for her work for the A-T Project and is a mentor to a young playwright living in Tanzania through Nile Roger’s “We Are Family” Foundation. She is a proud member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and even prouder to be the mom of actor Shaun Taylor-Corbett.

Melanie Herman began her producing career in the 1970′s as founder and artistic director of The Bank – a groundbreaking off-Broadway and innovative multimedia company in Brooklyn Heights. Among her many early credits, she served as associate producer Off-Broadway of Candaules Commissioner, which launched her commercial producing career. During her early years as an emerging producer, Ms. Herman was cited by renowned journalist Vincent Canby on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times, exclaiming “…Brooklyn banners waived high for the youngest producer emerging in the Broadway and off-Broadway scene!” It was at the York Theater where Ms. Herman first discovered a new, original musical comedy The Musical Of Musicals (The Musical!). After a sold-out run at The York, she re-opened it at the prestigious New World Stages, garnering unanimous critical acclaim and ran for a total of almost 2 years.  Since then, it has had numerous productions across the country, with 25 additional productions slated for the near future. Most recently, Melanie successfully co-produced the West End premiere of The Musical Of Musicals (The Musical!) to unanimous raves, as well as the recent acclaimed London revival of Side By Side By Sondheim.

The York Theatre Company (winner of a special Drama Desk Award for developing and producing new musical theatre) is the only theater in New York City—and one of very few in the world—dedicated to developing and fully producing new musicals, as well as preserving gems from the past.  For more than three decades, York’s intimate, imaginative style of producing both original and rarely seen classic musicals has resulted in critical acclaim and recognition from artists and audiences alike.  Under the guidance of Artistic Director James Morgan since 1997, the York has focused exclusively on new musicals in its Mainstage Series–most of them world, American, or New York premieres—by some of the field’s most esteemed creators, and has also helped launch the careers of many talented new writers. Over 30 cast recordings from York Theatre Company productions are now available on CD, and commercial transfers of such York productions as The Musical of Musicals –The Musical!, Souvenir, Captain Louie, Jolson & Company, and acclaimed revivals of Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures have all showcased the importance of the York and its programs. York’s Musicals in Mufti Series, which offers rarely seen works from the past, has presented more shows than any other musical theatre concert series in the world, and is the first series to present works from on Broadway and Off-, as well as from London’s West End. The York’s Developmental Reading Series, which presents over 40 free readings of new musicals every year, was the incubator for the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Avenue Q, among many other significant shows.

The York Theatre Company is located at Saint Peter’s in Citigroup Center on Lexington Avenue just east of 54^th Street. Tickets are available now, by calling 212-935-5820. For more information, check out www.yorktheatre.org. For Group Sales, contact MATCH-TIX at 212/354-2220.

Alumni Return to E.S.T.’s Under 30-Playwrights Group for Short Play Festival

Youngblood Turns 15
Alumni Return to E.S.T.’s Under 30-Playwrights Group for Short Play Festival
October 21^st to 25^th  

Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s collective of emerging playwrights under 30 (RJ Tolan/Graeme Gillis, Artistic Directors), will celebrate its fifteenth season this year with Asking For Trouble, the biggest play festival in their history. Youngblood has invited their alumni – 41 playwrights, 35 directors and 120 actors – to participate in the mammoth 5-day event, including many EST members alongside emerging talents like Johnny Pruitt (“Chappelle’s Show”), Jessica Andres (“Gossip Girl”), Matt Lauria and Marguerite Stimpson (both of “Lipstick Jungle”).  Writers taking part will include Lloyd Suh, Amy Fox, Ann Marie Healy, and Lucy Thurber, as well as recent Youngblood members like Amy Herzog, Qui Nguyen, Sam Forman and Zakiyyah Alexander. The series runs from October 21 through October 25 at E.S.T. (549 West 52^nd Street).

“The spirit of E.S.T. and of Youngblood has always been the spirit of inclusion,” said William Carden, E.S.T.’s artistic director. “It made sense for this anniversary to throw the door open as widely as possible.”

Asking For Trouble is Youngblood’s annual speed theater challenge: playwrights pick a cast and a director out of a hat, and are given one week to write a play for that cast. After one week of rehearsal, the plays are presented, off-book and fully staged, in a raucous, eclectic sampler platter of the group’s unique voices.  Asking For Trouble plays have gone on to productions at the Royal Court in London, the E.S.T. Mainstage, and the Humana Festival (including by Heideman Award winner Michael Lew, also participating in this year’s festival).

Created in 1993 by EST founder Curt Dempster to provide an artistic home and proving ground for young talent, Youngblood has grown into a major resource for early career playwrights.  Over the last fifteen years, Youngblood has nurtured over 50 playwrights, including Christopher Shinn, Annie Baker, Liz Meriwether, Steven Levenson and the late John Belluso.

 “This is basically a big birthday party for us,” said RJ Tolan, Youngblood’s co-artistic director.  “With 42 plays in five days, and almost 200 people involved, it’s a chance for us to celebrate the membership and the artists we’ve worked with over the years while continuing to do what EST does best, which is to give new talent a chance.”

Asking For Trouble is the kickoff to E.S.T.’s OCTOBERFEST, an annual fall harvest of new work where dozens of EST’s 500 artistic members present new readings, workshops and performances, ranging from the legendary director Ulu Grosbard to “Daily Show” contributor Lewis Black. 

“If you write a good play, you can get in the door – that’s a bedrock principle of E.S.T. That’s how we all ended up here,” said Graeme Gillis, a Youngblood alumni writer and the group’s co-artistic director. “So in that spirit this is a kind of homecoming. Everybody climbing back onto the boat.”

Tickets to Asking For Trouble are only $10.  For schedule and ticket information, go to www.youngbloodnyc.org.  For more information about Ensemble Studio Theatre, go to www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org.

Ars Nova Announces Complete Lineup for A.N.T. FEST

Ars Nova Announces Complete Lineup for
A.N.T. FEST
An Unmissable Adventure, from Beginning to Trend

October 16^th Through November 24^th

All Tickets Only $10! -On Sale Now!

Ars Nova (Jason Eagan, Artistic Director; Jon Steingart & Jenny Wiener Steingart, Executive Producers) will present its inaugural A.N.T. FEST (Ars Nova Theater Festival), dedicated to new work and emerging artists.  Featuring over 175 artists performing in 30 nights of music, comedy, theater, dance and genre-defying acts, A.N.T. FEST will run Thursday through Monday evenings, October 16th through November 24th, at Ars Nova (511 West 54th Street).  Performances begin at 8pm.  The festival will kick off Wednesday, October 15th at 7pm with an invited press launch and industry presentation featuring performances from select A.N.T. FEST artists.  All tickets are only $10 and can be purchased at www.smarttix.com or by phone at (212) 868-4444.

A COMPLETE SCHEDULE FOLLOWS.

In six weeks of mayhem featuring fresh material from today’s most daring emerging artists, the festival will push the boundaries of live entertainment by bringing together talented performers from many disciplines under one roof. Ars Nova is dedicated to spotlighting New York’s next wave of songwriters, bands, comedy artists, theater-makers, storytellers and genre-defying performers. A.N.T. FEST 2008 takes that mission to the next level.  

Ars Nova received over 250 submissions consisting of scripts, CDs, DVDs, YouTube videos, Myspace pages and even one VHS tape.  After reviewing material ranging from soul steppers, bands, pirates, ninjas, drag queens, plays, eggmobiles, monologists, Mormons, and everything in between, Ars Nova selected the top thirty submissions and offered each one night in the festival. For more information about each show and a full lineup, visit www.arsnovanyc.com.

 

“As Ars Nova grows and becomes increasingly able to develop and produce full-scale productions, it’s important we remain committed to our role as a crucial point of entry for emerging theater, comedy and music artists. A.N.T. FEST provides just that – we are opening our doors to innovative artists so they can get their work on stage and take risks in front of smart audiences.  We received hundreds of open submissions from people who see live performance in surprising and inspiring new ways.  There is a huge need for this kind of artist support in New York and we are committed to making this festival a permanent part of the landscape,” says Artistic Director Jason Eagan.

In addition to the performances, Ars Nova will also host artist salons throughout the festival, giving A.N.T. FEST participants a social, informal setting where they can engage with the greater community of Ars Nova artists. Salons are closed to the public.

As New York’s premiere hub for emerging artists and new work, Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing eclectic theatre, comedy and music to feed today’s popular culture.  To that end, Ars Nova strives to create daring collaborations, meld disciplines and give voice to a new generation of artists.  This season Ars Nova developed and produced critically acclaimed productions of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom, Liz Flahive’s From Up Here (in a co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club), and Nick Jones and Raja Azar’s Jollyship the Whiz-Bang.  Past productions include Dixie’s Tupperware Party, At Least It’s Pink, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, Holy Cross Sucks!, Freestyle Love Supreme and The Wau Wau Sisters. In addition to its featured productions, Ars Nova supports and develops new work from the most promising emerging artists through its alternative comedy series (Tragedy Tomorrow), music series (Uncharted), public play-reading series (Out Loud), writer’s group (Play Group) and artist-in-residence program.  Ars Nova was founded in memory of Gabe Wiener.  

For more information, visit www.arsnovanyc.com

OCTOBER 16th – November 24th 

Thursdays – Mondays 8pm
All tickets for A.N.T. FEST are $10 and can be purchased at www.smarttix.com or by phone at (212) 868-4444.
Ars Nova is located at 511 West 54th Street.
Box Office opens 30 minutes prior to performance

 

 

A.N.T. FEST 2008 FULL SCHEDULE

 

Step

Thursday, October 16

Theater/Dance

Written by Maxine Lyle and Amissa Miller Directed by Martin Wilkins

Performed by Soul Steps: Heather DeLeon, Maxine Lyle, Dionne Norton, Sean Thomas

For over a century, step dancers have used their bodies as musical instruments to create a new physical language that celebrates and forges community. Step is a high-energy theatrical performance where dance, Afro-urban rhythms and poetry relay the stories of a new generation and explore their link to the past.

Soul Steps has recently been selected to be members of Pentacle, a non-profit service organization for the performing arts that promotes eclectic dance groups.

www.soulsteps.com

 

Liquid Gold

Friday, October 17

Comedy

Featuring Adira Amram, Ann Carr, Katina Corrao, Sara Schaefer, Becky Yamamoto

An evening of comedy, music and video so hot, it will melt all your precious metals. And your face. These fiery female comedians came together this past spring to create a season preview of a fake television show called Mascara Mountain. The creative energy between them was so strong, and the video such a success, they decided to continue working together, and the idea for Liquid Gold was born. 

www.adiraamram.com/

www.myspace.com/anncarr

www.katinacorrao.com/

www.saraschaefer.com/

www.beckyyamamoto.com/

 

Project

Saturday, October 18

Music

Performed by Greg Pattillo (flute), Peter Seymour (string bass), Eric Stephenson (cello)

Combining a classical repertoire with original compositions, this dynamic young ensemble thrills audiences with boundless energy and innovative style. Their incomparable sound fuses jazz, hip-hop, and one-of-a-kind beatbox flute – melded with a sincere allegiance to their classical roots.

www.whatisproject.org

 

Box Theory

Sunday, October 19

Theater

Created and Directed by Aaron Schroeder

Performed by Matt Carr, Brandon Uranowitz

An almost-one-person show about a guy with a mind full of information and an illness-like aptitude for deconstruction. Quick, smart and relevant, Box Theory draws on an eternity of popular culture and historical events to evoke the fragmentation surrounding this generation.

 

 

 

Just Jump!

Monday, October 20

Dance/Comedy

Written and Choreographed by Chad Schiro Directed by Damon Arrington

Performed by Francesca Harper, Chad Schiro, Katrina Yaukey

Only in the world of Just Jump! could a seven-year-old girl standing petrified on a high-dive find the courage to jump into the wisdom of a tranny-hooker. A sexy, nasty, funky, freaky, (and yes, endearing), out-of-this-world, high-speed chase for the secret to Happiness On Earth!

Chad Schiro is the choreographer of the upcoming Disney Film Old Dogs starring John Travolta, Robin Williams and Bernie Mac and associate choreographer of the 2009 Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie.

 

 

The Story of America

Thursday, October 23

Music/Comedy

Written by Becky Yamamoto Directed by Jose Zayas

Performed by Tony Carnevale, Becky Yamamoto

In a time when no one believed comic songstress Becky Yamamoto could serve a second term as class president, she dared to run for reelection. Becky and pal Tony Carnevale illustrate to her class just how similar she is to George Washington (more similar than you would imagine). You vote. You decide.  For America.

www.beckyyamamoto.com

 

The Lance and Ray Show

Friday, October 24

Comedy/Theater

Written by Ray Munoz and Lance Rubin

Performed by Ray Munoz, Jeffrey de Picciotto, Lance Rubin, Katie Schorr

Lance and Ray are best friends.  They have written a fun show together. And it will change your life. In the style of Stella and Mr. Show, The Lance and Ray Show weaves their sweet, contemporary-yet-classic chemistry into a hilarious sketch-play, involving everything from the Dave Matthews Band to The West Wing to hefty emotional baggage.

www.myspace.com/thelanceandrayshow

 

Gato Loco Coconino

Saturday, October 25

Music

Directed by Stefan Zeniuk

Live Video Animation by luckydave

Performed by Gato Loco: Rick Becker (trombone), Eric Biyondo (trumpet), Joe Exley (tuba), Ari Folman-Cohen (bass), Mike Gamble (guitar), Kevin Moehrringer (trombone), Jesse Selengut (trumpet), Greg Stare (drums), Brett Tyson (congas)

Imagine a giant tarantula dancing with a woman in slow motion and you are beginning to dream up the deranged Latin big band Gato Loco Coconino. Teamed with live video wizard luckydave, the ten member group will present an evening of hot and heavy grooves accompanied by a rich visual landscape of live video images and hallucinatory, 1920s-style animation.

www.myspace.com/GatoLocoNYC

 

Groping and Grappling: Three Tales of Self Discovery

Sunday, October 26

Theater/Comedy

Written and Performed by H.R. Britton, Martin Dockery, Maggie Lauren

Three theatrical storytellers weave vastly different tales of personal journeys and unexpected realizations. 

 

H.R. Britton’s Melting in Madras provides a look at his quixotic pilgrimage to India and his slightly misguided adventures into the terrain of sickness and delusion, and back again. www.OvercoatTheater.com

 

In this raunchy, embarrassing exposé of adolescent sexuality, Maggie Lauren recounts tales of growing up Absurdly Normal.

 

A man is forced to reevaluate the meaning of family when he discovers a secret baby brother and sister on a visit to Vietnam in Martin Dockery’s The Surprise. www.martindockery.com

 

Yes to Everything!

Monday, October 27

Theater

Written by Philip Dawkins Directed by David Chapman

Yes to kissing a cactus! Yes to dysfunctional families! Yes to lurid dreams about your best friend! YES TO EVERYTHING! This evening of bite-sized plays by Philip Dawkins takes us on an electrifying journey through relationships, memory and wardrobe, performed by a small cast and one wildly talented houseplant.

 

Nobody Likes the Mormons

Thursday, October 30

Written and Directed by Kerry Whigham

Music by Matt Citron

Performed by Teddy Bergman, Erin Felgar, Roger Lirtsman, Vayu O’Donnell

A comic, irreverent and thoughtful theatrical exploration of Joseph Smith’s Mormon Church, examining its beliefs and asking the question: what makes people believe in anything in the first place?

www.kerrywhigham.com

 

Cavalcade of the Odd

Friday, October 31

Created by Tighe Swanson

Performed by Betty Bloomerz, Lucy Buttons, Jellyboy, Matters Squidling, Tighe Swanson

Celebrate Halloween with a wild ride through the wondrous world of old-time Americana entertainment! Featuring dangerous stunts, amazing feats, unique circus skills, oddball behavior, crazy antics and crowd favorite, The Wheel of Pain, all performed by the horrifyingly delightful Cavalcade of the Odd.

Cavalcade of the Odd premiered with a month-long run at Six Flags Fright Fest last October. It was a fan favorite and ganered rave reviews.

www.sideshowthrills.com

 

Goodbye Picasso’s The Book of Aylene

Saturday, November 1

Music

Created by Chris Dreyer

Performed by Goodbye Picasso: Chris Dreyer (vocals/guitar), Tim Lappin (bass), Joe Nero (drums), Scott Taylor (guitar)

Singer-songwriter Chris Dreyer’s modern-day song cycle spanning the entirety of his protagonist’s relationship with Aylene, “the one who got away.” Performed by the folk-rock-indie-acoustic band Goodbye Picasso.

Chris Dreyer and Scott Taylor performed at the 2006 CMJ Music Marathon in NYC. They lived in Nashville in 2006, and then toured the country, playing 85 shows in 6 months.

www.goodbyepicasso.com

 

Ladystein is a Band

Sunday, November 2

Music

Performed by Ladystein: Alana McNair (guitar/keyboard/vocals), Annie Nero (bass/vocals), Jamal Ruhe (drums), Kate Wilkinson (keyboard/omnichord/vocals)

Deep in the Ameristein Laboratories, a scientist and would-be drummer creates three female music machines and ends up with the greatest band ever: Ladystein!  Charting the group from humble beginnings to huge successes to slow demise and back, this concert will unveil the epic story through the eyes of the monsters themselves.  Ladystein founders Alana McNair and Kate Wilkinson are frequent writing partners as well as bandmates. They are the co-writers of (and also starred in) the Off-Broadway hit Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy.  Alana and Kate are currently at work on their new collaboration, a play called Settlement.

www.ladystein.com

 

So The Arrow Flies

Monday, November 3

Theater

Created and Performed by Esther Chae Directed by Casey Stangl

A North Korean Spy.  The Korean-American FBI Agent that chases her.  Who will get hit first? Esther Chae explores the ramifications of post-9/11 themes of conflicting ideologies, government sanctioned torture, national identity, and how the changing political tides affect a family.

Chae has been awarded a Golden Reel Award, Best Radio Play (“Hiroshima”/w Tyne Daly and Ruby Dee), Obie Theater Award Nom. (“Pojagi”/Ping Chong and Co.), Ammy Award for Asian Americans, Best Documentary Nom. (“Becoming an actor in NYC”)

www.estherchae.com

 

Pirates and Ninjas

Thursday, November 6

Theater/Comedy

Conceived and Directed by Lissa Sherman in collaboration with the performers

Animation by Steven Wendt

Performed by Jessie Derks, Daniel Gallai, Aly Mawji, Qasim Naqvi, Lissa Sherman, Steven Wendt

Two apartments: one occupied by a wench-loving pirate drifting in an endless sea of debauchery, and the other by a silent and stealthy ninja grappling with a severe case of OCD.  Across the hall and worlds apart, they carry on blissfully unaware of one another…until fate brings them together.

www.piratesandninjas.com

 

The Spotlight With Sean Taylor

Friday, November 7

Comedy/Variety

Created by Sean Taylor Written by Tony Carnevale Directed by Shawn Amaro

Performed by Jess Allen, Shawn Amaro, Tony Carnevale, Tara Copeland, Paul W. Downs, Kevin Hines, Steve Horak, Terry Jinn, Jon Kern, Ernie Privetera, Robin Rothman, Matthew Shafeek, Sean Taylor

Letterman, O’Brien and Stewart watch out.  Spend a night in the faux studio audience during a “live taping” of The Spotlight, an improvised late-night television talk show featuring the comedic stylings of Sean Taylor, The Spotlight Band and special guests who have actually been on TV! 

The Spotlight with Sean Taylor was a recent guest at the Toronto Improv Festival.

www.thespotlightwithseantaylor.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Apple Turns to Cider

A Hip-Hop Musical

Saturday, November 8

Theater/Music

Written and Directed by Gustav Gauntlett

Performed by L. Chanes, Donald Cole, M.J. Donoghue, Nahdi Gibson, Jamil A.C. Mangan, Danielle Murat, TidalFriction, Chike Nwabukwu

Written entirely in rhyme and telling the story of an aspiring hip-hop artist and his journey through the history-rich hip-hop culture of New York City, Gustav Gauntlett’s bold, contemporary musical is performed by wildly gifted singers, actors, poets and hip-hop artists.

www.myspace.com/appletocider

 

The Rickety Stares

Sunday, November 9

Comedy/Music

Written and Performed by Alex Bechtel and Mat Burrow

Alex Bechtel and Mat Burrow combine their powers of wit and whimsy as The Rickety Stares, comedy-rock-balladeers who know no limits. With songs about the ever-funny Bubonic Plague and the womanizing John Stamos, these two lanky studs throw a party on stage that you won’t soon forget!

www.Myspace.com/thericketystares

 

Work

Monday, November 10

Theater/Comedy

Written by Bekah Brunstetter, Laura Jacqmin, Josh Koenigsberg, Harrison Rivers

Directed by James Dacre and Colette Robert

Always wondered what it’s like to be a part-time assistant chicken farmer?  A door-to-door lobster killer?  A saucier? At Play Productions presents five stories about some of the freakiest, bloodiest, most bizarre jobs in America. 

At Play Productions is a New York City based theater company composed of forty emerging writers, actors, directors and producers under the age of thirty brought together by fate (and Kevin Spacey), wholly committed to creating adventurous new work through ensemble collaboration.  At Play is the resident company of the 24 Hour Plays Off-Broadway, and all of its members are part of the New Voices Network New York, a branch of the Old Vic New Voices Network in London.

www.atplayproductions.com

 

Girls I’ve LIKE Liked

Thursday, November 13

Comedy/Variety

Written by Josh Halloway Directed by Kerry Whigham

Media by Ana Hurka-Robles

Performed by Josh Halloway and Phoebe Strole

Writer/Performer Josh Halloway shares some of his favorite unrequited love stories in this candid, auto-bio-fictional romp about the road to manhood and the women you meet along the way. A celebration of the hilarious, the humiliating, and the just plain stupid things we do for love. With special guest Phoebe Strole.

Josh Halloway is the writer/performer of 2007 NY Fringe Fest hit LOST: How A Certain TV Mega-Hunk Stole My Identity. He’s also a veteran of Movie Geek at Ars Nova.

www.josh-halloway.com

 

ITHACA

a rock’n'roll play by LPFunK

Friday, November 14

Music/Theater

Composed and Written by Lucas Papaelias Directed by Brian Mertes

Music Directed and Arranged by Ray Rizzo

Performed by Liadain Clancy, Patch Darragh, Kelly Halloran, Lucas Papaelias,

Ray Rizzo, Deborah Smith, Amelia Zirin-Brown

A rock n’ roll odyssey following three close friends intertwined in a decade-long love triangle, told through a dynamic sonic landscape of percussive, guitar-driven rock songs, harmony-layered pop hooks, and spaced-out psychedelic funk jams.  LPFunK & Ray Rizzo received a 2007 Drama Desk nomination for Best Original Music in a Play for Adam Rapp’s Essential Self-Defense (Playwrights Horizons/EDGE).  LPfunK composed and performed original music Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Kevin Kline & directed by David Leveaux on Broadway. 

www.lpfunkrocks.com

 

Dial ‘P’ for Pasties

Saturday, November 15

Variety/Comedy

Written and Performed by Trixie Little, The Evil Hate Monkey, Bradford Scobie, Dr. Lucky

with Kate Valentine

The original burlesque who-done-it that seamlessly integrates acrobatics, dance, striptease and shenanigans with “brilliant” acting and a paper-thin plot.  Join acrobatic burlesque superduo Trixie Little and The Evil Hate Monkey on their quest to crack the case of the stolen gold pasties. These hardboiled burlesque detectives leave no trick unturned and no tassel untwirled!

Trixie Little & The Evil Hate Monkey have been fighting, dancing, flipping and stripping for audiences since 2002. With highly skilled sexy-smart antics and a charming love-hate dynamic, Trixie and Monkey showcase trapeze, striptease, acrobatic dance, and physical comedy in jaw-dropping burlesque, cabaret, variety and theater shows.  This talented twosome are the winners of Las Vegas’ 2006 Exotic World Best Burlesque Duo trophy.

www.trixielittle.com

 

A Whole Lotta ISH

Sunday, November 16

Variety/Comedy/Opera/Alternative Classical

Written, Composed, and Directed by Derrick Wang

Performed by Ashley Bathgate (cello), Jenny Ferrar (clarinet),

 Derrick Wang (keyboard), Wei-Jen Yuan (piano)

Cellos.  Pool noodles.  And a heavy dose of whipped cream. A wild showcase of comic concert pieces by composer/lyricist/librettist Derrick Wang, written under the (artistic) influence of artery-clogging appetizers, inappropriate children’s rhymes, and ancient video games.

Wang was the recipient of a 2007 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the winner of the 2007-2008 American Modern Ensemble Composition Competition.

www.derrickwang.com/

 

Songs About Real Life

Monday, November 17

Music/Comedy

Written by Eric March and Jared Weiss

Performed by Eric March, Lauren Marcus, Jared Weiss

Upcoming musical theater writers Eric March and Jared Weiss present an evening of eclectic rock/pop/theater/comedy songs about what it’s really like to be Jared Weiss and Eric March. One part madness, three parts white boy angst and six parts questionable ideas about women.

www.myspace.com/desperatetimers

 

Camille! Young! Silly!

Thursday, November 20

Comedy/Music

Created and Performed by Camille Harris

An evening of jazzy songs and silly stories by Camille Harris. With topics ranging from a dislike of shopping to her unrequited love for the Muffin Man, this vibrant young dynamo is guaranteed to charm!

www.myspace.com/camillevictoriamusic

 

Outré Island

Friday, November 21

Comedy/ Theater/ Variety

Created and Performed by Christopher Rozzi

Musical Director Mark Dzula

Journey to Outré Island and experience firsthand its rich culture, ridiculous history and colorful citizens! The rousing sounds of the band The Magic Caravan round out this absurd comic mash-up of Monty Python, Prairie Home Companion and The Simpsons.

www.outreisland.com

 

The Worst of Us

The Impending Moustache

Saturday, November 22

Comedy

Performed by Katie Hartman, Daniel Kelley, Gabe Pacheco, Leah Rudick

Prepare for the worst. Time travel through tragedy with alternative comedy troupe The Impending Moustache as they reenact horrible moments in their own lives, combined with the horrifying characters of their own creation. Comedic conventions are awkwardly slaughtered as these four savage innocents smother babies and smile rainbows. 

Founded in 2006, The Impending Moustache has been featured in New York City at Caroline’s on Broadway, The Laugh Factory NYC, Comix, Rififi, Mo Pitkins, The PIT, and Galapagos Art Space.

www.impendingmoustache.com

 

The Eggmobile

Sunday, November 23

Theater/Music

Written by Ricardo Ortiz Musical Director Jesse Wallace

Performed by Ricardo Ortiz (vocals), Milton Ruiz (guitar), Jesse Wallace (drums)

A vagabond storyteller wanders through the streets of the city searching for clarity and comfort in this multicultural, semi-autobiographical journey set to rock, reggae, blues, funk and bossa nova.  Join innovative band Eggmobile for this boundary-defying rock opera.

 

Digital Love

Monday, November 24

Theater/Music

Created by Thompson Davis Directed by Aaron Gensler

Performed by Thompson Davis, Lucas Kavner, Willie Orbison, Sally Swallow

The new rock-band driven musical Digital Love follows a young temp as he doo-wops, discos, and rocks his way through the workday. Dedicated to all those creative souls tired of the digital love affair, waiting for the day when they can put a clenched fist through the monitor.

www.myspace.com/ilovethompson

WIN $500 CASH AND CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN AT THE AWESOME 80S PROM

WIN $500 CASH AND CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN AT

THE AWESOME 80S PROM

NOW IN ITS 5^th RAD YEAR

“SO TOTALLY RAD!  Like being the star of your very own John Hughes movie!”

- New York Times

 

What do Friday the 13th, Children of the Corn, and Nightmare on Elm Street all have in common?  They’re all ‘80s movies!  And now is your chance to celebrate those awesome ‘80s horror flicks with a special AWESOME 80S HALLOWEEN PROM on Saturday November 1^st at Webster Hall!

This special Prom will include an awesome COSTUME CONTEST with CASH prizes, a new ‘80s soundtrack with a Halloween theme, a “Thriller” of a performance by our special guest star, and more! DRESS UP AND WIN $$$, CONCERT TICKETS & MORE! 

Dress up like “Jason” or “Chucky” or anyone you’d like and you could win one of the following awesome prizes:

GRAND PRIZE

$500 CASH!!!

TWO Tickets to see NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK in concert at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in ATLANTIC CITY! And – An Awesome 80s Prom T-Shirt!

1st PRIZE

TWO Tickets to see NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK in concert at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in ATLANTIC CITY! And – An Awesome 80s Prom Tee-Shirt!

2nd PRIZE

Lunch for Two at Murphy & Gonzales Pub and Cocina! And – An Awesome 80s Prom T-Shirt!

And in the spirit of voting for Prom King & Queen, we’re going to let the audience decide the winners of the contest, too!! 

THE AWESOME 80S PROM is the award-winning new interactive experience in the style of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding and The Donkey Show set at the Wanaget High’s Senior Prom… in 1989! All your favorite characters from your favorite ’80s movies are at THE PROM, from the Captain of the Football Team to the Asian Exchange Student, from the Geek to the hottie Head Cheerleader, and they’re all competing for Prom King and Queen. And just like on “American Idol,” the audience decides who wins, all while moonwalkin’ to great retro hits like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go!”  Come “Back in Time,” to quote a Huey Lewis tune, and join the break-dance circle or just sit back and watch the ’80s drama unfold.

THE AWESOME 80S PROM was conceived and directed by Ken Davenport and written by Davenport and “The Class of 1989”, a group of performers including Sheila Berezan, Alex Back, Adam Bloom, Anne Bobby, Courtney Balan, Nicole Cicchella, Mary Faber, Stephen Guarino, Jeff Hiller, Emily McNamara, Troy Metcalf, Jenna Pace, Amanda Ryan Paige, Brian Peterson, Jessica West Regan, Kathy Searle, Mark Shunock, Josh Walden, Noah Weisberg, Brandon Williams, Simon Wong and Fletcher Young.

Davenport, “The PT Barnum of Off-Broadway” (NY Times), was recently named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” and is the only producer to have three shows running simultaneously Off-Broadway: in addition to Prom, he also has Altar Boyz (www.altarboyz.com) and My First Time (www.MyFirstTimeThePlay.com). Ken is also the Producer of the new Broadway musical 13 and the 20^th Anniversary revival of David Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow starring Jeremy Piven, and was recently featured in an iPhone commercial. Ken is currently developing a musical version of the film Somewhere in Time.

 

 

PRODUCTION DETAILS

THE AWESOME 80S PROM continues to perform Saturday evenings at Webster Hall (125 East 11^th Street), www.websterhall.com.  PROM at 8 PM; doors, dancing and Duran Duran from 7:30 PM.

Tickets from $49.99.   After THE PROM, party all night at Webster Hall for free with each paid admission.  For tickets call at 877- RAD-PROM or visit www.awesome80sprom.com.

For totally awesome group rates (bachelor/bachelorette parties, class reunions, or audio-visual clubs) call 877-RAD-PROM.

To learn more about THE AWESOME 80S PROM, visit the official website: http://www.awesome80sprom.com

 

PARACHUTE PANTS AND PROM DRESSES ARE STILL ENCOURAGED!

 

ALL-STAR CAST PERFORMS CONCERT VERSION OF JEREMY SCHONFELD’S DRIFT

ALL STAR CAST PERFORMS CONCERT VERSION OF DRIFT

BB King Blues Club & Grill – Monday, November 3rd ONLY!

 

Lauren Kennedy Directs a Cast Featuring Some of Broadway’s Best, Including Adam Pascal, Hunter Parrish, Jarrod Emick,

Julia Murney, Karla Mosley, Kris Coleman, and Terrence Mann

 

BB King Blue Club & Grill in New York City will be the site for an all-star benefit concert performance of DRIFT with music and lyrics by Jeremy Schonfeld.  Directed by Lauren Kennedy (Vanities), the event will star Adam Pascal (Rent), Hunter Parrish (Spring Awakening, TV’s “Weeds”), Jarrod Emick (Tony Award winner: Damn Yankees), Julia Murney (Wicked), Kris Coleman (Jersey Boys), Karla Mosley  (Expatriate) and Terrence Mann (two time Tony Award nominee: Beauty and the Beast, Les Miserables), and feature Scott Coulter and Michelle Kinney.

Produced by the PATH Fund, Inc. (“Rockers on Broadway”), the evening benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights and Atlanta’s Broadway Dreams Foundation will take place on Monday, November 3, 2008 at 8:00pm at BB King Blues Club & Grill, 237 West 42^nd Street. Tickets are $60, with standing room available at $30.

With a pulsing rock score from acclaimed composer Jeremy Schonfeld, DRIFT weaves raw and gracefully honest songs together to tell the story of one man’s divorce and reconciliation.  Originally released as a concept recording by Sh-K-Boom Records, a book musical version of DRIFT (with collaborator Craig Pospisil) premiered at the 2005 New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF), and was subsequently produced in an award-winning full-scale production as part of the 2006 Festival.

Hailed by The New York Times as a blend of Jonathan Larson and Billy Joel, Schonfeld’s singular blend of tuneful pop, hard-edged rock, gospel, soul and blues has made him one of today’s most sought after musical theater composers. 

 

DRIFT
Monday, November 3, 2008 at 8pm
BB King Blues Club & Grill – Stage 3.  237 W. 42^nd Street, New York, NY  10036
For Tickets: Visit Ticketmaster.com or call 212/307-7171
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT BBKINGSBLUES.COM

 

ADAM KANTOR REPLACES HUNTER PARRISH IN ALL-STAR CONCERT VERSION OF DRIFT

ADAM KANTOR REPLACES HUNTER PARRISH IN ALL-STAR CONCERT VERSION OF JEREMY SCHONFELD’S DRIFT

BB King Blues Club & Grill – Monday, November 3rd ONLY!

Kantor Joining Some of Broadway’s Best, Including Adam Pascal, Jarrod Emick, Julia Murney, Karla Mosley, Kris Coleman, and Terrence Mann; Lauren Kennedy Directs

Adam Kantor, who made his Broadway debut as the final Mark in Rent, will replace Hunter Parrish in the all-star benefit concert performance of DRIFT with music and lyrics by Jeremy Schonfeld.  Directed by Lauren Kennedy (Vanities), the event will also star Adam Pascal (Rent), Jarrod Emick (Tony Award winner: Damn Yankees), Julia Murney (Wicked), Kris Coleman (Jersey Boys), Karla Mosley  (Expatriate) and Terrence Mann (two time Tony Award nominee: Beauty and the Beast, Les Miserables), and feature Scott Coulter and Michelle Kinney.

Kantor, a Great Neck, Long Island native, was a recent Northwestern graduate when he made his Broadway bow this spring in Rent; at Northwestern, he played Posthumus in Cymbeline (directed by Mary Zimmerman) and Todd in In the Bubble (directed by Michael Greif). Mr. Parrish had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts with Spring Awakening, in which he appears.

Produced by the PATH Fund, Inc. (“Rockers on Broadway”), the evening benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Atlanta’s Broadway Dreams Foundation will take place on Monday, November 3, 2008 at 8:00pm at BB King Blues Club & Grill, 237 West 42nd Street. Tickets are $60, with standing room available at $30.

With a pulsing rock score from acclaimed composer Jeremy Schonfeld, DRIFT weaves raw and gracefully honest songs together to tell the story of one man’s divorce and reconciliation.  Originally released as a concept recording by Sh-K-Boom Records, a book musical version of DRIFT (with collaborator Craig Pospisil) premiered at the 2005 New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF), and was subsequently produced in an award-winning full-scale production as part of the 2006 Festival.

Hailed by The New York Times as a blend of Jonathan Larson and Billy Joel, Schonfeld’s singular blend of tuneful pop, hard-edged rock, gospel, soul and blues has made him one of today’s most sought after musical theater composers.  

The PATH Fund, Inc. (Performing Artists That Help) was formed as a result of the success of Rockers on Broadway and aims to give artists of all kinds an avenue to share their unique talents while helping raise money for charities that benefit the arts and entertainment communities that inspire their livelihood.

All proceeds will go to support Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Dreams Foundation.  Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS gives assistance nationwide to persons living with HIV/AIDS and Breast Cancer (www.broadwaycares.org). The Broadway Dreams Foundation’s mission is to brighten the future of young talent.  Through their programs, they bring young performers closer to their Broadway dreams, regardless of financial status.  BDF believes that dramatic arts, fun and education must work hand-in-hand to cultivate young minds.
  

Casting Announced for the World Premiere of Joseph Heller’s CATCH 22

Aquila Theatre Announces Completed Casting for the
 World Premiere of
Joseph Heller’s CATCH 22,
Adapted & Directed By Peter Meineck

AQUILA THEATRE (Peter Meineck, Artistic Director) is proud to announce the complete cast for the World Premiere of the stage adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, adapted and directed by Peter Meineck: joining the previously announced John Lavelle will be Mark Alhadeff (currently appearing in Bedroom Farce; prior to that, Power of Darkness at the Mint), David Bishins (whose numerous NY credits include A Mother, a Daughter and a Gun with Olympia Dukakis; Sympathetic Magic at Second Stage; Boys in the Band), Chip Brookes (making his Off-Broadway debut), Christina Pumariega (last seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Hartford Stage, directed by Lisa Peterson and All Eyes And Ears at INTAR, directed by Eduardo Machado), Craig Wroe (seen in Miss Evers’ Boys in the West End and Off Broadway at Barrow Street in An Oak Tree), and Richard Sheridan Willis (more than a dozen Aquila productions including Julius Caesar, The Tempest, The Importance of Being Earnest, Hamlet, The Man Who Would Be King, and others).

Performances begin November 14th, with opening night scheduled for November 23rd. This limited engagement continues through December 20th. All performances will be at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker & Hudson Streets). For tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200. For more information, visit www.aquilatheatre.com.
 .
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is a modern American classic. The term itself has entered the language as a description of a ridiculously cyclical situation. The book by Joseph Heller was first published in 1961 and immediately caused a huge furor in the literary world. In 1971, Heller himself created a play based on his best-selling novel. Since then, Catch-22 the play has not received a professional production. Aquila feels this is a work by one of America’s great creative geniuses, and it deserves to be seen. Yossarian is a bombardier on a B-25, based on a small island off the coast of Italy in 1944. He starts to question the futile and ridiculous administration of his air base and seeks a way to preserve his life when the whole world around him seems to be going mad. Like a modern-day Achilles, Yossarian protests with powerful and often hilarious results. Catch-22 tackles huge things with rich metaphors, boldly drawn characters and near-impossible situations. It is a work of great theatricality with superb language and a sense of dark surrealism. Heller dares to examine the very philosophy of war and what it does to the humans that fight them. For a whole new generation of Americans, Yossarian Lives!

Peter Meineck explains, “As modern day Milo Minderbinder’s play havoc with the stock market and contemporary Colonel Cathcart’s place the lives of our troops at risk for political gain, this is the right time for Catch-22 to be seen on stage. We are all greatly looking forward to seeing Yossarian live again.” Mr. Meineck has directed and/or produced over 40 productions in NY, London, Holland, Germany, Greece, Scotland, Canada, Bermuda, and the US in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the ancient Stadium at Delphi, Lincoln Center, and the White House. Peter has published several volumes of translations of Greek plays including Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which won the Lewis Galantiere Award for Literary Translation from the American Translators Association, Sophocles’ Theban Plays (with Paul Woodruff) and Philoctetes and Ajax and Aristophanes’ Clouds, Wasps & Birds. He has also written several literary adaptations for the stage including The Man Who Would Be King, Canterbury Tales, The Invisible Man, in addition to Catch-22. He also acts as a mythological advisor, most recently to Will Smith on I Am Legend.

The Aquila Theatre Company was founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck and has been based in New York City since 1999. Aquila’s mission is to bring the greatest theatrical works to the greatest number. Aquila presents a regular season of plays in New York, at international festivals, and tours to approximately seventy American towns and cities a year. Aquila also provides access to excellent theatre for people in under-served rural and inner city communities. The Aquila performance approach is a technique developed by Peter Meineck that combines text and physical action based in a theory of theatrical unity. The technique is aimed to create an aesthetic environment where the performer can create and recreate a role in a consistently changing theatrical atmosphere. Aquila Theatre broadens the classical cannon, collaborates across the performing arts, deepens a commitment to artistic excellence, teaches and exchanges idea and embraces new technology.

 

PLEASE NOTE: This production contains full frontal nudity. 

TISCH ANNOUNCES NEW ALUMNI INITIATIVE FOR EMERGING PLAYWRIGHTS

TISCH ANNOUNCES NEW ALUMNI INITIATIVE FOR EMERGING PLAYWRIGHTS
INAUGURAL YEAR TO KICK OFF WITH READING OF NEENA BEBER’S A WORLD BENEATH
AT THE CHERRY LANE THEATER

NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts alumna and Dean’s Council Member Elizabeth Hemmerdinger (MFA, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing) and Tisch East Alumni Council have created BEHIND THE SCENES @ TISCH, a new alumni initiative created to give a new generation of playwrights a forum to develop their work and connect to the community of professional theater artists.

Behind the Scenes @ Tisch will accept submissions of one-act plays annually, for review by a panel of industry professionals and Tisch alumni.  Under the leadership of renowned playwright and Tisch faculty member Eduardo Machado, this annual festival will offer staged readings, open to the public, of new plays.  

“Behind the Scenes is a way for NYU to continue to fulfill its commitment to the artistic life of its alumni,” Mr. Machado explained. Mr. Machado serves as Artistic Director of the Off-Broadway company INTAR and is also an acclaimed playwright (The Cook, Havana is Waiting, Kissing Fidel, Stevie Wants To Play The Blues, among many others) and author (Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger For Home).

The first public reading will be of Neena Beber’s play, A World Beneath, on November 10th (7PM) at the Cherry Lane Theater (28 Commerce Street).  Jessica Hecht (“Friends”) and Peter Frechette (The Miracle of St. Anna) will be among the cast.

Ms. Beber is a 1989 MFA graduate of the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at Tisch, whose plays include Jump/Cut, Hard Feelings, The Dew Point, A Common Vision, Tomorrowland, The Brief but Exemplary Life of the Living Goddess, Thirst, and Failure to Thrive. Her work has been done at theatres across the country, including Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre, Circle Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Women’s Project and Lincoln Center Director’s Lab in New York, as well as GeVa Theatre, South Coast Rep, and The Magic Theatre (San Francisco) among others.. In other writing projects, Ms. Beber’s children’s television writing has garnered Emmy and Ace Award nominations, including serving as Head Writer of “Clarissa Explains it All” (Nickelodeon) and “Little Bear” (Nick Jr.), which she adapted for television from the Maurice Sendak/Elsa Minarek book series; she also adapted Erica Jong’s feminist version of Rip Van Winkle for HBO’s Happily Ever After series.

Limited seating available.  For reservations, contact fbush@nyu.edu.

For more information about Behind the Scenes @ Tisch contact Richard Pierce at 212/998-6796 or by email, richard.pierce@nyu.edu.

TOP 8 – THE NEW “MYSPACE MUSICAL” To Have Industry Presentations

TOP 8 – THE NEW “MYSPACE MUSICAL” by Jordan Beck and Jonathan May
To Have Industry Presentations
At The Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row
October 27th & 28th

TOP 8, the new musical by Jordan Beck and Jonathan May which is currently optioned for production by Martian Entertainment (Naked Boys Singing!), will have two industry-only presentations on Monday October 27th and Tuesday October 28th at the Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row.

Featured in the presentations will be Michael Buchanan (Cry Baby), Dani Spieler (Legally Blonde), Rashidra Scott (Avenue Q), Henry Gainza (Four Guys Named Jose…and una mujer named Maria), Heather Corrigan (Junie B. Jones tour), Tiffany Ellen Solano, Jonathan Monk, and Dominick Bei.

In the new musical TOP 8 by Jordan Beck and Jonathan May, we journey with eight strangers searching for identity in the world of cyberspace.  Bloggers, flirts, playaz, Goth chicks and artists collide, in a universal story about the one thing we all seek in common: Acceptance.

TOP 8 can be heard and seen in its development process by joining MySpace and going to the profile: MySpace.com/Top8Musical  

The creators of TOP 8, Jordan Beck and Jonathan May, will also be offering a concert of their work entitled “DREAMER: The Songs of Beck & May” at The Duplex Cabaret Theatre on Nov. 2nd and 3rd @ 9:30pm. There is a $10.00 cover plus 2-drink minimum. Performers include members of the TOP 8 cast, as well as Andrew Call (Altar Boyz, Cry Baby, Glory Days), Brian Crum (Wicked, Grease), Katherine Tokarz (A Chorus Line, Wicked, and White Christmas), and Kelly Felthous (Off-Broadway’s Seussical). Check out www.theduplex.com to make reservations.

YORK HONORS GEORGE S. IRVING WITH OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN AWARD

THE YORK THEATRE COMPANY HONORS
 TONY AWARD-WINNER GEORGE S. IRVING WITH
 17TH OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN AWARD

 

The York Theatre Company (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director) will honor Tony® Award-winner George S. Irving with the 17th Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre Monday, December 8th.

The concert celebration of Irving’s career will be presented at The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park).  Prior to the 8:15 pm curtain will be a dinner at Japonais (111 East 18th Street), starting with a cocktail reception at 5:00 pm, featuring both live and silent auctions with dinner to follow.  After the performance, the evening will conclude at The Players Club with a champagne/ dessert reception and cast party for all attendees.  For more information, visit yorktheatre.org or call 212-935-5824 x 15.

During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Irving was waving a beer mug in the chorus of a touring production of The Student Prince at the National Theatre in Washington. After that close brush with history, he went on to his Broadway debut in the original company of Oklahoma! There followed a stint among the greatest generation, and when World War II closed he returned to the stage in Call Me Mister, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Tovarich, I Remember Mama, Me and Juliet, An Evening with Richard Nixon (Drama Desk Award), So Long, 174th Street, Irene  (Tony Award), On Your Toes and Me and My Girl, among others. At the New York City Opera, he sang in Regina, Street Scene, The Ballad of Baby Doe and a German production of The Threepenny Opera. At Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Theatre, he played in a two-person revue, Together at Last, with his late wife, Maria Karnilova, and a one-man show, An Evening with W.S. Gilbert.  George is currently reprising his role as Harrison Marlowe in York Theatre’s production of Enter Laughing: The Musical, closing Sunday, October 26th.

The Oscar Hammerstein Award is named in honor of the legendary lyricist who helped shape the American musical theatre through his collaborations with a number of different composers and writers.   The Oscar Hammerstein Award Gala is the major fundraising event of The York Theatre Company, and is presented with the endorsement of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and the Hammerstein Family.  Past recipients include Stephen Sondheim, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Harold Prince, Cy Coleman, Charles Strouse, Arthur Laurents, Jerry Herman, Stephen Schwartz, Peter Stone, David Merrick, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Terrence McNally, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Carol Channing, Tony Walton and Joseph Stein.  The award will be presented by Alice Hammerstein Mathias.  Anita Jaffe serves as the Honorary Chairperson of the event.

Scheduled to Appear: Joy Abbott (co-author of upcoming biography of her late husband George Abbott), Loni Ackerman (Cats, Evita and original Broadway cast of So Long, 174th Street, the first Enter Laughing musical), Jim Dale (Barnum, narrator on “Pushing Daisies” and the voice on the award-winning audio book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Golden Globe winner Jill Eikenberry (for “LA Law,” 5-time Emmy nominee; currently appearing in York Theatre’s Enter Laughing), Tony® nominee Anita Gillette (Theatre World winner and multiple TV and film credits from “Quincy M.E.” to “30 Rock”), Josh Grisetti (“Knights of Prosperity” and York’s Enter Laughing), TV’s Michael Tucker (170+ episodes of “LA Law” – where he played the husband of real-life wife Jill Eikenberry), MGM star Jane Powell (Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, recently seen in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce), Tony® nominee Charlotte Rae (TV’s “Facts of Life” and “Different Strokes”), Tony®, Drama Desk and Theatre World Award winner Michael Rupert (Falsettos, Legally Blonde) and Tony®  winner Maryann Plunkett (currently on Broadway in A Man for All Seasons).  The presentation will be directed by York favorite and Tony® Award winning choreographer Donald Saddler.

The York Theatre Company is the only theatre in New York City—and one of very few in the world— dedicated to developing and fully producing new musicals and preserving neglected, notable shows from the past.  For over three decades, the York’s intimate, imaginative style of producing both new and classic musicals has resulted in critical acclaim, multiple awards, and acclamation from artists and audiences alike.  In 2006, a special Drama Desk Award was presented to the York for its “vital contributions to theater by developing and presenting new musicals.”

For tickets to the event, visit www.yorktheatre.org or call 212-935-5824, ext. 15

DETAILS

Star-studded gala honoring George S. Irving with The Oscar Hammerstein Award, presented by The York Theatre

Monday, December 8th

Dinner at Japonais (111 E. 18th St.); cocktail hour and dinner starting at 5:00 pm

Presentation & Performance at The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park), 8:15 pm curtain

For Tickets:  Call Shahna at the York Theatre:  212/935-5824, ext. 15

PLATINUM LEVEL:
$10,000 (10 tickets to dinner and concert)
Premium seating for 10 at Gala Dinner/Live Auction and Concert;
Cast Party/Dessert Reception following the Concert;
Listing in Commemorative Journal;
Full-page Journal ad;
Four tickets to Opening Night Performance/Party for a York Mainstage production.

GOLD:
$6,000 (includes 10 tickets to dinner and concert)
Premium table seating for 10 at Gala Dinner/Live Auction and Concert;
Cast Party/Dessert Reception following the Concert;
Listing in Commemorative Journal;
Half-page Journal ad;
Two tickets to Opening Night Performance/Party for a York Mainstage production.
 
SILVER
$1,000 (1 ticket to dinner and concert)
Premium seating at Gala Dinner/Live Auction and Concert;
Cast Party/Dessert Reception following the Concert;
Quarter-page Journal ad.
 
BRONZE
$425 (1 ticket to dinner and concert)
Gala Dinner/Live Auction and preferred seating for Concert;
Cast Party/Dessert Reception following the Concert;
Listing in Journal.
 
SUPPORTER
$175 (1 ticket to concert only)
Gala Concert;
Cast Party/Dessert Reception following the Concert

 

WHO WILL BE YOUR ‘FIRST’ – McCain or Obama?

MY FIRST TIME OFFERS FREE TICKETS TO ANY ‘FIRST TIME’ VOTERS

 

“Provocative, amusing and moving!” – NY Post

“A diverting evening of first-time tales that is by turns comical, erotic, sentimental, galling, heart-rendering, and even mildly political.” – Toronto Globe & Mail

“80 minutes of titillation!  The theatrical equivalent of a date-movie!” – Newsday

 “Funny and touching to sweet, sexy and silly!” –Village Voice

 

MY FIRST TIME (www.MyFirstTimeThePlay.com), the Off-Broadway play featuring true stories about first sexual experiences, will offer anyone voting on November 4^th for the first time a free ticket to the show on Friday November 7^th.  The most talked about new show in New York, featured on CNN, “The Tonight Show” and in an iPhone commercial, will give you a complimentary ticket, upon presentation of a newly issued Voter Registration card.

Producer/creator, Ken Davenport explains, “Voting for the first time, like having sex for the first time, is a very important milestone in every human being’s life.  Both events should be done with proper forethought and discussion and, of course, safety.  The last thing you want to do is wake up the next morning and say, “Oh my God, what did I do last night?   We hope that by offering free tickets to My First Time, those people who haven’t “done it” before will get out there this election and exercise their right.  In fact, voting, like sex, is something that’s even better with a partner!  So don’t do it alone.  Grab a friend, talk about it, and get out there and do it!”

MY FIRST TIME is a new Off-Broadway play featuring four actors in hysterical and heartbreaking stories about first sexual experiences written by real people . . . just like you.  In 1998, a website was created that allowed people to share their own stories about their First Times.  The website became an instant phenomenon as over 40,000 true stories poured in from around the globe that were silly, sweet, absurd, funny, heterosexual, homosexual, shy, sexy and everything in between.  And now, in the first-ever example of Theater 2.0, these stories and all of the unique characters in them are brought to life in MY FIRST TIME, which critics have called:  “Screamingly Funny!” “80 minutes of titillation,” and “Terrific for date night!” 

Performances are Friday evenings at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, New York City, New York) at 10 PM.  For tickets, visit Telecharge.com or call (212) 239-6200.   For more information call 1-888-MY-1-TIME or visit www.MyFirstTimeThePlay.com.

Recently hailed as the “P.T. Barnum of Off-Broadway” by The New York Times, featured on a national commercial for the iPhone, and named one of Crain’s ‘Forty Under 40,’ KEN DAVENPORT is the only independent producer to have three shows running simultaneously Off-Broadway:  Altar Boyz, The Awesome 80s Prom and My First Time.  On Broadway, he is producing 13 the new musical and Speed the Plow starring Jeremy Piven, Raul Esparza and Elizabeth Moss. He is currently adapting the novel and film Somewhere in Time into a Broadway musical as well as filming a documentary on one of the top unsigned rock bands in the country, Red Wanting Blue.  Ken runs a number of theatrical websites including the new social networking site, www.BroadwaySpace.com and www.BestOfOffBroadway.com.  For more information, visit www.DavenportTheatrical.com or Ken’s blog at www.TheProducersPerspective.com.  

NYC’s Largest Election Night Viewing Party at New World Stages

DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Hosts New York City’s Largest Election Night Viewing Party at New World Stages

 

Bloggers Are Invited To Blog Live On-Site

 

 

Join Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century for their Election Night Bash! DL21C will host New York City’s biggest Election Day party celebrating our local and national elections at the New World Stages (340 West 50^th Street, between 8^th and 9^th Avenues) on Tuesday, November 4^th (doors open when the first polls close – at 6pm).  The election bash will take over the 60,000 square foot complex with huge projection televisions, DJ, dance floor, elected officials, a special performance and more!  Members get in free and entrance for non-members is only $5 at the door.

Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century is an independent organization of young, progressive New Yorkers. Since 1993, DL21C has been dedicated to increasing the political awareness and participation of a new generation of New Yorkers. DL21C is the premier political group for young people in New York and serves as a model for grassroots organizing nationwide. For more information  and to RSVP, please visit www.dl21c.org.

DL21C’s ELECTION NIGHT BASH!

An Evening to Celebrate Democrats from across the City, State, and Nation!

Live from New World Stages, featuring 60,000 square feet of PARTY:

Ø                 Watch the returns from 3 15-ft projection TVs with dozens of plasma screen throughout the space

Ø                 Three top-shelf bars (including the Time Out New York Lounge, a “bar within the bar”)

Ø                 Drink specials and light food/snacks from leading NY restaurants

Ø                 Dozens of local, state, and national elected officials TBD plus local and national media coverage

Ø                 Entertainers from film, theater, TV, and sports TBD

Ø                 a theater within the venue, where you can watch the returns in a “quiet room” with full sound

Returns broadcast all night for Presidential race as well as key Democratic races around the country for Governor, U.S. Senate and the House!  It’s going to be a night to remember…and an exciting finale to weeks and years of your hard work – canvassing, knocking on doors, and getting out the vote for the Obama/Biden team and all the local and state candidates here in New York!

All of New World Stages is Wi-Fi accessible and a VIP area will be designated for those who wish to Blog live from New World Stages.

York Announces Return of ENTER LAUGHING

THE YORK THEATRE COMPANY
ANNOUNCES THE RETURN ENGAGEMENT OF  THE ACCLAIMED OFF-BROADWAY PREMIERE OF

Flat-out Hilarious! Smashing! Wittily staged! Had the audience howling!
-New York Times

****(FOUR STARS!) The funniest tuner to hit town since The Producers!

 

 - New York Post

A laugh-out-loud funny score by Stan Daniels–This production has winner written all over it!  
-TheaterMania

Sporting a sweet, funny story and a cheerful earful of tunes, Enter Laughing: The Musical offers lots of light-hearted entertainment.
-Star Ledger

It’s a charmer, cleverly staged and choreographed by Stuart Ross (Forever Plaid) and acted by the best cast in town!
-Wall Street Journal

A genuinely funny, sunny show! Stein’s book cannot be faulted. It is not only solid scene by scene; it also knows how to build to increasing fun, with the final play-within-a-play scene an absolute riot, immaculately staged by Stuart Ross.
-John Simon, Bloomberg

An Honest-to-God Musical Comedy!
–New York Magazine

The YORK THEATRE COMPANY (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director) is proud to announce that its acclaimed production of ENTER LAUGHING: THE MUSICAL will return for a limited seven-week engagement to accommodate the demand. Performances will begin January 21st, and continue until March 8th; all performances will be at the company’s home at The Theatre at Saint Peter’s (54th Street just East of Lexington). My Vaudeville Man! the new musical runs there through January 4th. Tickets for both shows are on sale now!

ENTER LAUGHING has a book by Fiddler on The Roof’s Joseph Stein and music and lyrics by “Taxi” creator Stan Daniels. Based on the early life of comedian Carl Reiner and the hit play by Broadway master Joseph Stein, ENTER LAUGHING tells the hilarious story of a stage-struck, woman-struck teenager who blunders his way into manhood via showbiz. Stuart Ross (Forever Plaid) and Matt Castle return as Director and Music Director, respectively.  Casting will be announced soon.  

Producing Artistic Director, James Morgan, says, “We are delighted to bring ENTER LAUGHING: THE MUSICAL back to our stage. No show in York’s 40-year history has had such a phenomenal reception from audiences and critics alike.  It’s particularly exciting that this return engagement allows us to continue polishing this hilarious gem.  I know I speak for many when I say, ‘I can’t wait to see it again!’”
 
The York Theatre Company (winner of a special Drama Desk Award for developing and producing new musical theatre) is the only theater in New York City­and one of very few in the world­dedicated to developing and fully producing new musicals, as well as preserving gems from the past.  For more than three decades, York’s intimate, imaginative style of producing both original and rarely seen classic musicals has resulted in critical acclaim and recognition from artists and audiences alike.  Under the guidance of Artistic Director James Morgan since 1997, the York has focused exclusively on new musicals in its Mainstage Series–most of them world, American, or New York premieres­by some of the field’s most esteemed creators, and has also helped launch the careers of many talented new writers. Over 30 cast recordings from York Theatre Company productions are now available on CD, and commercial transfers of such York productions as The Musical of Musicals –The Musical!, Souvenir, Captain Louie, Jolson & Company, and acclaimed revivals of Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures have all showcased the importance of the York and its programs. York’s Musicals in Mufti Series, which offers rarely seen works from the past, has presented more shows than any other musical theatre concert series in the world, and is the first series to present works from on Broadway and Off-, as well as from London’s West End. The York’s Developmental Reading Series, which presents over 40 free readings of new musicals every year, was the incubator for the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Avenue Q, among many other significant shows.

For ticket information visit www.yorktheatre.org or call 212/935-5820.

THE YORK THEATRE COMPANY in Saint Peter’s Theatre,
Lexington Avenue, just South of 54th Street
E, V train to Lexington Avenue or 6 train to 51st Street

For more information, check out www.yorktheatre.org

 

 

VOTE NO ON PROP 8

Here’s the best example I’ve come across to fight PROP 8 in California. I hope my readers there will get out and vote today.

 

more about “Vodpod Firefox Extension for WordPress“, posted with vodp

“Prop 8 – The Musical” starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more…

more about ““Prop 8 – The Musical” starring Jack …“, posted with vodpod

ANTIGONE IN HARLEM

A Bold New Outreach Program Between Aquila Theatre &

Frederick Douglass Academy

Students Perform in a Professional Production of Scenes from Sophocles’ Antigone  

 Wednesday December 10^th At 7PM

 

Antigone in Harlem is an innovative and rigorous program in which students learn the history, culture and politics of ancient Greece. The vitally important art form of Greek Tragedy is not taught in most NYC schools and Sophocles’ Antigone is an excellent text to engage and challenge young minds.

Aquila Theatre and Frederick Douglass Academy (2581 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard) are delighted to present Sophocles’ Antigone, at Frederick Douglass Academy.

Participation in Aquila’s Antigone in Schools program enables Frederick Douglass Academy to greatly expand their theatre course offerings, to involve as many students as possible in a theatrical endeavor, and allows students to benefit from sharing in the experience of Aquila’s working theatre professionals.

The performance is the capstone event of the Aquila Theatre’s Antigone in Harlem program at Frederick Douglass Academy. Since September of this year, teaching artists from Aquila have been working intensively with FDA students three days a week after-school on reading and understanding ancient Greece through English class visits, liaising with faculty, and generating a new enthusiasm for Greek Tragedy at Frederick Douglass Academy. This new program has been made possible by generous support from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

Aquila Theatre’s mission is to bring the greatest theatrical works to the greatest number. Aquila provides access to excellent theatre to people in many areas where there is little or no professional theatre and to under-served rural and inner city communities and presents a regular season of plays in New York and at international festivals and tours to around seventy American towns and cities a year.

“Aquila’s productions of Shakespeare are dramatically revealing, beautifully spoken and crystalline in effect.”  – The New Yorker

“Powerful, ensemble productions.”  – The New York Times

Frederick Douglass Academy is a public Middle/High School in Harlem under the leadership of Gregory M. Hodge, Ph.D.  Founded in 1991, the goal of Frederick Douglass Academy is to provide a rich, vigorous and challenging academic curriculum that will prepare students to enter the college of their choice.  College preparation begins in 6^th grade; New York State Regents classes start in 7^th grade; with many students completing required course work by the end of the 11^th grade.  Students then take Advanced Placement Courses and, in some cases, introductory college courses at Hunter and City colleges.  Eighty percent of the accepted students must reside in the Harlem community and twenty percent come from outside of District Five.  Emphasis is placed on one’s intellect and not on one’s appearance.  All students are expected to graduate from high school and attend college.

Scenes from Sophocles’ Antigone, will play on Wednesday, December 10^th 2008 at 7pm at Frederick Douglass Academy, 2581 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (149th Street and 7th Avenue). For more information and reservations, please call (212) 491-4419 or email: IRosado3@schools.nyc.gov.

 

For more information, visit www.aquilatheatre.com

PLAYLIST SONG-INSPIRED SHORT PLAYS FROM ARS NOVA’S PLAY GROUP

ARS NOVA

PRESENTS

PLAYLIST

SONG-INSPIRED SHORT PLAYS FROM ARS NOVA’S PLAY GROUP

January 22^nd - 25^th All Tickets Only $15! – On Sale Now!

Ars Nova (Jason Eagan, Artistic Director; Jon Steingart & Jenny Wiener Steingart, Executive Producers) will present Playlist for five performances only January 22^nd – 25^th. All tickets are only $15 and can be purchased at www.arsnovanyc.com.

Ars Nova’s Play Group puts the theater on party shuffle with song-inspired short plays that’ll be stuck in your head for weeks. New York’s hottest emerging playwrights join forces with a killer live band to shatter your memories of lame junior high mixes!  Featuring plays by Annie Baker, Bekah Brunstetter, Evan Cabnet, Dylan Dawson, Liz Flahive, Sam Forman, Nick Jones, Steven Levenson, Barry Levey, Carly Mensch, Rachel Shukert, Mat Smart, Adam Szymkowicz and Samuel Brett Williams. The plays will be directed by Evan Cabnet, Sam Gold, Shira Milikowsky, Meredith McDonough, and Kerry Whigham.  Casting and band will be announced at a later date.

Play Group is a vibrant and eclectic group of emerging writers who gather twice a month at Ars Nova to share new work and get peer feedback. The group offers members the chance to develop their plays with peer support; to be inspired by each other’s work; to form collaborative relationships; and to build a strong sense of community within Ars Nova.

Axel F by Liz Flahive

Looking for Astronauts by Steven Levenson

Sam Hall by Samuel Brett Williams

Where is My Mind? by Mat Smart

Simple Man by Sam Forman

Crank That by Bekah Brunstetter

Mother Nature’s Son by Dylan Dawson

All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You by Rachel Shukert

Song for Myla Goldberg by Carly Mensch

Downeaster Alexa by Barry Levey

No Children  by Adam Szymkowicz

Steppin’ Out by Evan Cabnet

Different Drum by Annie Baker

Still, Still, Still by Nick Jones

 

Five performances only!

Thursday, January 22, 8pm, Friday, January 23, 8pm

Saturday, January 24, 2pm and 8pm, Sunday, January 25, 8pm

 

All tickets are only $15 and can be purchased at www.arsnovanyc.com

As New York’s premiere hub for emerging artists and new work, Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing eclectic theatre, comedy and music to feed today’s popular culture.  To that end, Ars Nova strives to create daring collaborations, meld disciplines and give voice to a new generation of artists.  This season Ars Nova developed and produced critically acclaimed productions of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom, Liz Flahive’s From Up Here (in a co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club), and Nick Jones and Raja Azar’s Jollyship the Whiz-Bang.  Past productions include Dixie’s Tupperware Party, At Least It’s Pink, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, Holy Cross Sucks!, Freestyle Love Supreme and The Wau Wau Sisters. In addition to its featured productions, Ars Nova supports and develops new work from the most promising emerging artists through its alternative comedy series (Tragedy Tomorrow), music series (Uncharted), public play-reading series (Out Loud), writer’s group (Play Group) and artist-in-residence program.  Ars Nova was founded in memory of Gabe Wiener.

Ars Nova is located at 511 West 54th Street. Box Office opens 30 minutes prior to performance. For more information, visit www.arsnovanyc.com.

Playwrights

Annie Baker‘s plays have been produced and developed at Soho Rep, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, the Atlantic, EST, Ars Nova, and the Sundance Institute. Annie was a member of EST’s Youngblood and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, is currently a member of MCC Playwrights’ Coalition and a Time Warner Storytelling Fellow.

Bekah Brunstetter hails from North Carolina and has an MFA in Playwriting from the New School for Drama. Most recently, her play Oohrah! was read in the Out Loud series, directed by Leigh Silverman. Other credits include: To Ninevah,Green, Le Fou, and You May Go Now (2008 NY Innovative Theater Award: Best New Full Length Play).

Evan Cabnet’s (writer/director) directing credits include: Adam Rapp’s Tone Unknown, Mark Schultz’s Fun, and Liz Meriwether’s 90 Days (stageFARM’s SPIN/Cherry Lane), Brooke Berman’s Wonderland (Juilliard), Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! (Long Wharf) and The Mistakes Madeline Made (Naked Angels). Other NYC: LCT, Public, Roundabout, Rattlestick, MCC, Soho Rep. Recipient of the 2003 Boris Sagal and 2002 Bill Foeller Fellowships for Directing, and the 2008 Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists. Founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group.

Dylan Dawson’s most recent play, Movie Geek, has been produced in New York (Ars Nova, FringeNYC – Award Winner, The Culture Project (produced by Bill Cosby), L.A. (The Complex) and Maine (The Penobscot Theater).

Liz Flahive’s From Up Here (winner: John Gassner Award for Playwriting), was recently produced by MTC in association with Ars Nova.  A Tisch graduate, Liz’s plays have been developed at Williamstown, Naked Angels, and Ars Nova. Liz also volunteers with the 52nd Street Project and is currently writing for Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. 

Sam Forman co-wrote (with composer Eli Bolin) the musical I Sing!  Other plays include: The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall (dir. Sam Gold) The Grille Room (dir. Thomas Kail), Quarterlife (workshop dir. by Mark Brokaw) Please Stop Talking, Fringical! (NYMF, dir. Thomas Kail), The Quiet Game (dir. Daniel Kramer).

Nick Jones is perhaps best known for last summer’s pyrate puppet rock odyssey, Jollyship the Whiz-Bang (Ars Nova).  Other works produced include: Little Building, Rockberry, and Straight Up Vampire.  Upcoming: The Nosemaker’s Apprentice, with Rachel Shukert, at the Brick. 

Steven Levenson‘s plays include The Language of Trees (Roundabout Underground), Almost Stuck, and Girls Day, and they have been developed at Ars Nova, E.S.T., New York Stage & Film, New Dramatists, and Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre. A Brown University graduate, he’s currently working on commissions for Roundabout and Lincoln Center.

Barry Levey‘s plays include Critical Darling (developed at Arena, Rattlestick and Williamstown and produced at The New Group) and All the Way From China (developed at Ars Nova and The New Group, produced by Fourth Wall, Cleveland). MFA, UCSD.

Carly Mensch’s plays include Len, Asleep in Vinyl (Second Stage Uptown) and All Hail Hurricane Gordo (2008 Humana Festival of New Plays, co-produced by The Cleveland Playhouse).  She’s got some commissions and other stuff going on. Carly is a graduate of the Juilliard School and is Ars Nova’s 2008 Playwright-in-Residence.

Rachel Shukert’s plays include The Worshipped, Johnny Applefucker, and Bloody Mary. She has been produced and developed at Ars Nova, the Public, and Galapagos, among others. Upcoming: two collaborations with Nick Jones, and Wasp Cove at the Zipper.  She’s also the author of Have You No Shame? (Villard 2008) and an Omaha native.

Mat Smart’s plays include The 13^th of Paris (Pittsburgh’s City Theatre) and The Hopper Collection (Huntington Theatre Company, Magic Theatre and published by Broadway Play Publishing).  He has been commissioned by South Coast Rep, Huntington, City Theatre and Magic Theatre.  He is co-founder of Slant Theatre Project.  MFA: UCSD. 

Adam Szymkowicz studied playwriting at Columbia and Juilliard. Several of his plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service.  Szymkowicz is a two-time Lecomte du Nouy Prize winner, a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwright’s Coalition and Ars Nova Play Group. For more, go to www.adamszymkowicz.com.

Samuel Brett Williams’ plays have been developed at the O’Neill, Kennedy Center, P73, and the Lark and produced at Cherry Lane Theatre, N.O.T.E., and the DC Arts Center. Brett recently received the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award and a National New Play Network New Play Commission.

Directors

Evan Cabnet: (writer/director) Directing credits include: Adam Rapp’s Tone Unknown, Mark Schultz’s Fun, and Liz Meriwether’s 90 Days (stageFARM’s SPIN/ Cherry Lane), Brooke Berman’s Wonderland (Juilliard), Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! (Long Wharf Theater),The Mistakes Madeline Made (Naked Angels). Other NYC: LCT, Public, Roundabout, Rattlestick, MCC, Soho Rep., etc. Recipient of the 2003 Boris Sagal and 2002 Bill Foeller Fellowships for Directing, and the 2008 Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists. Founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group.

Sam Gold At Ars Nova: Nick Jones and Raja Azar’s Jollyship the Whiz-bang. Other recent credits: Sam Forman’s The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall (Stage 13), Noah Haidle’s Rag and Bone (Rattlestick), Betty Shamieh’s The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop), Sam Mark’s The Joke (Studio Dante), Beau Willimon’s Farragut North and War Story and Sam Hunter’s I Am Montana (Juilliard). 

Shira Milikowsky has spent the past year as the 2008 director-in-residence at Ars Nova. Favorite projects have included: Corey Tut: Everything… ‘Til Now, Jeffery Self’s People I Slept With Who Never Called Me Back, and last year’s Play Group’s project, The Wikipedia Plays. Drama League Directing Fellow, Columbia MFA.

Meredith McDonough Meredith McDonough is the Associate Artistic Director of The Orchard Project and The Exchange, and is an Associate Artist at Delaware Theatre Company, where she is heading next to direct Copenhagen.  NY premieres with Ars Nova, Keen Company, Women’s Project, Slant Theatre, New Georges and the Drama League.  MFA – UCSD.

Kerry Whigham recently directed Nobody Likes the Mormons  and Josh Halloway’s Girls I’ve LIKE Liked at Ars Nova’s A.N.T. FEST.  Other recent projects include premieres of punkplay by Gregory Moss, Neighborhood 3:  Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley, and The Revolution Will Be Televised, also by Josh Halloway.  www.kerrywhigham.com.

Dan Guerrero Brings His Acclaimed Solo Show To The Zipper Factory Theatre For Its NY Debut

¡GAYTINO!
Dan Guerrero Brings His Acclaimed Solo Show To The Zipper Factory Theatre For Its NY Debut

January 10th and 11th Only!!

¡GAYTINO!, written and performed by Dan Guerrero, will have its Off-Broadway premiere at the Zipper Factory Theater for two nights only: Saturday, January 10th (8pm) and Sunday, January 11th (7pm).  Diane Rodriguez directs what the Washington Post called “a disarming twist on the triumph-of-the-human-spirit theme.” Tickets can be purchased at www.thezipperfactory.com or at the box office 1 hour before each performance. For more information, visit http://www.gaytino.com.

¡GAYTINO! was originally produced by the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, where it premiered in 2006. Since then, it has toured to more than a dozen cities around the country, including Santa Fe where his performance was introduced by Governor Bill Richardson. Mark Sendroff, Carl D. White and David Gersten present this NYC debut.

From Mariachi to Merman. Sondheim to César Chávez: this remarkable life journey takes you from East LA in the 1950s to New York’s Great White Way in the ’60s & ’70s, and back to Hollywood. A father/son relationship and a treasured boyhood friendship drive this 75-minute, autobiographical solo play with music. through decades of Chicano history and the gay experience from a unique and personal perspective. Touching, hilarious and absolutely one-of-a-kind, Dan Guerrero brings his two disparate worlds together in one riveting show.

Originally from East LA, Guerrero moved to NYC at age twenty to perform in musicals, working Off-Broadway, in regional theater, summer stock, and countless cabaret revues including one that took him to the Nixon White House.  He later became a successful Broadway talent agent representing Tony winners and future Hollywood stars including an eleven-year old Sarah Jessica Parker. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Guerrero became a ‘born-again Hispanic’ fiercely working for more positive Latino images on the screen as a casting director, writer and, for the past fifteen years, as a producer and director. Hispanic Magazine recognized him as “one of the 25 most powerful Latinos in Hollywood.”

Guerrero has received acclaim as an innovative producer of Latino-themed programming in both English and Spanish for network and cable television. He has also produced and staged major live concert and award shows at many prestigious venues, including conceiving and directing the 100th birthday celebration of the late Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda at the Kennedy Center, where ¡GAYTINO! also played this summer.

An award-winning documentary film he produced and wrote about his late father, Lalo Guerrero The Original Chicano, has been airing nationally on PBS stations. The elder Guerrero was widely recognized as the Father of Chicano Music and a National Medal of Arts recipient among other honors.
Diane Rodriguez (director) is a nationally recognized Obie-winning actor, writer, and director. She is currently Associate Producer/Director of New Play Production at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.. She won an Obie for Performance in 2007 for playing multiply characters in Heather Woodbury’s Tale of Two Cities.   She received the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Award for directing in 1998 and was nominated for the TCG Alan Schneider Director Award by David Emmes/Artistic Director of South Coast Repertory for her work on Octavio Solis’ Posada Majica. She has developed and directed the works of numerous writers including Nilo Cruz’s Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams and Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation at Sundance Theatre Lab, Oliver Mayer, Annie Weisman Macomber, Jessica Goldberg, Lloyd Suh at Ojai New Play Festival, Cherrie Moraga, Dan Guerrero, Eric Loo, Kirsten Greenridge, Julia Cho, Polly Penn and numerous others.

 

WHAT THE CRITICS HAVE SAID ABOUT ¡GAYTINO! FROM COAST TO COAST:

 
“A Disarming Twist On The Triumph-Of-The-Human-Spirit Theme”

The Washington Post


 
“A Lovable Wit…. A Delightful Emcee Of His Own Journey”   

Los Angeles Times 


 
“Story Telling And Comic Timing Superb…. Explodes With A Playful Performance…. A Boundless Force Of Nature”

Orange County Register


 
“A Man Who Will Move You…. Very Funny… Viva The Fabulous Guerrero”

Los Angeles Daily News


 
“Wit, Timing, And Vividness As A Storyteller”

The Portland Oregonian


 
“Blessed With Charm, Stature”

L.A. Weekly


 
“Fun…Highly Energetic Presence…Charming”

Variety


 
“A Riveting Piece Of Social And Political History.”

G&L Times, San Diego 


 
“Keeps Audiences Hooked Throughout The Fast-Paced Show.”
In Magazine


 
“Captivating…An Exceptional Look At An Exceptional Life.”
Maestro Arts And Reviews Online


Altar Boyz Responds to the Economic Uncertainty with “Pay What You Can” Night

Altar Boyz Responds to the Economic Uncertainty with “Pay What You Can” Night
Wednesday, January 21st!
Ken Davenport and Robyn Goodman are proud to announce that Altar Boyz (www.altarboyz.com), the acclaimed musical comedy about to begin its 5th year at New World Stages, will make tickets available to anyone regardless of the amount they can pay. For the Wednesday, January 21st (8 PM performance), tickets will be available on a first-come/first-served basis, for whatever you feel you can afford. (“Pay What You Can” tickets will go on sale at 7PM for that evening’s performance*).

“These are tough times, everyone knows that.  So many people are worrying about money.  But these are exactly the times when people need to get out of their homes, get together with friends and family and laugh their you-know-whats off. All of us at Altar Boyz wanted everyone to have that chance without having to worry about money,” said producer Ken Davenport.

Altar Boyz, the acclaimed musical comedy, winner of the 2005 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Off-Broadway, is the longest running new musical comedy to open in New York in years! Full of sharp parody, sinfully spectacular dancing, and irreverent humor, this spoof about a heavenly guy-group is adored by audiences and critics alike.  With an extraordinary mix of side-splitting songs “convincing enough to be played on MTV,” uncontrollable laughs and lighthearted fun, this award-winning and totally original new musical is “90 minutes of pure delight” that’s suitable for all ages and will have “the whole family laughing and singing along.”  Altar Boyz is in the midst of its Second National Tour. Altar Boyz enjoyed its Asian premiere in Seoul, South Korea, its Australian premiere in Sydney, and its European premiere in Budapest. Productions will be opening shortly in Tokyo and the Philippines.

Critics have spreading the word coast to coast: “Sly and funny subversion, terrific voices, soothing harmonies, and deliciously funny numbers. It sends you home with a smile! Made up of five potential Teen People cover boys.” (Charles Isherwood, The New York Times); “Thank Heaven for Altar Boyz! It keeps you laughing all evening long. If laughter is a form of salvation, my soul is clean!” (Howard Kissel, Daily News);  “Hilarious! This sweet and sassy, witty and completely unpretentious show sends everybody out on a cloud of mirth – and we mean everybody!” (Jacques Le Sourd, Journal News); “Ninety minutes of heavenly hilarity!” (Boston Globe); “You’ll laugh your socks off!” (Chicago Tribune); “Hallelujah! Altar Boyz is in town. Funny song-and-dance numbers that never stop and a talented cast of five handsome men. Top-notch musical theater!” (Miami Herald).

Altar Boyz features Michael Kadin Craig, Neil Haskell, Travis Nesbitt, Mauricio Perez, and Ravi Roth. New World Stages is located at 340 West 50th Street, just west of Eighth Avenue. For more information, visit www.altarboyz.com or call 1 – 877- ABOYZ – 411.  For all the gossip on the BOYZ, visit www.altarholics.com

* minimum $1 including theater restoration fee. Cash only and subject to availability. Does not affect prior sales. Only available at the Box Office on January 21st.

Actors Playhouse Reopens with BLOOD TYPE: RAGU

Blood Type: RAGU

To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere At the Newly Restored Actors’ Playhouse

Performances Begin February 20th With Opening Night Set for March 5th

 

Flying Machine Productions will present the Off-Broadway premiere of BLOOD TYPE: RAGU, a new play written and performed by Frank Ingrasciotta, and directed by Ted Sod. Performances will begin February 20th, for an Opening Night on March 5th, at the newly restored Actors’ Playhouse (100 Seventh Avenue South).

Blood Type: RAGU is a hilarious and poignant exploration of the Sicilian immigrant experience based on the life of writer/performer Frank Ingrasciotta. This one-man show features more than 20 characters, who live, love and laugh as they struggle to thrive in a new culture, while nurturing the traditions of the old. It’s not drama . . . it’s just family! And we all have one.

You don’t have to be Italian to enjoy Blood Type: RAGU.  Its universal themes have delighted audiences around the country.  The play’s twice-extended four-month run at the Belmont Playhouse broke records, becoming one of the longest running shows in the theatre’s ten-year history. The show has also been performed at Dixon Place, HERE, Manhattan Theatre Source, Ensemble Studio Theatre (as part of its Octoberfest), Manhattan Repertory, Authors Playhouse, George Street Playhouse, Westchester Music Conservatory, Riverspace Arts (Nyack), Metropolis Port Theater Company (Atlanta, GA) as well as Westchester Community College, CUNY Lehman College, SUNY Stony Brook.  Blood Type: RAGU was recently featured in Prof. Fred Gardaphe’s book From Wiseguys to Wise Men.

Frank Ingrasciotta began his career as stage manager for the original Off-Broadway production of Godspell.  His NY stage credits include Valley of the Dolls, Three Postcards, Dinner at 8, Edgar Degas in The Girl in the Blue Armchair and the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. TV credits include recurring roles on “Guiding Light,” “One Life to Live” and “The Equalizer.”  He was also the director, writer and producer for the annual NY Cable Follies, a live musical satire of the year’s events in the cable industry, performing to TV network CEOs and executives.  He has directed cabarets, corporate shows and productions regionally and in NYC including Neil Berg’s musical The Life & Times of Fiona Gander, A Day in Hollywood, The Prince and the Pauper, Grease, Chicago, Sondheim Tonight, Once on This Island &Fascinating Gershwin.  For the NYC Fire Department, he directed & choreographed firefighters in a benefit production ofGuys and Dolls, raising over $20,000 for the New York Burn Center.

Performances will be Wednesday at 2 PM & 7:30 PM, Thursday at 7:30PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM & 6 PM.  Tickets will be $47.50 on Wednesday & Thursday and $52.50 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and are available at Smarttix.com or by phone at 212/868-4444.  The historic Actors’ Playhouse is located at 100 Seventh Avenue South at Sheridan Square, in the heart of Greenwich Village. 

For more information visit www.BloodTypeRagu.com 

ROOMS a rock romance to open at New World Stages

ROOMS a rock romance,

A New Musical from the Creator of Bright Lights Big City and the Director of Bat Boy: The Musical and tick, tick… BOOM!,

Will Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere at New World Stages

Performances Begin February 27^th With Opening Night Set for March 16^th

Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger to Star

 

Van Hill Entertainment is proud to announce that the Off-Broadway premiere of ROOMS a rock romance, starring Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger, will begin performances on Friday February 27^th at New World Stages/Stage 2 (340 West 50^th Street). Opening Night is set for Monday March 16^th (7 PM). 

ROOMS a rock romance has music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman (Bright Lights Big City) and book by Goodman and Miriam Gordon, and will be directed by Scott Schwartz (Golda’s Balcony, Bat Boy: The Musical, tick, tick… BOOM!, Jane Eyre).

ROOMS a rock romance begins in 1970s Glasgow where Monica, an ambitious singer/songwriter meets Ian, a reclusive rocker. The two quickly become entangled creatively and romantically. Their music takes them first to London and ultimately to New York City, where they discover the vibrant new music scene and create an intimate partnership, their love deepening while their personalities drive them apart. A five-piece rock band accompanies these two characters as they search for the balance between ambition and happiness.

Leslie Kritzer’s Broadway credits include A Catered Affair (Drama Desk nomination), Legally Blonde (Clerence Derwent Award for Most Promising Performer) and Hairspray. She received critical acclaim and a Time Out New York Award for her sold-out Joe’s Pub run of “Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone At Les Mouches” (a performance she repeated at The Plush Room in San Francisco). Off-Broadway and regional credits include The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Drama Desk nomination), Bat Boy, Godspell, Broadway: Three Generations (Kennedy Center), Born Yesterday, the world premiere of Vanities, Urinetown (National Tour), Evita, and an acclaimed Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Ms. Kritzer recently starred as Hildy in On the Town for Encores! at City Center. She has performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall as a guest soloist honoring Tim Rice and Alan Menken and can be heard on several cast recordings. Film credits include Love And Other Impossible Pursuits. Television credits include “3LBS” (CBS) and “Jason and Jessica”(HBO).

Doug Kreeger most recently appeared regionally in the world premiere production of Rooms: a rock romance, receiving rave reviews from every critic including the Washington Post and Variety.  Before that he appeared as Chita Rivera’s boy-toy in the highly anticipated, sold-out and critically lauded production of Signature Theatre’s The Visit.  Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Doug attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and RADA in London.  He recently appeared on Broadway in the original revival cast of Les Miserables (Jean Prouvaire – Marius u/s) and has toured internationally as Danny Zuko in Grease and Berger in Hair. Doug’s performance as Richard Loeb in Off-Broadway’s Thrill Me: The Leopold And Loeb Story was called “compelling” by both The New York Times and New York Post and “riveting” by Rex Reed in The New York Observer.  He has performed regionally at Arkansas Rep, Barrington Stage, Bay Street Theatre, MetroStage, Geva Theatre, and The Old Globe. For more, visit www.DougKreeger.com.

ROOMS a rock romance will have scenic design by Adam Koch, costume design by Alejo Vietti, lighting design by Herrick Goldman, sound design by Jonathan Weston with musical supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Jesse Vargas. Matt Williams will serve as choreographer. 

ROOMS a rock romance enjoyed its critically acclaimed World Premiere as a co-production between MetroStage in Alexandria, VA and Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY after a showcase as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) in 2005.

ROOMS a rock romance will play Monday, Wednesday through Friday evenings at 8pm, Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm and 7 pm. Please note: there will be no matinee performances on Sunday March 1^st, or Sunday March 8^th. Tickets will range from $10 to $69.50 (including $1.50 facility fee) and can be purchased at TeleCharge.com or by phone 212/239-6200. New World Stages/Stage 2 is located in the heart of the theater district at 340 West 50^th Street, between 8^th and 9^th Avenues. For more information visit www.roomsmusical.com. 

Paul Scott Goodman was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland.  In 1984, he relocated to NYC after 5 years of performing in London and a year in LA. Paul wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Bright Lights, Big City, which was presented at the New York Theater Workshop (dir. Michael Greif), The Guggenheim Museum, the Prince Music Theater, Philadelphia, and recently licensed worldwide by The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. Paul’s other produced musicals include: Him & Her (Prince Music Theater, March 2007, New York International Fringe Festival 2002 ‘Best Performance’ Award); ROOMS a rock romance, produced by the University of Michigan and the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2005, Metro Stage in August 2008 and the Geva Theatre, October 2008 (dir. Scott Schwartz); Alive In The World, produced by Van Hill Entertainment at NYMF 2006 and as an all-star benefit concert at The Zipper Factory in January 2008; God Save The New Wave (Bottom Line, West Bank Theater); Metropolitan Music (Marymount Manhattan College); Just East Of Broadway (The Duplex). Paul was the first recipient of the Songwriters Hall of Fame Best New Songwriter Award, winner of the Backstage Bistro Award for Domestica (book, music and lyrics), first solo recipient of the Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, and winner of the Gilman Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Commendation Award. In London, Paul’s musicals have been produced at the National Theater, The New End Theater, and twice on BBC television. He has performed as an opening act for John Cougar Mellencamp, Joan Armatrading, David Essex, and The Average White Band. He lives in Soho, Manhattan with his wife Miriam Gordon, and their three children. www.PaulScottGoodman.com

Miriam Gordon wrote the book with Paul Scott Goodman for the musical ROOMS a rock romance directed by Scott Schwartz, which was produced at the Geva Theater (Rochester, NY, 2008) and MetroStage (Alexandria, VA, 2008), Van Hill Entertainment at the Zipper Theater (NYC, 2006), and New York Musical Theater Festival (NYC, 2005). She wrote the book with Paul Scott Goodman and directed the musical Him & Her – Tiny Dancer and Domestica, which won a NYC International Fringe Festival 2002 award, and was also produced at The Prince Music Theater (Philadelphia, 2007, dir. Michael Unger), The New End Theatre (London, 2006), Theater One (NYC, 2003), and Musical TheaterWorks (NYC). She was book writer with Paul Scott Goodman and director of God Save The New Wave (Bottom Line, and West Bank Theater, NYC) and Marathon by Paul Scott Goodman (New York Theater Workshop). Miriam directed the short musical, I’ve Got To See You Again, by two-time Grammy Award winner Jesse Harris, whose title song was recorded on Norah Jones’ Grammy Award winning album. Miriam is writer and lyricist with Wendy Federman for a new musical, Not For Better, and is the writer and director of a new musical, The Kid Who Ran For President, which received the Allan S. Gordon Foundation Performing Arts Program Award. Her other directorial credits include Rooms (Theater One, NYC 2003 – starring Raul Esparza), When Heaven And Earth (Circle Rep East, NYC, 2003), and In Audela (Cherry Lane Theater, NYC, 2004 by Anna Traina).

On Broadway, Scott Schwartz directed Golda’s Balcony and Jane Eyre (co-directed with John Caird).  His off-Broadway work includes Bat Boy: The Musical (Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle awards, Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical; Drama Desk nomination, Outstanding Director of a Musical), tick, tick… BOOM! (OCC Award, Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical; Drama Desk nomination, Outstanding Director of a Musical), The Foreigner starring Matthew Broderick for Roundabout Theatre Company, Franz Kafka’s The Castle (OCC nomination, Outstanding Director of a Play), Miss Julie, and No Way To Treat A Lady.  He also directed Golda’s Balcony on tour starring Valerie Harper, in London, in Los Angeles at the Wadsworth Theater, and in San Francisco at A.C.T.   He collaborated with legendary director Harold Prince as the director of “Lavender Girl” as part of 3hree, which played at the Ahmanson Theater.  Recently, he directed Othello and Much Ado About Nothing at the Alley Theater in Houston; Curvy Widow starring Cybill Shepard at the Post Street Theatre in San Francisco; and a new re-envisioning of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers which played at Paper Mill Playhouse, TOTS, TUTS and North Shore Music Theater (2008 IRNE Award, Outstanding Director of a Musical).  His work has been seen at regional theaters across the U.S. including the Alliance, Berkshire Theater Festival, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Geva, Goodspeed Opera House, La Jolla Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, Prince Theater, Rubicon, Signature Theater, Studio Arena, Theatre Works, and Virginia Stage Company among others.  He received the Connecticut Critics Circle Award as Outstanding Director for his production of Me And My Girl at Goodspeed Opera House.  For radio broadcast, he directed the Grammy-nominated recording of The Prisoner Of Second Avenue, starring Richard Dreyfus and Marsha Mason, for L.A. TheatreWorks.  Mr. Schwartz is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, is an Associate Artist at the Alley, and is a graduate of Harvard University.

Co-founded by Van Dean and Hillary Cutter, Van Hill Entertainment most recently presented the World Premiere of ROOMS a rock romance as a co-production between MetroStage and Geva Theatre Center. Saint Heaven received its West Coast Premiere at the Village Theatre in Issaquah, WA opening their 2008/’09 season.  Van Hill co-produced an all-star benefit concert of Paul Scott Goodman’s Alive in the World (dir. Kurt Deutsch) featuring Adam Pascal, Lea Michele, Melissa Errico, Daniel Reichard, and Greg Naughton. In 2006, Van Hill produced three shows at the New York Musical Theatre Festival including Paul Scott Goodman’s Alive in the World featuring two time Tony® Award nominee Kelli O’Hara and Greg Naughton and Saint Heaven (winner of the 2006 NMTN Directors’ Choice Award) featuring Nancy Anderson, Montego Glover, Roz Ryan and Patrick Ryan Sullivan.  Van Hill’s World Premiere production of Saint Heaven was named one of the top theatrical events of 2006 by The Norwalk Hour and Frank Rizzo (The Hartford Courant and critic for Variety). This production of Saint Heaven (dir. Matt Lenz) at the SCA Rich Forum in Stamford featured Tony® Award winner Chuck Cooper, Deborah Gibson, Cheryl Alexander, Montego Glover, Darren Ritchie and Patrick Ryan Sullivan. Van Hill co-produced The 2006 NY Musical Theatre Festival: The Best of Fest Bash featuring a star-studded roster of Broadway talent.            

ROOMS Garners 5 Helen Hayes Nominations

ROOMS a rock romance

SWEEPS THE HELEN HAYES AWARD NOMINATIONS!

Off-Broadway Premiere Begins February 27^th With Opening Night Set for March 16^th

 

Van Hill Entertainment is proud to announce that ROOMS a rock romance garnered five nominations from the prestigious Helen Hayes Awards, in recognition of their world premiere engagement at MetroStage in Washington, DC.  Nominations were presented to ROOMS a rock romance in the following categories: Outstanding Director – Resident Musical, Outstanding Lead Actor – Resident Musical, Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Musical, the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical, and Outstanding Resident Musical.

ROOMS a rock romance has music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman (Bright Lights Big City) and book by Goodman and Miriam Gordon, and will be directed by Scott Schwartz (Golda’s Balcony, Bat Boy: The Musical, tick, tick… BOOM!, Jane Eyre).

Starring Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger, performances will begin Friday February 27^th at New World Stages/Stage 2 (340 West 50^th Street). Opening Night is set for Monday March 16^th (7 PM). 

ROOMS a rock romance begins in 1970s Glasgow where Monica, an ambitious singer/songwriter meets Ian, a reclusive rocker. The two quickly become entangled creatively and romantically. Their music takes them first to London and ultimately to New York City, where they discover the vibrant new music scene and create an intimate partnership, their love deepening while their personalities drive them apart. A five-piece rock band accompanies these two characters as they search for the balance between ambition and happiness.

 ROOMS a rock romance will have scenic design by Adam Koch, costume design by Alejo Vietti, lighting design by Herrick Goldman, sound design by Jonathan Weston with musical supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Jesse Vargas. Matt Williams will serve as choreographer. 

ROOMS a rock romance enjoyed its critically acclaimed World Premiere as a co-production between MetroStage in Alexandria, VA and Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY after a showcase as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) in 2005.

ROOMS a rock romance will play Monday, Wednesday through Friday evenings at 8pm, Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm and 7 pm. Please note: there will be no matinee performances on Sunday March 1^st, or Sunday March 8^th. Tickets will range from $10 to $69.50 (including $1.50 facility fee) and can be purchased at TeleCharge.com or by phone 212/239-6200. New World Stages/Stage 2 is located in the heart of the theater district at 340 West 50^th Street, between 8^th and 9^th Avenues. For more information visit www.roomsmusical.com. 

INTAR Begins New Season Sunday Feb 15th

  

INTAR Victim of Zipper Theater Closing Finds New Home at the Cherry Lane

Performances Begin Sunday February 15th

 

INTAR (Eduardo Machado, Artistic Director/John McCormack, Executive Director/Alina Troyano, Associate Artistic Director), which was scheduled for two engagements, winter and spring, at the now suddenly shuttered Zipper Factory Theater, has found its new home for this season at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street). Performances will begin February 15^th and run through March 7^th.  Opening Night is set for February 18^th.  For tickets visit www.telecharge.com or call 212/239-6200.

In a statement Artistic Director Eduardo Machado said, “we are extremely grateful to the off-Broadway community. The response to our predicament has been overwhelming, proving again that theater folks are THERE when there’s a crisis. This is truly one of those times when the show WILL go on! Thanks to our friends at the Cherry Lane.” Cherry Lane Theatre (Angelina Fiordellisi, Founding Artistic Director) is New York’s oldest, continuously running Off-Broadway theatre; the Cherry Lane has helped to define American drama, fostering theater that is fresh, daring, and relevant, for over 80 years.

INTAR, one of the United States’ longest running Latino theatres producing in English, works to:

- Nurture the professional development of Latino theater artists.

- Produce bold, innovative, artistically significant plays that reflect diverse perspectives.

- Make accessible the diversity inherent in America’s cultural heritage.

 

Through an integrated program of workshops, productions of works in progress, and mainstage productions, INTAR continues to raise standards of the theater arts.  INTAR brings to the public vital and energetic voices of both promising and accomplished Latino theater professionals, replacing stereotypes while giving expression to the diversity and depth of today’s Latino-American community.

In Eduardo Machado’s new play In Paradise an estranged husband shows up on his wife’s doorstep. Carlos left Marilyn seven years ago for another man, but both the conflicts and chemistry between them feels as fresh as if they were never apart. Deserted by his lover, Carlos has returned to Marilyn for answers and salvation. As they delve into the remains of their shared history, the power struggle between them plays out through recrimination, eroticism, anger, and love. Can you help someone who betrayed you move forward, or will you always blame one single person for ruining your entire life?

In Nick Norman’s lyrical new play She Plundered Him the boundaries of familial relationships are tested in new and dangerous ways. Calder, already on a mental precipice, is convinced that he saw something unseemly pass between his wife, Keep, and son, Anthony…but did he? As Calder’s obsessive jealousy spirals out of control and Keep and Anthony lie to him and one another, the family unit threatens to break irreparably. Throughout, the playwright employs heightened classical language infused with harsh vernacular, and the results are harrowing and brutal. Nick Norman’s devastating story presents a searing, challenging emerging voice to New York theatre.

Billy Hopkins directs a cast that features Leslie Lyles (as Marilyn) and Ed Vassallo (as Carlos) for In Paradise; and James Chen (as Anthony), Leslie Lyles (as Keep), and Mark Elliot Wilson (as Calder) in She Plundered Him 

Billy Hopkins (Director) For “Summer Shorts 2″ at 59E59, Billy directed Leslie Lyles’ The Waters of March (starring Amy Irving), Keith Reddin’s Our Time is Up, and Roger Hedden’s Deep in the Hole. In last year’s “Summer Shorts,” he directed Leslie Lyles’ Rain, Heavy at Times, the Eduardo Machado/Skip Kennon musical Afternoon Tea, and Merwin’s Lane by Keith Reddin. For the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon of One Act Plays he directed The Great Pretenders by Leslie Lyles (starring Amy Irving), Roger Hedden’s Been Taken and Terry Neal’s Future (starring Sarah Jessica Parker), and The Big Squirrel by Keith Reddin (starring Janet Zarish and the then 6 year old Macaulay Culkin), as well as one-acts by Frank D. Gilroy, Shirley Kaplan, and David Mamet. Full-length credits include Mr. Hedden’s Bodies, Rest, and Motion (Lincoln Center Theater) and Mr. Reddin’s The Perpetual Patient (NYPW). He directed the feature film of Wendy Kesselman’s I Love You, I Love You Not (starring Jeanne Moreau, Claire Danes, Jude Law, and Julia Stiles). As Casting Director, recent theatre credits include: The Black Monk (The Beckett), Edward Albee’s The American Dream/The Sandbox (Cherry Lane Theatre); Artfxxxers (DR2), Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell (Naked Angels); All Eyes and Ears (INTAR); Stitching (Wild Project). Highlights from Lincoln Center Theater include: House Of Blue Leaves, Speed the Plow, Anything Goes and Six Degrees of Separation. Recent film credits include Push (Sundance 2009); The Visitor; Anamorph; Tennessee (Tribeca Film Festival 2008); and Pineapple Express. Most notable film credits include: Fatal Attraction, Seven, Cider House Rules, JFK, Boys Don’t Cry, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting, Unfaithful and Monster’s Ball. Television: Roseanne; Sex and the City (Emmy Nomination); The Bronx Is Burning (Emmy nomination).

Nick Norman is an Argentine-British playwright born to a mother from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a British father who was raised in Uganda, where Nick’s grandfather lived and worked as a priest.  Though his parents met in Argentina, Nick received his education in England. Nick was educated at Eton College and Leeds University, where he studied English Literature.  He first tried writing drama while on an undergraduate exchange to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in the summer of 2003.  Returning to Leeds for the fall, he wrote and directed his first play Waiting for Good Blow.  The play was performed twice on campus before representing the university at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival, running for the month of August at The Underbelly Theatre. That winter he submitted Waiting for Good Blow to TAPS (Training and Performance Showcase), an English arts foundation which accepts six writers a year and prepares them, through a series of workshops and mentorships, for a career writing for television.  He was accepted on to the program and over that period wrote his first and to date only teleplay, Take Away Girl.  In the Fall of 2005 he enrolled in the MFA playwriting program in the theatre division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he graduated this October.  He wrote two full-length plays while at Columbia, Say Hello Children and She Plundered Him.  Say Hello Children was produced at The Red Room theatre on East 3^rd Street in the Summer 2006, She Plundered Him is being produced by INTAR this winter. His one-act plays include Guts, which was performed in May 2006, The Iron Maiden –part of a short play festival named “The Torture Project,” and Foreign Fields­ –part of “The Patriot Project.”

Eduardo Machado is the author of over forty plays including The Cook, Havana is Waiting, The Floating Island Plays, Once Removed, and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, Hampstead Theatre in London, American Place Theatre, The Cherry Lane Theatre, and Repertorio Español, among many others. Mr. Machado has served as an Artistic Associate at The Public, the Flea Theatre/Bat Theatre Company and The Cherry Lane Alternative, and he was playwright in residence at The Mark Taper Forum. He has received four National Endowment for the Arts grants, two Rockefeller Foundation Playwriting grants, and grants from The TCG Pew Charitable Trust and The Berrilla Kerr Foundation, among many others. His plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group and Samuel French. Mr. Machado is currently INTAR Theatre’s Artistic Director in NYC, and is Head of Playwriting in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home,” a food memoir by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich, was released by Gotham Press in October 2007. Mr. Machado just completed a new play, That Night in Hialeah. 

Altar Boyz Starts its 5th Year with a BANG!

ALTAR BOYZ STARTS ITS FIFTH YEAR SUNDAY MARCH 1ST!

Ken Davenport and Robyn Goodman, in association with Walt Grossman, Ruth Hendel, Sharon Karmazin, Matt Murphy and Mark Shacket, proudly announce that Altar Boyz, the acclaimed musical comedy at New World Stages, will celebrate its fourth anniversary on Sunday, March 1st. Altar Boyz opened to acclaim on March 1, 2005 and recently recouped its investment, making it the first Off-Broadway commercial book musical to recoup in years!  Capitalized at $1Million, Altar Boyz received unanimous raves, going on to garner seven Drama Desk nominations and winning the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, Off-Broadway.

Altar Boyz is the longest running new musical comedy to open in New York in years! Full of sharp parody, sinfully spectacular dancing, and irreverent humor, this spoof about a heavenly guy-group is adored by audiences and critics alike. With an extraordinary mix of side-splitting songs “convincing enough to be played on MTV,” uncontrollable laughs and lighthearted fun, this award-winning and totally original new musical is “90 minutes of pure delight” that’s suitable for all ages and will have “the whole family laughing and singing along.”  Altar Boyz is in the midst if its Second National Tour as well as both national and international resident productions in Chicago, Korea, Hungary, Finland, Australia, Montreal, and the Philippines.

Critics are spreading the word coast-to-coast: “Finally, an Off-Broadway musical that actually works!” (Zinoman, The New York Times); “Sly and funny subversion, terrific voices, soothing harmonies, and deliciously funny numbers. It sends you home with a smile! Made up of five potential Teen People cover boys.” (Isherwood, The New York Times); “Thank Heaven for Altar Boyz! It keeps you laughing all evening long. If laughter is a form of salvation, my soul is clean!” (Daily News);  “Hilarious! This sweet and sassy, witty and completely unpretentious show sends everybody out on a cloud of mirth – and we mean everybody!” (Journal News); “Ninety minutes of heavenly hilarity!” (The Boston Globe); “You’ll laugh your socks off!” (Chicago Tribune); “Hallelujah brothers and sisters! Altar Boyz is in town. Funny song-and-dance numbers that never stop and a talented cast of five handsome men. It’s top-notch musical theater!” (Miami Herald).

Altar Boyz features Michael Kadin Craig, Neil Haskell, Travis Nesbitt, Mauricio Perez, and Ravi Roth, and is directed by Stafford Arima and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Altar Boyz has music & lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker with book by Kevin Del Aguila, based on a concept by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport. 

Performances are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2pm & 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm & 7pm.  New World Stages is located at 340 West 50th Street, just west of Eighth Avenue. For more information, please visit www.altarboyz.com or call 1 -877-ABOYZ-411.  For all the gossip, visit www.altarholics.com

 

EST offers free readings of John Patrick Shanley plays

Ensemble Studio Theatre Presents

A Free Month-Long Celebration of the Works of

Tony Award Winner, Oscar Winner and E.S.T. Member Playwright

John Patrick Shanley

 

ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (William Carden, Artistic Director, Paul Alexander Slee, Executive Director) proudly announces a free month-long celebration of the work of Tony and Oscar winner and E.S.T. longtime member playwright John Patrick Shanley   Mr. Shanley is being honored at this year’s E.S.T. Annual Benefit on May 4th with the Second Distinguished Member Award.  Performances of these seminal works, all of which were developed at E.S.T., begin April 7th, and continue through April 28th at E.S.T. (549 West 52nd Street).

“E.S.T. is the fertile womb from which so much theatre has found life. I did many of my first readings of plays in their playwrights unit, including Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Savage In Limbo. It is a round and satisfying thought that many of these scripts are being visited again, given voice by comrades old and new,” Mr. Shanley said.

April 7, 2009

Savage In Limbo, directed by Deborah Hedwall,* who originated the role of Savage in 1985

With Brad Bellamy*, Maria Gabriele*, Abigail Gampel*, Jan Leslie Harding*, Bruce MacVittie*

 

April 14, 2009

Four Dogs and a Bone, directed by Will Pomerantz*

with James Murtaugh*, Catherine Curtin*, Diana Ruppe*, Haskell King*

 

April 21, 2009

One-Acts from the Welcome to the Moon series

“These little plays are dedicated to James Ryan, for his friendship”

with William Jackson Harper*, Maureen Sebastian

The Red Coat, directed by James Ryan*

Let Us Go Out Into the Starry Night, directed by Billy Hopkins*

 with J.J. Kandel*, Anna Thomson Wilson*

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, directed by Suzanne Shepherd*

with Julie Fitzpatrick*, Kris Eivers

 

April 28, 2009

Beggars in the House of Plenty, directed by Mary Robinson*

Cast to be announced!

 

John Patrick Shanley’s plays include Defiance, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, the dreamer examines his pillow, Beggars in the House of Plenty, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Italian American Reconciliation, The Big Funk, Where’s My Money, Dirty Story, Sailor’s Song and Romantic Poetry (a musical).  His play Doubt was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play.    In the arena of film, Mr. Shanley has had four spec screenplays produced: Five Corners, Moonstruck, The January Man and Joe Versus the Volcano. Five Corners won the Special Jury Prize for its screenplay at the Barcelona Theatre Festival. For Moonstruck, Shanley received both the Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also did the film adaptations of both Aliveand Congo. Mr. Shanley directs in both theatre and film.

Ensemble Studio Theatre is a not-for-profit developmental theatre founded in 1972 with two primary goals: to nurture individual theatre artists, and to develop new American plays.  Among E.S.T’s members are winners of accolades and higher awards including Pulitzer Prizes, Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, and Obies.  E.S.T. is a lifelong artistic home for its member playwrights, directors, actors, designers, technical personnel, and administrators.  Each year, the Ensemble produces over 300 projects, including readings, staged readings, and fully produced mainstage full-lengths.

THE ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE is located at 549 West 52nd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues).  Performances will be Tuesday evenings at 7pm beginning April 7th and continuing through April 28th. For more information about the Series, or to request an invitation to the 2009 Benefit in honor of Mr. Shanley, call Julie Whitehouse at (212) 247-4982 ext. 115, or visit the company’s website at www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org.

* Indicates Ensemble Studio Theatre member artist

ROOMS a rock romance Opens To Rave Reviews!

“We have a new contender for Best Musical!”  Broadway World

 “A sweet love story, delicious comic moments! Ms Kritzer is funny and fabulous! Mr. Kreeger is solid and strong. They mesh perfectly!”  New York Times

 “ROOMS is delightful, clever and poignant! Fun musical theater rock ‘n’ roll with an edge, youthful romance and fresh comedy!” Associated Press

 “ROOMS is terrific! Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger are two of the most talented performers I have ever seen! Leslie Kritzer possesses the best pipes on the New York Stage today. She is fantastic! You will love this show with a big heart and its two marvelous performers!  WOR Radio

 “Sharp and energetic direction by Scott Schwartz. Rising star Leslie Kritzer has sly comic chops and a powerful voice. Doug Kreeger brings great depth and feeling to his acting and singing.”  Daily News

 “ROOMS is an entertaining and enjoyable affair with canny staging and strong performances. Impressive direction from Scott Schwartz.” Variety

  “ROOMS a rock romance is an appealing surprise. Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger give it their all, and we’re happy to take it. Kritzer gives a hilarious tour de force.”  New York Post

 “Hit alert! Hit alert! When was the last time you went to see a new musical on or off- Broadway and came out humming a tune? Rooms will have NYC humming and buzzing and cheering ‘til the heather on the hills of Scotland is no longer. Doug Kreeger and Leslie Kritzer are perfection with charisma by the bucketful and voices to match. This is a musical for all ages. An unconventional love story that bridges the traditional and the new. Rooms is well structured, well written, has a charm and wit all its own – and it rocks!” Talk Entertainment

  “Is there a technical showbiz term—besides divine—to describe Leslie Kritzer? She’s the rare singer-performer around whom musicals ought to form as naturally as the earth’s mantle surrounds its molten core. She has a wallpaper-shredding belt that belies her petite form and pretty, elfin looks. She’s drop-dead funny but owns her serious moments.”  Time Out NY

 ROOMS a rock romance begins in 1970s Glasgow where Monica, an ambitious singer/songwriter meets Ian, a reclusive rocker. The two quickly become entangled creatively and romantically. Their music takes them first to London and ultimately to New York City, where they discover the vibrant new music scene and create an intimate partnership, their love deepening while their personalities drive them apart. A five-piece rock band accompanies these two characters as they search for the balance between ambition and happiness.

ROOMS a rock romance has music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman and book by Goodman and Miriam Gordon, and is directed by Scott Schwartz. ROOMS a rock romance has scenic design by Adam Koch, costume design by Alejo Vietti, lighting design by Herrick Goldman, sound design by Jonathan Weston with musical supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Jesse Vargas. Matt Williams is the choreographer. 

ROOMS a rock romance will play Monday, Wednesday through Friday evenings at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm and 7 pm. Tickets will range from $20 to $69.50 (including $1.50 facility fee) and can be purchased at TeleCharge.com or by phone 212/239-6200. New World Stages/Stage 2 is located in the heart of the theater district at 340 West 50^th Street, between 8^th and 9^th Avenues. For more information visit www.RoomsARockRomance.com.  

FOR LOVERS ONLY to Premiere at New World Stages

FOR LOVERS ONLY
(Love Songs… Nothing but Love Songs)
TO MAKE ITS OFF-BROADWAY PREMIERE
Performances Begin April 24 At New World Stages
Opening Night Is Set For May 11th

FOR LOVERS ONLY (Love Songs… Nothing but Love Songs), a new musical revue celebrating romance, will begin performances on Friday April 24th at New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street (between Eighth & Ninth Avenues).  Opening Night is set for Monday May 11th (8 PM).  

FOR LOVERS ONLY (Love Songs…Nothing but Love Songs) features nearly 100 of the 20th Century’s most beloved love songs, from the American Popular Songbook, Broadway, and beyond, interspersed through a fast-paced evening, directed and choreographed by Christopher Scott, with musical direction by Ken Lundie.  The five-member cast features Glenn Allen, Monica L. Patton, Dominique Plaisant, Trisha Rapier, and Kevin Vortmann.

FOR LOVERS ONLY presents a cavalcade of love songs from pop to Puccini, from Broadway and around the world, including “True Love,” “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Love Is in the Air,” “Love Makes the World Go ‘Round,” Almost Like Being in Love,” “Till There Was You,” and “People Will Say We’re in Love.” And these are heard in the first 8 minutes alone!

Glenn Allen appeared in Broadway’s The Light in the Piazza and Off-Broadway in A Fine and Private Place at York Theatre. Monica L. Patton had roles in Ragtime on Broadway. Off-Broadway’s Little Ham, and she was the Star to Be in the 30th anniversary tour of Annie.  Dominique Plaisant recently toured in Philip Glass’ Book of Longing, and she was seen on Broadway in The Wild Party and Lestat.  Trisha Rapier appeared on Broadway in The Boy From Oz, and her Off-Broadway credits include Sessions, Shout! The Mod Musical and The Pirates of Penzance.  Kevin Vortmann appeared in the Encores! productions of Face the Music, Juno, Stairway to Paradise, On the Town, and Applause.

Director/Choreographer Christopher Scott has numerous Off-Broadway directing credits including Golf: The Musical, Lorenzo, My Secret Garden, and The Big Bang.  Musical Director Ken Lundie’s credits include Golf: The Musical and A Celebration of the Gershwins, and regional productions of Barnum, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Dames At Sea, Moby Dick, and Some Enchanted Evening.

FOR LOVERS ONLY (Love Songs… Nothing but Love Songs) will have set design by Peter R. Feuchtwanger, with costume design by Bernard Grenier and lighting design by Ben Hagen.

Performances will be Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 7 PM, and Monday at 8 PM.  Tickets range from $20 to $60 and are available through Telecharge.com or at 212-239-6200. For group sales call 212/354-4722.  

FOR LOVERS ONLY (Love Songs… Nothing but Love Songs) is being presented Off-Broadway by Eric Krebs and Sara Lundie.  

GIRLS NIGHT To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere

Girls Night: The Musical

To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere At the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre
Performances Begin June 2nd With Opening Night Set for June 4th

Entertainment Event Productions will present the Off-Broadway premiere of the smash UK hit GIRLS NIGHT: THE MUSICAL, written by Louise Roche and directed by Jack Randle.  Performances will begin June 2nd, for an Opening Night on June 4th at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre at Sofia’s (227 West 46th Street, next to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre). Featured in the cast are Sonya Carter, Renee Colvert, Laurie Gardner, Justine Hall, and Carly Sakalove. This limited engagement runs through July 26th.

Girls Night: The Musical has earned rave reviews playing packed houses throughout the United Kingdom since 2003.  It premiered in the US in May 2007 and has toured across the country since then. It has been described as “’Desperate Housewives’ meets Mamma Mia!” (Applause Magazine), “a boisterous, bust-out, bawdy musical revue” (Wisconsin State Journal),  “An infectious, exhilarating sense of intoxication!” (Hollywood Reporter) and “As funny and outrageous as Sex and the City!” (The Advocate).  

Hilarious and touching, Girls Night: The Musical follows five friends in their 30s and 40s during a wild and outrageous girls night out at a karaoke bar. Friends since their teens, they have all had their fair share of heartache and tragedy, joy and success. Among the characters are Carol the party girl, blunt Anita who tells it like it is, Liza with her marital (and eating) issues, boring Kate the designated driver and Sharon, the not-so-angelic angel who just couldn’t resist tagging along.  Together, they reminisce about their younger days, celebrate their current lives and look to the future, all the while belting out an array of classic anthems such as “I Will Survive,” “Lady Marmalade,” “It’s Raining Men,” “Man I Feel Like a Woman,” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

The Off-Broadway premiere marks the latest chapter in Girls Night’s meteoric rise from an idea in a Milton Keynes’ mom’s kitchen, through a community production, medium scale tour and culminating in 2006 in an extensive National Tour starring Lucy Speed (“EastEnders”) and Gwyneth Strong (“Only Fools and Horses”). The story behind Girls Night is an inspiration to any writer still waiting for their big break.  One night, four years ago, Louise Roche, a mother of three children under five, went out with a group of friends to see a musical.  She looked around the theatre, saw that the audience was mostly women and thought “I could do this…I could write a show that lots of women will enjoy watching.” So she did.  She went home and wrote her first play, Girls Night, a musical comedy about a group of friends who relive the past on a wild night out at a karaoke club! She put it on with some of her friends at the local community theatre.  Five old friends from school did the acting. She got a woman that she met at her daughter’s playgroup to design the posters and the set.  Her mom did the costumes and she dressed the auditorium up like a nightclub herself.  It sold out its entire run and gained legendary status in the area.  One audience member claimed that it made her laugh so hard that her Tampax fell out! Bolstered by this success, she hired the much bigger Milton Keynes Theatre to mount a spectacular performance of Girls Night.  Not one to do things by halves, our heroic housewife put her money where her mouth was and ploughed her life savings of £10,000.00 into the show.  Every one of the fourteen hundred seats in the building sold and she made back just over £10,000.00. Since then, Girls Night has gone from success to success.

Louise Roche has written and produced six plays: Girls Night (UK Tours 2003, 2004 and 2006), Bobby and Johnny (UK Tour 2005), Girls Behind (UK Tour 2005), Checkout Girls (Milton Keynes 2005), Lucky Balls (Milton Keynes 2002) and Milton Keynes The Musical (Milton Keynes 2002). Her writing for television includes “Where the Heart Is” and “Doctors.” She also has a novel, Glutton for Punishment, published in paperback by Pan Books. Previously, she worked in television production as a researcher and producer of factual programs. Credits include “Where There’s Life,” “First Tuesday” and the drama documentary “Shoot To Kill.” Three more plays, True Love, Happy Christmas Shirley and Finding Daddy are in development. Louise became co-director of Goodnights Entertainment in 2003.

Jack Randle studied Drama at Exeter University. On graduating, he took acting roles with Leda Theatre, Nottingham; Theatre of Fact, Milton Keynes; New Victoria Theatre, Stoke; Theatre Alibi, Exeter; Forced Entertainment, Sheffield and M6 Theatre Company, Rochdale.  He also played Dylan in the UK Tour of The Magic Roundabout for David Graham.  He more recently starred as Bobby D’Angelo in Bobby and Johnny (Milton Keynes, 2003). Television has included “EastEnders,” “Emmerdale,” “Cracker,” “Out Of The Blue,” “Hetty Wainthrop Investigates,” and a series of commercials for Draught Bass. His directing credits include Girls Night (UK Tours 2003, 2004, 2006), Bobby and Johnny (UK Tour 2005), Girls Behind (UK Tour 2005), Lucky Balls (2002) and Frankie’s Game (1999). He became co-director of Goodnights Entertainment in 2003.

Performances, which begin June 2nd, will be Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Friday evenings at 8PM, Saturday at 5 PM, and Sunday at 3 PM.  Tickets for all performances will be $55 and may be purchased online at www.girlsnightthemusical.com or by phone at 212/947-9300.

COMING THIS FALL: LIBERACE: The Man, The Music & the Memories

Starring Wayland Pickard

 

 

Today producers Edmund Gaynes and Nancy Bianconi have announced their plans to produce LIBERACE: The Man, The Music & the Memories starring Wayland Pickard in New York. Dates for a Broadway theatre opening are being discussed. The production recreates and celebrates a Liberace Las Vegas showroom concert featuring Pickard as Liberace along with assorted special guest stars.

Making his New York stage debut as the great showman will be WAYLAND PICKARD.  Wayland is a Television “Ace” Award Nominee for HBO, Cine Golden Eagle Award winner and a Billboard Song Finalist and 2006 Los Angeles Theatre ADA Award Winner for “Best Actor”. He has been described by Dick Van Dyke as “A Great Showman” and by Phyllis Diller as “The Piano Variety-Artist of the Decade”. LA Metro Magazine recently called him “the new Mr. Entertainment”.

 

He has been featured in recordings, film and television. Wayland has appeared on “The Tonight Show,” HBO and at Carnegie Hall! He’s also appeared in such films as Beethoven’s 5th and The Great Santini. His television credits include a recurring role in the CBS television series, “Capitol”. As a composer, he’s scored music for film & television. As a performer, Wayland has shared the stage with such notables as Jay Leno, Lee Greenwood, Dionne Warwick, Dick Van Dyke, Larry Gatlin, Carol Lawrence, Pam Tillis, Bill Cosby, Andy Williams, Sandi Patty, James Darren, Carol Channing and many other celebrities.

 

LIBERACE: The Man, The Music & the Memories will be directed by Pamela Hall, veteran Broadway actress, who has most recently compiled a list of Off-Broadway directorial credits (Picon Pie, The Rise of Dorothy Hale, Trolls). She is currently directing  Danny & Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical, going into previews at St. Luke’s Theatre on May 2^nd.

The production has the approval and co-operation of the Liberace Foundation for the Performing & Creative Arts.

York Theatre announces 2009-’10 shows

THE YORK THEATRE COMPANY

ANNOUNCES TWO OF ITS SHOWS FOR 2009-‘10:

 

Blind Lemon Blues Set for Fall Opening

and Yank! The New Musical to Debut in Spring 2010

 

The YORK THEATRE COMPANY (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director) is proud to announce two upcoming mainstage productions.  Blind Lemon Blues—based upon more than 60 Blind Lemon Jefferson songs — will return to the York Mainstage in Fall 2009.  Performances begin September 8th.  Spring 2010 will see the Off-Broadway premiere of the new musical Yank!.  Performances begin in February 2010.  All performances will be at the company’s home at The Theatre at Saint Peter’s (54th Street just east of Lexington Avenue). For more information, visit www.yorktheatre.org or call 212/935-5820.

The York Theatre Company was recently nominated for five 2009 Drama Desk Awards, four 2009 Lucille Lortel Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and two Drama League Awards for its productions of Enter Laughing, The Musical and My Vaudeville Man! last season.  The York is the only theater in New York City—and one of very few in the world—dedicated to developing and fully producing new musicals, as well as preserving gems from the past. Winner of a special Drama Desk Award for developing and producing new musical theatre, York’s intimate, imaginative style of producing both original and classic musicals has resulted in critical acclaim and recognition from artists and audiences alike for almost four decades.  Under the guidance of Artistic Director James Morgan since 1997, the York has focused exclusively on new musicals in its Mainstage Series—most of them world, American, or New York premieres—by some of the field’s most esteemed creators, and has also helped launch the careers of many talented new writers. The York’s Developmental Reading Series, which presents nearly 40 free readings of new musicals every year, was the incubator for the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Avenue Q, among many other significant shows.

Blind Lemon Blues was created by Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde, has musical arrangements by Akin Babatunde, Cavin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples Yarbrough, and is directed and choreographed by Mr. Babatunde. It will be presented by The York Theatre Company and Documentary Arts in association with Central Track Productions. 

Blind Lemon Blues was presented as a York mainstage production in 2007 for a special 10-performance run featuring Benita Arterberry, Akin Babatunde, Timothy Parham, Lillias White, Cavin Yarbrough, Alisa Peoples Yarbrough and guitarist Sam Swank.  The New York Times declared it “a lively and intelligent new musical—an inspiration!” and Variety concurred, saying “Blues lovers be grateful… very, very grateful—Blind Lemon Jefferson’s voice emerges with full force!”  Casting for the fall engagement will be announced soon. 

Jefferson was a blind street musician who played his guitar with a tin cup tied to it until a Paramount Records scout discovered him.  Between 1926 and 1929, Jefferson made more than 80 records and became the biggest selling down-home blues singer in America.  Blind Lemon Blues is set in New York City in 1948 at the last recording session of the legendary Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, and combines elements of traditional blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, doo-wop, and rap to evoke the enduring legacy of Blind Lemon and his contemporaries Blind Willie Johnson, Lillian Glinn, Hattie Hudson, Bobbie Cadillac, Lillian Miller and Leadbelly himself. 

Yank!, a new musical set in the U.S. Army at the time of World War II, has music by Joseph Zellnik with book and lyrics by David Zellnik.  It will be presented by the York Theatre Company in association with Pamela Koslow, Maren Berthelsen and Stuart Wilk, and associate producer Matt Schicker.  The cast and creative teams will be announced shortly. 

Yank! tells the story of Stu, a scared Midwestern kid who gets drafted for World War II in 1943, and becomes a photographer for Yank Magazine, the journal “for and by the servicemen.” Yank! has a score that pays homage to the 1940s and explores what it means to be a man, and what it is to fall in love and struggle to survive in a time and place where the odds are stacked against him. Yank! premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2005 where it had a sold-out run and won an audience award for Best Musical. It was subsequently presented by the Gallery Players in Brooklyn—where it was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award, and was seen in its West Coast premiere at the Diversionary Theatre in San Diego.  During its run at the Gallery Players, NYTheatre.com declared “Yank! is poised to become a musical of real stature.”

Tickets for both shows will be available soon at the York box office (212) 935-5820 and on its website, www.yorktheatre.org.

So Help Me God!

A GALA READING TO BENEFIT MINT THEATER COMPANYOF THE PLAY BY MAUREEN DALLAS WATKINS (“CHICAGO”)AND FEATURING KRISTIN JOHNSTON

MONDAY JUNE 8^TH AT THE LUCILLE LORTEL THEATRE

 

Mint Theater Company will present a reading of the backstage farce, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins on Monday, June 8^th at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).  Kristen Johnston, three-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in “Third Rock from the Sun” will read the leading role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy.  Watkins play was written nearly 20 years before Mary Orr wrote her story about Eve Harrington — the basis for the famous film, All About Eve.

So Help Me God! will be directed by Martin Platt.  In addition to Ms. Johnston, the cast will also include Sheffield Chastain, Catherine Curtin, Roderick Hill,  Jeremy Lawrence,  Mark Pinter, Allen Lewis Rickman, and  Jeff Steitzer. Additional casting will be announced shortly.

Maurine Dallas Watkins was a journalist with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, covering the crime beat — but her real aspiration was to write plays. She studied playwriting at Yale in George Pierce Baker’s famous 47 Workshop and wrote the play Chicago for a class assignment.  Originally titled The Brave Little Woman, Chicago made a great sensation on Broadway in 1927 under the direction of George Abbot. Watkins’ play was the basis for the wildly successful Broadway musical, now at the Ambassador Theatre.  Shortly after the success of Chicago, Watkins went to Hollywood where she became a successful screenwriter.  Her credits include Libeled Lady and Roxie Hart, based on her play, Chicago.

So Help Me God! circled New York in October of 1929 but did not land on Broadway, thanks in no small part to the Stock Market Crash.  The comedy tried out “out-of-town” on the “Subway Circuit” including Werba’s Flatbush Theater and the Boulevard Theater in Queens.

Kristen Johnston has recently been tapped to star in the Fox series “Absolutely Fabulous.”  Johnston’s New York stage credits include The Women, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Skin of Our Teeth.

Mint Theater Company, “that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past” (Village Voice) has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992.  In 2001, the Mint was awarded an Obie for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition.”  Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for “Unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.”

A limited number of tickets from $40 to $250 are available by calling the Mint box office at 212/315-0231 or go to www.minttheater.org. The Lucille Lortel Theater is located at 121 Christopher Street.  The reading begins at 7:30 PM.

NBS Tenth Anniversary

 

 

NAKED BOYS SINGING!

THE LONG RUNNING INTERNATIONAL SENSATION

NOW AT NEW WORLD STAGES

CELEBRATES ITS 10^TH ANNIVERSARY

AND LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE!

“The three greatest words in the English language – Naked Boys Singing!” - Kelly Ripa, “Live With Regis & Kelly”

NAKED BOYS SINGING!, the fifteen-song celebration of the male form will hit yet another milestone: it will celebrate its tenth anniversary on Saturday July 25^th.  The Naked Boys are appearing on New World Stages Stage 4, graciously shared with the other (clothed) Boyz of New World Stages: Altar Boyz!  New World Stages is located at 340 West 50^th Street, between 8^th & 9^th Avenues.  Naked Boys plays Fridays at 10:30pm and Saturday evenings at 6pm.

To further mark the occasion, the producers of the show recently launched a new website!  Check it out at http://www.NakedBoysSinging.com

Still drawing both equally gay and straight crowds, NAKED BOYS has become a New York mainstay, while the London production, which recently opened to critical acclaim, announced it will soon transfer to the West End. Other productions are currently running in Las Vegas and Provincetown, and more will open within the next year, including a production in Lisbon, and another in Berlin.

Naked Boys Singing! is produced by Jamie Cesa, Carl D. White, Hugh Hayes, and Tom Smedes.  It is directed and was conceived by Robert Schrock, and choreographed by Jeffry Denman. Schrock and a team of 12 writers — Stephen Bates, Marie Cain, Perry Hart, Shelly Markham, Jim Morgan, David Pevsner, Rayme Sciaroni, Mark Savage, Ben Schaechter, Trance Thompson, Mark Winkler and two-time Emmy Award winning Bruce Vilanch — have written a bouncy (pun intended) and fabulous musical revue that reminds us that clothes alone do not make the man. The show opened Off-Broadway at The Actors’ Playhouse in July 1999. The film version was released in 2008 by TLA Releasing and remains one of their top sellers on DVD.

Ticket prices are $69.50, which includes $1.50 facility fee.  Tickets for Naked Boys Singing! are available through Telecharge.com at 212-239-6200 or at the New World  Stages Box Office. For Group Sales, call 212-302-4848, ext 18.  The show runs at a lean, hard 70 minutes, without an intermission.

 

 

COMING OFF-BWAY THIS FALL:

COMING OFF-BROADWAY THIS FALL: 

THE DEEP THROAT SEX SCANDAL, A NEW PLAY BY DAVID BERTOLINO, DIRECTED BY JERRY DOUGLAS 

PERFORMANCES BEGIN  SEPTEMBER 14^TH AT THE HA! THEATER

 

 

When Harry Met Linda, LLC today announced that The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, a new play by David Bertolino, directed by Jerry Douglas, will have its Off-Broadway premiere at the newly renovated HA! Theater (163 West 46^th Street, just east of Broadway). Performances will begin September 14th. Full cast to be announced shortly as well.

Finally the true story will be revealed: In 1972, a hairdresser from the Bronx made a little movie that grossed over $600 Million (possibly the most profitable film of all time) and ignited the sexual revolution. The Deep Throat Sex Scandal takes you behind the scenes, into the secret world of adult filmmaking and introduces you to the legendary Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems.  Follow the bizarre journey from the creation of the movie, through the raids, arrests and the banning of the film, to the political fallout of the ensuing courtroom drama, which launched the career of Allen Dershowitz.

Born and raised in the Boston area, DAVID BERTOLINO became intrigued with theater having operated Boston Costume for over 25 years, a landmark theatrical super store catering to theater in Boston.  He created his first theatrical venture, SPOOKYWORLD, a Halloween theme park that ran for 14 years and showcased the talent of over 200 actors each evening.  Guest stars included Linda Blair, Elvira, Alice Cooper, Robert Englund, Willard Scott, Bill Mahar, and Jerry Springer, among others; David also produced the comeback career of Tiny Tim, presenting Tiny’s wedding live on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” from SPOOKYWORLDand hosting an episode of MTV’s “The Real World.”  Many a career was launched for dozens of special effects directors and technicians as well.  Spookyworld sold over a million tickets under Berolino’s reign, during which time, he also partnered with the New England Patriots Football Team.  The Deep Throat Sex Scandal is Bertolino’s first foray into New York theater. 

JERRY DOUGLAS, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, attended Drake University and did his graduate work at the Yale School of Drama. Among the Broadway and Off-Broadway plays he has written and/or directed are Rondelay, Spofford (by Herman Shumlin, produced by Zev Bufman), Circle in the Water, Score (where he discovered Sylvester Stallone, getting him his Equity card), Tubstrip, and Max’s Millions. He also wrote the screenplay for Radley Metzger’s film version of Score. In the early 1970s he directed two films, The Back Row and Both Ways, then began to focus on a career as a free-lance journalist for such publications as The Advocate and Manshots..  Among his more recent films are More of a Man, Kiss-Off, Honorable Discharge, Flesh & Blood, Dream Team, and BuckleRoos.  

Sharon Carr will serve as Associate Producer.

Performances will begin September 14^th. Tickets will go on sale at a later date. For more information, visit www.deepthroattheplay.com.

 

SUMMER SHORTS 3 Kicks off July 24th

 

3^rd ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF NEW AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS

RUNNING JULY 24^th THROUGH AUGUST 27^th ONLY

AT 59E59 THEATERS

Featuring World Premieres from John Augustine, Nancy Giles, Bill Connington & Skip Kennon, Roger Hedden, Neil LaBute, Carole Real, Keith Reddin and William Inge

 

J.J. Kandel and John McCormack will present SUMMER SHORTS 3, their third annual festival of new American short plays, at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street).  Performances begin Friday July 24^th, and continue through Thursday August 27th. Featured will be eight World Premieres from some of New York’s finest established and emerging playwrights, including John Augustine (“Encore! Encore!” starring Nathan Lane), Nancy Giles (“CBS Sunday Morning”), Bill Connington (Zombie) & Skip Kennon (Herringbone, Time and Again), Roger Hedden (Bodies, Rest & Motion), Neil LaBute (reasons to be pretty), Carole Real (ABC’s “Relativity” and “Port Charles”), Keith Reddin (Life and Limb, Rum and Coke) and the late William Inge (Come Back Little Sheba, Bus Stop, Picnic). Maruti Evans will provide scenic and lighting design.

Summer Shorts returns for another summer of new American one-acts featuring original plays by the country’s top playwrights. Representing some of today’s best writing, directing and acting talents, Summer Shorts celebrates theatre, summer and the short form. The festival’s two separate series offer a diverse range of voices, styles, and subject matter. Summer Shorts 3 offers eight world premiere one-act plays, in two separate evenings. The two series will run in rotating repertory (a detailed description and schedule follows below). Last year The New York Post declared “one-act shorts fit nicely in summer heat!”  

59E59 Theaters is the Drama Desk Award-winning state-of-the-art theater complex located on 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan. Owned and operated by the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, a not-for profit operating foundation, 59E59 Theaters has set an invigorating policy of bringing new, challenging and entertaining work to a new Off Broadway neighborhood.

Performances will be Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8:15pm, with matinees Saturdays at 2:15 and Sundays at 3:15.  Tickets are $18 each (59E59 Members $12.60). Tickets can be purchased from the Box Office (Monday 12pm – 6pm, Tuesday – Saturday 12pm – 9pm, Sunday 12pm – final curtain.), by phone through Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. Service fees apply to phone and web purchases. For more information, please visit www.59e59.org or www.summershortsfestival.com  

 

SERIES A:

 

THINGS MY AFRO TAUGHT ME Written and Performed by Nancy Giles    A black girl, her hair, her adventures, and eventual escape from a Los Angeles acting cult.   DEATH BY CHOCOLATE by John Augustine Directed by Robert Saxner    A woman copes with menopause, her birthday, and the death of her husband. Luckily, she has alcohol and candy to help her get through the day. Unluckily, she faces an unwanted visit from her sister-in-law.     A SECOND OF PLEASURE by Neil LaBute  Directed by Andrew McCarthy   A couple head off for a romantic weekend – or do they?   THE ETERNAL ANNIVERSARY Book by Bill Connington Music and Lyrics by Skip Kennon Directed by TBA   A hotel chef in 1913 New York City makes the perfect meal for his anniversary dinner. Very much in love with his wife, he is haunted by the suspicion that she was unfaithful to him years ago. Finding a lost bottle of Grand Marnier to complete the meal, he discovers evidence of her innocence. They can finally rest assured in their “perfect love.”

Performance Schedule   Fri July 24 @ 8:15PM Saturday July 25 @ 8:15PM Sunday July 26 @ 3:15 PM Tuesday July 28 @ 7:15PM Wednesday July 29 @ 8:15PM Thursday August 6 @ 8:15PM Friday August 7 @ 8:15PM Saturday August 8 @ 2:15PM Tuesday August 11 @ 7:15PM Wednesday August 12 @ 8:15PM Saturday August 15 @ 8:15PM Sunday August16 @ 3:15PM Thursday August 20 @ 8:15PM Friday August 21 @ 8:15PM Saturday August 22 @ 2:15PM Tuesday August 25 @ 7:15 PM

 

 

 

 

SERIES B:

 

DON’T SAY ANOTHER WORD By Carole Real Directed by Ian Belknap   Irascible and compulsively honest, Josh tells his girlfriend Laura about a conversation he had with his guy friends. Big Mistake.   THE SIN EATER By Keith Reddin Directed by Billy Hopkins   El is 14 and her father has been murdered. She’s plotting revenge and nothing is going to stop her. Not the police, not the court appointed psychiatrist, and definitely not her mother. Because her mother was the one who killed El’s father.   IF I HAD By Roger Hedden Directed by Billy Hopkins   Landscape maintenance, class struggle, and a bikini-clad girl collide in a country with potable water.   THE KILLING  By William Inge Directed by José Angel Santana   Desperation leads one man to ask for the ultimate favor from a stranger.

Performance Schedule   Friday July 31 at 8:15 PM Saturday August 1 at 8:15 PM Sunday August 2 at 3:15 PM Tuesday August 4 at 7:15 PM Wednesday August 5 at 8:15 PM Saturday August 8 at 8:15 PM Sunday August 9 at 3:15 PM Thursday August 13 at 8:15 PM Friday August 14 at 8:15 PM Saturday August 15 at 2:15 PM Tuesday August 18 at 7:15 PM Wednesday August 19 at 8:15 PM Saturday August 22 at 8:15 PM Sunday August 23 at 3:15 PM Wednesday August 26th at 8:15 PM Thursday August 27th at 8:15 PM

 

Mint Announces First Plays of 2009-10 Season

Drama Desk Award-Winning Mint Theater

Announces Two Plays about Players:

Is Life Worth Living?

by Lennox Robinson, Directed by Jonathan Bank

Featuring Jordan Baker and Kevin Kilner 

 

So Help Me God!

by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Directed by Martin Platt

At the Lucille Lortel Theatre

Featuring Kristen Johnston

 

 

The Drama Desk and Obie Award-wining Mint Theater Company today announced that it its 2009 – ‘10 season will kick off with two plays celebrating the art and antics of the actor.  First up will be Lennox Robinson’s comedy, Is Life Worth Living? starring real-life couple Jordan Baker and Kevin Kilner as a pair of married actors heading up a troupe of traveling players in Ireland who bring their high-toned repertory of Russian and Scandinavian drama to the seaside resort town of Inish.  Is Life Worth Living? will play from August 19th thru Oct. 11th at the Mint’s usual home in the heart of the theater district, at 311 W. 43rd Street.  Following that, Mint will present two-time Emmy Award winner Kristen Johnston in a hilarious backstage farce by Maurine Dallas Watkins entitled So Help Me God! which will play downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater on Christopher Street beginning November 18^th.  Watkins wrote the play Chicago upon which the musical is based, as well as numerous films including Roxie Hart, Libeled Lady and Professional Sweetheart.

Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank will direct the rare revival of Lennox Robinson’s Is Life Worth Living? starring Jordan Baker and Kevin Kilner..  Performances will begin August 19^th, with Opening Night set for September 14^th. In addition to Ms Baker and Mr. Kilner, the cast includes Leah Curney, Bairbre Dowling, Brian Keane, John Keating, Laurie Kennedy, Jeremy Lawrence, Erin Moon, Grant Neale, Paul O’Brien, and Graham Outerbridge.

“Legit repertory troupe comes to a small village in Ireland and, after a week or so of Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg the town is off its nut.”  That’s how Variety described Lennox Robinson’s comedy when it played London in 1933 and that, in a nutshell, is the story of this gloriously goofy play that imagines the impact a steady diet of serious drama might have on the amiable residents of the seaside town of Inish. The fun begins when the town elders decide to improve the tone of the place.  Enter Hector de la Mare and his wife Constance Constantia of the De La Mare Repertory company—committed exclusively to “psychological and introspective drama: the great plays of Russia, an Ibsen or two, a little Strindberg; because,” as Hector puts it, “they may revolutionize some person’s soul.” Whether or not the souls of Inish require revolution is the question this comedy poses while delightfully exaggerating and celebrating the transformative power of the theater.  In choosing Is Life Worth Living? Mint pokes some fun at themselves.  One of the plays in the De La Mare repertory is Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness, which Mint produced in 2007.

“I suppose you would call it farce, “Robinson told The New York Times in 1933,” But I’d rather not call it that because—well, you know what people think you mean when you call a play farce.”  Is Life Worth Living? played on Broadway three times in the 1930’s—but has not been seen in New York since.  Brooks Atkinson writes, “You are permitted to respect the theme of Mr. Robinson’s play and to like every character who is in it.  If that is not pure comedy, what is?” 

Robinson was a key figure in the Irish theater for decades.  Critic and fellow playwright St. John Ervine described him as “easily the most skilful dramatist that the Irish theatre has produced.”  His comedy The Whiteheaded Boy was second only to Playboy of the Western World as the most performed play in Ireland through the 1960’s.  The author of more than 30 plays, his style defies categorization—during his prolific career, Robinson penned comedies, tragedies, radio plays, poetry, an historical novel, and short stories.

Is Life Worth Living? will have scenic design by Susan Zeeman Rogers, costume design by Martha Hally, lighting design by Jeff Nellis, and sound design by Jane Shaw.

Performances for Is Life Worth Living? will be Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $35 (Aug. 19^th – 30^th only), $45 (Sept. 1^st – 20^th only) and $55 (Sept. 22 –Oct. 11^th).  All performances will take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43^rd Street. To purchase tickets, or for more information, visit www.minttheater.org

 

Mint Theater Company will present its second offering of the season, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street), beginning November 18^th.  Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in “Third Rock from the Sun” will perform the role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy.  Watkins play was written 20 years before All About Eve.  So Help Me God! will be directed by Martin Platt. 

Maurine Dallas Watkins was a journalist with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, covering the crime beat — but her real aspiration was to write plays. She studied playwriting at Yale in George Pierce Baker’s famous 47 Workshop and wrote the play Chicago for a class assignment.  Originally titled The Brave Little Woman, Chicago made a great sensation on Broadway in 1927 under the direction of George Abbot. Watkins’ play was the basis for the wildly successful Broadway musical, now at the Ambassador Theatre.  Shortly after the success of Chicago, Watkins went to Hollywood where she became a successful screenwriter.  Her credits include Libeled Lady and Roxie Hart, based on her play, Chicago.

So Help Me God! circled New York in October of 1929 but did not land on Broadway, thanks in no small part to the Stock Market Crash.  The comedy tried out “out-of-town” on the “Subway Circuit” including Werba’s Flatbush Theater and the Boulevard Theater in Queens.

Kristen Johnston’s New York stage credits include The Women, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Skin of Our Teeth.

Mint Theater Company, “that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past” (Village Voice), has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992. The Mint was awarded an Obie for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition.”  Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for “Unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.”  

Advance tickets are available by calling the Mint box office at 212/315-0231 or go to www.minttheater.org. The Lucille Lortel Theater is located at 121 Christopher Street. 

 

 

 

THE COLUMBINE PROJECT to Premiere Off-Broadway

 

David & Pamela Burrus,

In Association with Bree Pavey and Jessimeg Productions,

Will Present the Off-Broadway Premiere of

THE COLUMBINE PROJECT,

A New Play Written & Directed by Paul Anthony Storiale

Performances Begin July 27 at Actors Temple Theatre

 

 

THE COLUMBINE PROJECT, a new play written and directed by Paul Anthony Storiale, will begin performances July 27^th at The Actors Temple Theatre, 339 West 47^th Street (between Eighth & Ninth Avenues). Opening Night will be Sunday August 9^th (at 7 PM).

Ten years ago on April 20, 1999, the world watched as two young men presumed to be outcasts walked into their high school and attempted to massacre hundreds of their peers. Although failing in their original mission to kill 250 students, the two teens left 12 students and a teacher fatally wounded and many others scarred for life.  THE COLUMBINE PROJECT examines exactly what went through the minds of several students, including the killers who at one time were just normal kids.  Pulled straight from journals, diaries and information shared personally with the writer by survivors of the incident, this true story provides insight into who these children were and who may have also had a hand in cultivating the rampage that resulted in bloodshed and destruction.

THE COLUMBINE PROJECT premiered in North Hollywood in April of this year.  After its initial sellout run, the production was extended twice and received unanimous favorable reviews.  Upon being invited to bring THE COLUMBINE PROJECT to New York City’s Actors Temple Theatre, the entire original cast committed to making the cross country trip to bring a very important story to a whole new audience.

Heading the cast of THE COLUMBINE PROJECT are Artie Ahr, Evan Enslow, Justin Mortelliti, Bradley Michael, and Rya Meyers.  Also featured in the cast are Stacy Allen, Will Barker, Alex Bica, Kelli Joan Bennett, Jesse Kove, Kelly McCracken, Derek Meeker, Bree Pavey, Karen Praxel, Morgan Roberts, Sara Swain, Stephanie Weyant, and Marquerite Wiseman.

Playwright/Director Paul Anthony Storiale has produced several shows in Los Angeles using the work of New York writers, such as Jeff Blumenkrantz’s Woman with Pocketbook, the West Coast premiere of Gila Sand and Paul Leschen’s Drama Desk Award nominated Twist in addition to several other New York originals, like The Ransom of Red Chief, The Musical, and The Life and Times of Joe Jefferson Benjamin Blow.  For Woman with Pocketbook, Paul’s production won an Artistic Director’s Achievement Award for Best Production along with several nominations for Twist, including Best Director of a Musical, and Best Production of a Musical. Paul’s sole creation One-Night Stands… The Sex Comedies, for which he won an ADA Award for Best Director of a Comedy, is now in its third continuous year. Currently Paul is co-creating A Big Gay Hollywood Wedding, an audience interactive comedy set to open at the end of August in Los Angeles.

The playing schedule for THE COLUMBINE PROJECT will be Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 7 p.m.  (Special added performances Tuesday July 28^th and August 11^th at 8 PM; no performances on Wednesday July 29^th or Monday August 10^th) .Tickets, which will be $31.50 and $56.50 (including facility fee), are available at Telecharge.com or by calling 212/239-6200.

THE COLUMBINE PROJECT is being produced Off-Broadway by David & Pamela Burrus in association with Bree Pavey and Jessimeg Productions.

Cast announced for Summer Shorts 3

3^rd Annual Festival Of New American Short Plays

To Feature Nancy Giles (“CBS Sunday Morning”), Neal Huff (Take Me Out), Stephanie D’Abruzzo (Avenue Q), Margaret Colin and Victor Slezak (Jackie), Rosalyn Coleman (Seven Guitars, Radio Golf), Robert Dusold (Les Miserables), Leenya Rideout (Company), Mary Joy, Sherry Anderson (Chris Durang & Dawne), and more, In World Premieres from John Augustine, Nancy Giles, Bill Connington & Skip Kennon, Roger Hedden, Neil LaBute, Carole Real, Keith Reddin and William Inge

 

J.J. Kandel and John McCormack will present SUMMER SHORTS 3, their third annual festival of new American short plays, at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street).  Performances begin Friday July 24^th, and continue through Thursday August 27th. Featured will be Nancy Giles (“CBS Sunday Morning”), Neal Huff (Take Me Out), Stephanie D’Abruzzo (Avenue Q), Margaret Colin and Victor Slezak (Jackie), Rosalyn Coleman (Seven Guitars, Radio Golf), Robert Dusold (Les Miserables), Leenya Rideout (Company), Mary Joy, Sherry Anderson (Chris Durang & Dawne), and more, in eight World Premieres from some of New York’s finest established and emerging playwrights, including John Augustine (“Encore! Encore!” starring Nathan Lane), Nancy Giles (“CBS Sunday Morning”), Bill Connington (Zombie) & Skip Kennon (Herringbone, Time and Again), Roger Hedden (Bodies, Rest & Motion), Neil LaBute (reasons to be pretty), Carole Real (ABC’s “Relativity” and “Port Charles”), Keith Reddin (Life and Limb, Rum and Coke) and the late William Inge (Come Back Little Sheba, Bus Stop, Picnic). 

Summer Shorts returns for another summer of new American one-acts featuring original plays by the country’s top playwrights. Representing some of today’s best writing, directing and acting talents, Summer Shorts celebrates theatre, summer and the short form. The festival’s two separate series offer a diverse range of voices, styles, and subject matter. Summer Shorts 3 offers eight world premiere one-act plays, in two separate evenings. The two series will run in rotating repertory (a detailed description and schedule follows below). Last year The New York Post declared “one-act shorts fit nicely in summer heat!”  

59E59 Theaters is the Drama Desk Award-winning state-of-the-art theater complex located on 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan. Owned and operated by the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, a not-for profit operating foundation, 59E59 Theaters has set an invigorating policy of bringing new, challenging and entertaining work to a new Off Broadway neighborhood.

Performances will be Tuesday at 7:15pm, Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8:15pm, with matinees Saturdays at 2:15 and Sundays at 3:15. Tickets are $18 each (59E59 Members $12.60). Tickets can be purchased from the Box Office, by phone through Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. Service fees apply to phone and web purchases. For more information, please visit www.59e59.org or www.summershortsfestival.com

NYMF 2009

 

 

The New York Musical Theatre Festival  Announces Complete Schedule For 2009 Festival

 

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) today announced the complete schedule for the 2009 Festival, which will begin September 28^th and continue through October 18^th. A full breakdown of this year’s performances and venues follows.

Since its inception in 2004, The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) has premiered more than 175 new musicals  – many of which have gone on to award-winning productions on and off-Broadway, in nearly every state, and in over a dozen countries.  NYMF alumni include the Tony Award-winning musical Next to Normal, currently playing at the Booth Theater on Broadway; NYMF 2004 hit [title of show], which enjoyed a Tony Award-nominated run last season; and Altar Boyz, now in its fifth year Off-Broadway at New World Stages.  

Hailed as “the Sundance of Musical Theatre,” the three-week annual festival works to revitalize one of America’s greatest art forms by discovering, supporting and promoting new musical theater artists, producers, and projects, and by introducing a diverse audience to the vibrancy of contemporary musical theater.  Widely regarded as the essential source for new material and talent discovery, NYMF is the flagship program of National Music Theater Network, Inc., a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization.  

NYMF 2009 is presented in association with BroadwayWorld.com, Production Resource Group and TheaterMania.com, and is supported by Back Stage, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, BroadwayBox.com, BroadwayInsider.com, Broadway.TV, Clear Channel Spectacolor, DFD-TV, Frank & Camille’s Fine Pianos, HX Magazine, King Displays, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, NASDAQ OMX, New World Stages , Next Magazine, Queerty.com, Reuters, Sweet Caroline’s, Tekserve, TheMENEvent, The Tank, and Times Square Squared.  Major supporters include ASCAP Foundation, BMI Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation with the support and encouragement of Jaimie Mayer, The Charlie & Jane Fink Charitable Fund, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Theater League.  NYMF is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Tickets to individual festival events are on sale to NYMF Members now and to the general public on September 1.  NYMF Memberships, which combine charitable contributions with valuable, flexible ticket packages and perks like early seating, are currently available for purchase at (212) 352-3101 or www.nymf.org.

 

A complete list of the 2009 Festival follows…

 

Full Productions

Academy

Book, Music and Lyrics by John Mercurio

Conceived and Developed by Andrew Kato

At St. Edward’s Academy, two seniors make a harmless bet on whether they can influence an unsuspecting freshman to break a few rules to succeed. But when the transaction goes recklessly out of control, the boys become entangled in a fight for their own academic and personal survival.  Inspired by Goethe’s Faust, Academy is a pop chamber musical about boys learning to become men—and remaining true to themselves.

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 6, 8pm; Oct. 7, 1pm; Oct. 10, 8pm; Oct. 13, 8pm; Oct. 15, 4:30pm; Oct. 17, 4:30pm

 

 

All Fall Down

Book by Greg Turner; Music and Lyrics by Selda Sahin

Golden boy Ben Little is embarking on his next great adventure: college. Everything comes crashing down, however, when he inexplicably jumps from the window of his sixth story dorm room. Astonishingly surviving the fall, Ben returns home—where nobody will talk about what happened or ask questions that might tear apart their picture-perfect world.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 9, 8pm; Oct. 10, 1pm; Oct. 14, 4:30pm; Oct. 15, 8pm; Oct. 17, 1pm; Oct. 18, 4:30pm

 

Anjou: A Tale of Horror

Book, Music and Lyrics by Guillermo Mendez and Lupita Sandoval

Catalina d’Medici, queen of France, engages in bloody crimes and inexpressible cruelties against her own people in her quest to enthrone her son, Henry d’Anjou. Politics and passion are interwoven throughout one of history’s most sordid events in this electrifying and magnificent musical tale of horror. Sixteenth-century France comes to life in a modern-day Mexican Pop Opera!

Performed in Spanish with English supertitles.

Presented by the TJMTC Mexican Youth Theatre Company. For more info about TJMTC, please visit www.tjmtc.org

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Oct. 8, 8pm; Oct. 9, 1pm; Oct. 11, 8pm; Oct. 12, 1pm

 

Cross That River

Music, Lyrics and Story by Allan Harris; Book by Andrew Carl Wilk 

The unsettled West of the 1860’s provides a new life and new dreams for Blue, a run-away slave, who escapes to Texas to become one of America’s first Black Cowboys. This compelling tale of freedom blends old-fashioned storytelling with an infectious score that ranges from country and bluegrass to soul, blues and rock gospel in a sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous chronicle of hardship and enduring perseverance.

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 12, 8pm; Oct. 13, 1pm; Oct. 14, 4:30pm; Oct. 16, 8pm; Oct. 17, 1pm; Oct. 18, 4:30pm

 

The Cure

Book, Music, and Lyrics by Mark Weiser 

In this rock and roll fable, two friends set out for a night of revelry and stumble across the world’s last surviving vampires. Offered the chance to live forever, one man is seduced while the other barely escapes with his life, setting in motion an even greater fight for survival.  At the crossroads of humanity and immortality, lies…The Cure.

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Sept. 29, 8pm; Oct. 2, 10:30pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 6, 8pm; Oct. 10, 9pm; Oct. 11, 1pm

 

 

 

Fantasy Football: The Musical?

Book, Music and Lyrics by David Ingber

September 1991, New York City. An unemployed stats geek and a small-time bookie realize that their passion for sports is keeping them from maintaining a job or a girlfriend. Combining forces, they set out to create the ultimate sports fan experience—and, in the process, pull their lives together—in this “bromantic comedy” of a musical.

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 1, 8pm; Oct. 2, 1pm; Oct. 3, 5pm; Oct. 4, 4:30pm; Oct. 4, 8pm; Oct. 8, 8pm

 

Fat Camp

Book by Randy Blair and Timothy Michael Drucker; Music by Matthew roi Berger; Lyrics by Randy Blair 

Nothing is going to make rock-and-roll rebel Robert Grisetti stay at fat camp this summer. That is, except for one ex-Navy Seal father, two suspiciously cheery camp counselors, and a 12-foot barbed wire fence. Visit Camp Overton, a weight loss retreat for hefty teenagers, as secrets, sex, S’mores, and self-image collide in this new musical comedy exploring the trials and tribulations of being “the fat kid.”

Acorn Theatre (410 West 42nd Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 2, 9pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 4, 1pm; Oct. 7, 9pm; Oct. 8, 5pm

 

F#@KING UP EVERYTHING

Book by Sam Forman and David Eric Davis; Music and Lyrics by David Eric Davis

Can Christian Mohammed Schwartzelberg stay true to himself and still get the girl? Or will he lose her to the guy in leather pants? Set against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s indie music scene with a gallery of hipsters, stoners, artists, cougars, songwriters and puppeteers, F#@KING UP EVERYTHING is a rock musical comedy with heart. And ironic t-shirts.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 6, 8pm; Oct. 7, 1pm; Oct. 11, 4:30pm; Oct. 11, 8pm; Oct. 13, 4:30pm; Oct. 16, 8pm

 

Gay Bride of Frankenstein

Book by Dane E. Leeman and Billy Butler; Music and Lyrics by Billy Butler 

A graphic novel comes alive on stage when Edna, Chloe, Harry and Thad stumble in to a night of rock music that can raise the dead! Will the girl get the girl? Never has there been a Halloween love story like this with mystery, magic and a cartoon caper that will scare you silly.

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Sept. 28, 8pm; Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 3, 8pm; Oct. 4, 1pm; Oct. 8, 1pm; Oct. 11, 4:30pm

 

The Happy Embalmer

Book, Music and Lyrics by Mark Noonan and Nick Oddy

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, count to three… Now picture a no-holds-barred steel cage match between Mel Brooks, Bruce Lee, Monty Python & Axl Rose.Wait…What? Edward Nando is a lonely embalmer. Emily is his lost love (unfortunately, she’s dead). But Ed has a special purpose… Enter a pistol-shootin’ Texan madman, a groovy Russian scientist, and one bad-ass Dalai Lama. Oh, yes – all hell is about to break loose.

Acorn Theatre (410 West 42nd Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Oct. 6, 8pm; Oct. 7, 5pm; Oct. 8, 9pm; Oct. 9, 1pm; Oct. 10, 5pm; Oct. 10, 9pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hurricane

Book by Michael Holland and Eric Bernat; Music and Lyrics by Michael Holland

Napatree, Rhode Island, 1938: As the tourist season comes to a close, a young meteorologist’s unconventional prediction of impending disaster goes unheeded by his superiors, resulting in one of New England’s greatest natural catastrophes. With a vibrant score by award-winning songwriter Michael Holland which incorporates elements of Depression-era pop, folk opera, and contemporary song, this epic musical portrait captures an all-but-forgotten moment in American history, one that ultimately emerges as a testament to hope, endurance, rebirth, and survival.

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Sept. 28, 8pm; Oct. 1, 9pm; Oct. 3, 5pm; Oct. 3, 9pm; Oct. 6, 5pm; Oct. 10, 9pm

 

Judas and Me

Book and Lyrics by Chad Beguelin; Music by Matthew Sklar 

It’s tough keeping up with the Joneses when your neighbor’s kid is the Messiah. Consumed by jealousy, Rheba Iscariot pushes her son Judas to be better than Jesus… and we all know how well that turns out. A new musical comedy by the Tony-nominated writing team of Chad Beguelin and Matthew Sklar, Judas and Me is a hilarious look at life with the ultimate biblical stage mom.

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Sept. 28, 8pm; Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 2, 7pm; Oct. 4, 5pm; Oct. 4, 9pm; Oct. 9, 7pm

 

The Last Smoker in America 

Book and Lyrics by Bill Russell; Music by Peter Melnick

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?

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 12, 8pm; Oct. 13, 1pm; Oct. 14, 8pm; Oct. 16, 4:30pm; Oct. 17, 8pm; Oct. 18, 1pm

 

Lighter 

Book, Music and Lyrics by Monica Bauer

What would YOU sacrifice to get a killer body? Two diet-crossed lovers, Connie and Stevie, break up when Connie is humiliated searching for a wedding dress.  Leaving her chubby would-be-hubby, she becomes a national singing weight-loss sensation on satanic Doctor Dan’s show, American Weight Loss Idol. With the help of his nutty friends, can Stevie save Connie before she becomes the ultimate Skinny Bitch?  A love story with a plus-size heart.

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 5, 8pm; Oct. 7, 4:30pm; Oct. 11, 1pm; Oct. 14, 8pm; Oct. 16, 4:30pm; Oct. 17, 8pm

 

Lorenzo

Book by Judd Woldin and Richard Engquist; Music by Judd Woldin; Lyrics by Richard Engquist

Lorenzo DaPonte, libertine and librettist, was driven out of Venice by furious husbands, fled Vienna to escape a furious emperor, and snuck out of London to avoid furious creditors. His spirited rise to fame and subsequent freefall from grace is the stuff of operatic legend. An epic tale befitting Mozart’s most famous collaborator and the true love that saved him in the end.

Acorn Theatre (410 West 42nd Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Oct. 5, 8pm; Oct. 7, 1pm; Oct. 9, 5pm; Oct. 9, 9pm; Oct. 10, 1pm; Oct. 11, 1pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marrying Meg

Book, Music and Lyrics by Mark Robertson

Based on the play The Lass wi the Muckle Mou by Alexander Reid

It’s 1603 and renowned minstrel Thomas the Rhymer has set out to write his masterpiece—a heroic ballad of mortal derring-do. But when he is cursed by the Queen of Elfland with a tongue (and a quill) that cannot lie, and confronted with a world that refuses to play by storybook rules, Thomas’s heroic masterpiece seems determined to remain unwritten in this rollicking Scottish musical comedy.

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Sept. 29, 8pm; Oct. 1, 5pm; Oct. 2, 9pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 4, 4pm; Oct. 6, 9pm

 

Max Understood

Book by Nancy Carlin; Music by Michael Rasbury; Lyrics by Nancy Carlin and Michael Rasbury

After Max escapes the apartment that he shares with his loving but overwhelmed parents, his world will never be the same again. This innovative “sound-scaped” musical is the transformative odyssey of a 7-year old autistic boy, exploring how the need to communicate can bridge an unintelligible chasm. Paving the way is a leaf-blowing philosopher, a string theorist, Pegasus, a mermaid, and all the presidents of the United States.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Sept. 28, 8pm; Oct. 1, 1pm; Oct. 3, 4:30pm; Oct. 3, 8pm; Oct. 4, 1pm; Oct. 7, 8pm

 

Mo Faya

Book and Music by Eric Wainaina

Additional music by Joshua Mwai, Morris Otis Omollo and Helen Akoth Mtawali 

DJ Lwanda’s voice rings out daily on local radio, leading and inspiring the Nairobi community of Kwa Maji. But Anna Mali, an avaricious real estate diva, craves the land beneath their slum. She seduces the fiery young DJ away with a job at a top nationwide station, and organizes a violent campaign to terrorize the people of Kwa Maji. When the government and media turn a blind eye to the decapitated bodies in the streets, DJ Lwanda must return home to expose the truth. But at what cost?

Performed in English with Swahili

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Sept. 29, 8pm; Sept. 30, 4:30pm; Oct. 2, 8pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 7, 8pm; Oct. 11, 8pm

 

My Illustrious Wasteland

Book, Music and Lyrics by Tod Kimbro

Based on a concept by Jason Bowles

Movie stars are sainted, anti-depressants are mandatory, and a tiny computer resides in every good citizen’s brain. Equal parts sci-fi epic, social satire, and high-energy rock show, My Illustrious Wasteland is an exhilarating ride through a wildly imagined future America. Watch as virtual lovers Mogs and Sunny encounter ghoulish tabloid reporters, pushy pop-up windows, terrorist hippies, drug-pushing clergy, and a ruthless Hollywood bad-boy President who presides over his perpetually distracted public.

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Oct. 1, 8pm; Oct. 3, 5pm; Oct. 3, 9pm; Oct. 4, 1pm; Oct. 7, 8pm; Oct. 10, 5pm

 

My Scary Girl

Book and Lyrics by Kyoung-Ae Kang; Music by Will Aronson

Dae-woo’s been saving his first kiss for someone like Mi-Na but is she as perfect as she seems? Things get weird for a naïve professor when he realizes his new girlfriend may be a seductive serial killer. Based on the hit Korean film and featuring the cast of the award-winning Seoul production, this darkly unpredictable romantic comedy knows that love and trust should go hand in hand… even when there’s a severed limb hiding in the kimchi fridge.

Performed in Korean with English supertitles

My Scary Girl is an official selection of the NYMF-DIMF International Production Exchange. For more information about DIMF, please visit www.dimf.or.kr/english

Acorn Theatre (410 West 42nd Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Oct. 1, 8pm; Oct. 2, 1pm; Oct. 3, 5pm; Oct. 3, 9pm; Oct. 4, 5pm; Oct. 4, 9pm

 

Open the Dark Door

Book, Music and Lyrics by David Lefort Nugent 

When the local executioner’s son, Skip, falls in love with the rebellious Luna, he and the other upstanding residents of Mortland, USA are shattered by a crisis of faith. Dangerous family secrets and festive beheadings are the norm in this haunting and darkly comic indie-rock musical examining a town crippled by fear and troubled by its past.

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Oct. 8, 8pm; Oct. 10, 1pm; Oct. 12, 5pm; Oct. 12, 9pm; Oct. 15, 8pm; Oct. 17, 9pm

 

Plagued

Book and Lyrics by Vynnie Meli; Music by Casey L. Filiaci

Cinderella’s daughter Dusty just wants to study science and cure the Plague with the help of Scoop, a flirtatious chronicler, but her grandmother the Queen wants to marry her off to a rich old prince instead. Odds are against Dusty and Scoop, while Cinderella and Prince Charming fight the odds to stay in love. Will a fairy godmother come out of retirement to show them the way out of the Dark Ages?

TBG Theater (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 9, 8pm; Oct. 10, 1pm; Oct. 13, 4:30pm; Oct. 14, 1pm; Oct. 15, 8pm; Oct. 18, 1pm

 

Rainbow Around the Sun

Music and lyrics by Matthew Alvin Brown; Book and additional lyrics by Tom Stuart

Local rock hero Zachary Blasto struggles with personal demons as he relives both painful and joyous memories during a radio retrospective of his career. Based on the album and film of the same name, prog-rock concert meets musical theatre in this fast-paced dissection of broken hearts, life through a liquor bottle, and rebirth through loss.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 5, 8pm; Oct. 7, 4:30pm; Oct. 10, 8pm; Oct. 11, 1pm; Oct. 13, 8pm; Oct. 17, 4:30pm

 

Seeing Stars

Book by Shelley McPherson; Music by Don Breithaupt; Lyrics by Jeff Breithaupt

Eddie “Bare Knuckles” McSorley and “Gentleman” Joe Sullivan are two rival boxers in love with Jean, a feisty reporter, in this tough and tender original musical set in Hell’s Kitchen in the ’30s. A black-and-blue romance with a bruising climax and a colorful cast of pugs, thugs, and dames, Seeing Stars explores the world of “boys being boys” and the women who love them.

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Oct. 7, 8pm; Oct. 10, 5pm; Oct. 11, 4pm; Oct. 13, 9pm; Oct. 16, 9pm; Oct. 17, 1pm

 

Street Lights

Book by Joe Drymala and Akin Salawu; Music and Lyrics by Joe Drymala

Monique is going to be the next Alicia Keys. Her brother is on track to be bigger than Thurgood Marshall. But none of this matters when their world is filled with violence, apathy, and broken promises. Can they keep faith when there’s no reason for hope? From writer/composer Joe Drymala and director Ryan J. Davis, the creators of the Broadway-bound 2006 NYMF hit White Noise, comes Street Lights, mixing pop, R&B and hip-hop to crank up the volume on the voice of a new generation saying yes, we can.

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Oct. 13, 8pm; Oct. 14, 8pm; Oct. 16, 7pm; Oct. 17, 1pm; Oct. 17, 5pm; Oct. 18, 1pm

 

The Toymaker

Book, Music and Lyrics by Bryan Putnam

When Sarah’s marriage falls apart after two failed pregnancies, stories of a childless toy maker of the past propel her on a desperate search that spans the globe and time itself. In this tale of enduring passion and hope, Sarah’s quest to find a missing toy and solve the mysteries of a village destroyed by war lead her to a destiny of fulfillment she once thought impossible.

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Oct. 5, 8pm; Oct. 6, 1pm; Oct. 12, 9pm; Oct. 13, 1pm; Oct. 17, 9pm; Oct. 18, 4pm

 

Under Fire

Book and Lyrics by Barry Harman; Music by Grant Sturiale

Set in the late 1970s during the bloody revolution in El Mirador, a Central American country lies

under the heel of the ruthless dictator Tacho. Russell Price, a young American photojournalist, is swept up in the maelstrom and embarks on a search for the mysterious rebel leader Rafael—whom no one has ever photographed. As Price makes his way into the heart of darkness, he encounters people working on both sides of the struggle, all with different and shadowy agendas…

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 1, 1pm; Oct. 4, 8pm; Oct. 9, 9pm; Oct. 10, 1pm; Oct. 12, 5pm

 

Whatever Man

Book, Music and Lyrics by Benjamin Strouse

Charlie Weiss, an un-lovable loser, is stuck in his miserable life. But everything changes after Anna, his strong-willed girlfriend, forces him into a self-help group where Charlie encounters disturbed superheroes desperate to stick him with their troubles. When their petty squabbles escalate, will Charlie choose to save the world, his relationship or himself? Whatever Man. 

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Sept. 29, 8pm; Sept. 30, 1pm; Oct. 2, 7:30pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 4, 8pm; Oct. 8, 1pm

 

 

DANCE SERIES

 

Andy Warhol Was Right

Concept by Melinda Atwood, Sammy Buck, Dan Acquisto, Daryl Gray, and Shea Sullivan

Book by Sammy Buck; Music by Dan Acquisto

Directed by Giovanna Sardelli; Choregraphed by Daryl Gray, Darren Lee, and Shea Sullivan

Fame. Some want it. Some get it. And some reject it. Andy Warhol predicted it: everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes. Andy welcomes you into his world of pop art, dance, music, film and fleeting celebrity, as three different stories come together at a party that travels from The Factory scene of the 60’s to today’s world of reality TV and YouTube.

A Born at NYMF Commission

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center (248 West 60th Street, between Amsterdam & 11^th Avenues)

Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 1, 1pm; Oct. 2, 3pm; Oct. 3, 1pm; Oct. 3, 8pm

 

Encore

Concept by Daniel Gwirtzman; Music by Various Artists

Directed and Choreographed by Daniel Gwirtzman

A troupe of Broadway dancers prepares to go on the road under the pressure of a fastidious and demanding choreographer.  During their final rehearsal, the cast goes through the paces of one show-stopping number after another – set to classic jazz recordings – working through the uncertainty, headaches and hilarity of the intense process of making art, and raising the age-old question: will the show come together?

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center (248 West 60th Street, between Amsterdam & 11th Avenues)

Oct. 1, 8pm; Oct. 2, 8pm; Oct. 3, 4:30pm

 

Special Events, Concerts & Readings

 

Count To Ten

Book by Michael Blevins; Lyrics by Michael Blevins and Beth Clary;

Music by Michael Blevins, Scott Knipe, Bruce Sacks and David Wollenberger

A tap-dancing writer’s Broadway ambitions are thwarted because his new musical lacks a real love story. Forced to develop the show at a performing arts camp full of spoiled, rich, and (in some cases) neglected stars of tomorrow, he finds he can no longer dance around his issues and learns to open up his heart. A cross-generational, all-dancing, upbeat musical everyone can “tap” into!

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Oct. 15, 8pm; Oct. 16, 1pm; Oct. 17, 5pm

 

Deep Cover

Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael Wolk

There’s love, laughter, rock ‘n’ roll and murder on Bleecker Street! Rex Ryan is a has-been rocker with a struggling bar and a volatile romance with Broadway and cabaret veteran Melody Reinhart. One night, a young, talented singer walks in, igniting long dead hopes and passions. But with her comes a hustler who sees Rex as his ticket to the big time. For the scheme to succeed, though, Rex must die…

Sweet Caroline’s (322 W. 45^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues)

Oct 12, 8:30pm; Oct 15, 8:30pm; Oct 16, 8:30pm; Oct 17, 2pm; Oct 17 6pm

 

The Greenwood Tree

Music and concept by Will Reynolds; Text by Shakespeare

Sparks fly when a brilliant young poet falls victim to Puck’s notorious flower and enters a love triangle with his songwriting best friend and a beautiful woman named Sylvia. With the passion and poetry of Shakespeare’s sonnets and a soaring, acoustic score, bask under The Greenwood Tree and savor a modern love story laced with classical seduction.

A NYMF Concert Presentation

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Sept. 30, 8pm; Oct. 2, 4:30pm

 

Letters To Daddy, Jr. 

Book by Jill Jaysen; Music and Lyrics by Mark Shepard; Conceived and Developed by 4e Productions 

Mr. Turner, an English teacher at Lincoln Elementary, has given his students an assignment to write letters about something unfair in their lives. When his 10-year-old daughter, Caroline gets into a fight with Billy the bully, she receives the ultimate “unfair” treatment – she’s grounded! Sent to her father’s study as punishment, she discovers the folder of letters. As they come to life in this whimsical musical, everyone grows and learns to get along, transforming an awful day into an awesome one!

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center (248 West 60th Street, between Amsterdam & 11th Avenues)

Oct. 4, 1pm; Oct. 4, 4pm

 

Liberty

Book and Lyrics by Dana Leslie Goldstein; Music by Jonathan Goldstein

A beautiful, French immigrant arrives in New York Harbor. There’s something different about her, something larger than life.  It’s the age of optimism, but there’s a recession going on, and immigration is a hot-button issue. Can the arrival of Liberty really solve anything? There are powerful political forces working against her, and a precious few who see her potential. Can Liberty’s friends keep her from being deported? Maybe even put her on a pedestal?  See for yourself. You’ll never look at Liberty the same way again.

A NYMF Concert Presentation

Acorn Theatre Acorn Theatre (410 West 42nd Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues)

Sept. 29, 8pm

 

Live! Nude! Girl!

Book and Lyrics by Donna Kaz; Music by Wayne Barker

What if a 1950’s Midwestern housewife got so sick of making meatloaf every Tuesday night that she snapped and ran away to Las Vegas?  What if her mother could drink like Dean and her daughter could entertain like Sammy? And what if this housewife went from the silent and submissive bottom to the tough, impulsive and calculated top of the heap?  Live! Nude! Girl! tells the story of a once-in-a-lifetime chance to break out of a rut into something original and cool.

A NYMF Developmental Series Reading Presentation

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 15, 1pm; Oct. 15, 4:30pm

 

 

Moisty the Snowman Saves Christmas

Book and Lyrics by Bradford Scobie, Music by Bradford Scobie and Christian Dyas

This kiddy show for adults is the naughty little fairy tale of how one filthy and flamboyant New York snowman saves Christmas.  Join Moisty and all his friends – a homeboy elf, a lesbian rag-doll, and the Baby Jesus – as they struggle to save Christmas from the witchy and glamorous Mayor Bloomburger-Meisterburger.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 8, 8pm; Oct. 9, 11pm; Oct. 10, 11pm

 

Nightingale and the Satin Woman

Book by William Kotzwinkle and Elizabeth Gundy; Music and Lyrics by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Based on the book Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman
Pursued by Scotland Yard, the WWI hero-turned-smuggler Nightingale and his alluring companion, The Satin Woman, hunt for an elusive Golden Caterpillar which brings its possessor untold wealth. But they are not the only ones seeking it – so are the master criminals Gospodinoff and Chang! From London to Cairo, Istanbul to India, China to Buenos Aires, intrigue, double-crosses, romance, and anthropomorphic creatures abound. This sensual and surreal tale features a score by the legendary Leiber and Stoller.

A NYMF Developmental Series Reading Presentation

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Oct. 2, 1pm; Oct. 2, 5pm

 

One Night Stand

By Quinn Beswick, Adam Cochran, Kobi Libii, Samantha Martin, Josh Margolin,

Jonah Platt, Mollie Taxe, and Andrew Resnick

A completely improvised hour-long musical! Using an audience-suggested title, everything is made up on the spot without ANY writing or planning, including the music, the lyrics, the singing melodies, the characters, the choreography, the plot, the dialogue and anything else you can think of. Fun for all ages!

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues) 

Oct. 9, 10:30pm; Oct. 11, 9pm

 

Punk Princess

Book and Lyrics by Yasmine Lever; Music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald

When rebellious blue blood Clare can’t get accepted into the early ‘80s London post-punk music scene, she escapes to Manhattan with American hustler Andy. Together, they reinvent her past as a “Watford slumdog” and launch Clare into musical stardom. But as things spiral out of control, she risks losing everything when Andy finally threatens to expose the Punk Princess’s true roots.

A NYMF Developmental Series Reading Presentation

Theatre St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Oct. 14, 4pm; Oct. 14, 8pm

 

Rated RSO: The Music and Lyrics of Ryan Scott Oliver

Multi-award winning composer and lyricist Ryan Scott Oliver brings sexy schoolteachers, provocative rent-boys, obsessive homicidal teenagers, and fairy dust to rock out at NYMF! Directed by Travis Greisler, this concert features a ridiculous cast of talent from Broadway to L.A., singing their faces off to Ryan’s eclectic work. Ryan is the recipient of the 2008 Richard Rodgers Award and the 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant, a 2009 MAC nominee and the composer of Mrs. Sharp (recently featured at Playwrights Horizons, starring Jane Krakowski). Rated RSO sold out when it played Joe’s Pub in May so don’t miss it this time around!

American Theatre of Actors – Chernuchin Theatre (314 West 54th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Oct. 5, 7pm; Oct. 5, 9:30pm

 

 

R.R.R.E.D: A Secret Musical
Book by Adam Jackman, Katie Thompson and Patrick Livingston;

Music and Lyrics by Katie Thompson 
In the Year 2005, the Oxford Hair Foundation predicted that due to the rampant intermixing of the population, the recessive gene which causes red hair would be extinct by the year 2100. Today, redheads have taken matters into their own hands. A world without redheads is no kind of world they are going to let happen, and if heads have to roll, well, they sure as hell won’t be red… heads.

45th Street Theater (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Oct. 1, 8pm; Oct. 2, 1pm; Oct. 2, 11pm; Oct. 3, 11pm

 

 

Educational Series

Triple Threats: Writers Who Write Book, Music AND Lyrics

Moderator: Peter Filichia (TheaterMania, Newark Star-Ledger)

Guests: Michael John LaChiusa, Monica Bauer (Lighter, NYMF ’09),

Bryan Putnam (The Toymaker, NYMF ’09)

It’s tough enough to compose a perfect score, write profound lyrics or create a captivating book, but to do all three is the mark of true talent. Forget the actor/singer/dancer, without these triple threat writers, there would be no show! Join us as we talk with some of theater’s most prominent writers, who’ll let us in on the joys and struggles of the demanding yet rewarding job of composer, lyricist and librettist.

Barnes & Noble (1972 Broadway) 

Oct. 1, 5pm

 

Showtunes in Translation: The Global Appeal of Musicals

Moderator: Michael A. Kerker (Director of Musical Theatre, ASCAP)

Guests: Joe DiPietro, Mark Hollmann, Will Aronson and Kyoung-Ae Kang (My Scary Girl, NYMF ’09), and Eric Wainaina (Mo Faya, NYMF ’09)

It’s the 21^st Century and it seems to be a small world after all. People on every continent are connected by the World Wide Web, cell phones, film, television, and…musical theatre? From Avenue Q in Sweden to Dreamgirls in Seoul, Broadway isn’t limited to Broadway anymore. Come learn about the differences and similarities between various productions around the globe, NYMF’s own international shows, and why people from all over the world share a universal love for the musical.

Barnes & Noble (1972 Broadway) 

Oct. 8, 5pm

 

Next to Normal: A Journey from NYMF to Broadway

Moderator: Isaac Robert Hurwitz (Executive Director & Producer, NYMF)

Guests: Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal)

The hit musical Next To Normal has taken Broadway by storm, but the road to success has not always been easy for creators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. After numerous revisions and workshops, Next To Normal has evolved into the heart-wrenching story of a dysfunctional suburban family struggling in the face of psychological illness, love and loss. Join the Tony-award winning team in an exclusive interview discussing Next To Normal’s journey from a bold idea to a Broadway smash.

Barnes & Noble (1972 Broadway) 

Oct. 15, 5pm

 

NYMF @ NITE

In Therapy With Celine

Book by Evan Storey; Featuring the Music of Celine Dion
Join in the hilarity of a 50-minute therapy session of woe and heartache with a sex-starved head case (played by Christina Cataldo) belting hits such as “All By myself,” “I Drove All Night,” “The Power of Love,” “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” and many, many more.
Sweet Caroline’s (322 W. 45^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues)

Oct 13, 8:30pm

TICKETS: $15 plus a 1-drink minimum

 

 

Sing, But Don’t Tell

Words by Sam Carner; Music by Derek Gregor; Directed by Igor Goldin
Irreverent, soulful, and insightful, Sing, But Don’t Tell explores the many eccentricities of isolation and connection in the modern city. An evening of original songs by Carner and Gregor and directed by Igor Goldin (Unlock’d, NYMF 2007 – “Best In Fest,” Talkin’ Broadway “Best Original Theatrical Score” and “Best Musical”), Sing, But Don’t Tell combines glorious harmonies and musical comedy with elements of progressive rock to weave together the musical stories of five New Yorkers, as they struggle to break habits, get out of ruts, and shed their urban armor.
Sweet Caroline’s (322 W. 45^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues)

Oct 18, 6pm

TICKETS: $15 plus a 1-drink minimum

 

 

ROOMS Album Launch Party

Straight from its critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run at New World Stages, we bring you the ROOMS A Rock Romance album promo party. Enjoy live performances of songs from ROOMS and hear tracks from the forthcoming Time-Life cast album. ROOMS features music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman (Bright Lights Big City) and book by Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon.  www.RoomsMusical.com

Sweet Caroline’s (322 W. 45^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues

Oct 14, 8:30pm

TICKETS: $20

 

NYMF Sixth Anniversary Season Opening Night Celebration
As the lights come up on new musicals with the start of the festival, there is no better way to celebrate than with a party! Dance the night away with the NYMF family at our opening night bash and meet the casts and creative teams of this year’s shows!
Touch (240 West 52^nd Street between Broadway and 8^th Avenue)

Sept 28, 9pm

TICKETS: Free for NYMF Members and Patrons

NYMF Closing Night
Hoist a glass or three as we toast an unforgettable three weeks of new musicals at our free closing night party. The 2009 festival may be ending but the fun lives on as you mingle with new friends and old.

Sweet Caroline’s (322 W. 45^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues)

Oct 18, 8:30pm

TICKETS: Free for NYMF Members and Patrons

 

 

Partner Events 

 

ARGENTINA passionate!

Created and Directed by Roi “Bubi” Escudero

Performed and Choreographed by Rubén Celiberti

ARGENTINA passionate! is an intrinsic, sensual and passionate musical spectacle embodied in a multimedia performance-art piece interpreting Astor Piazzolla, Carlos Gardel and other Argentinean legends and featuring Andy Chmelko, Jennifer Loryn, and La Banda Argentina. It reflects the Argentine idiosyncrasy through its culture, music, dance and its zest of life. Through a series of tableaux and connected musical vignettes, the audience will discover and explore an Argentina beyond Tango.

ATA – Beckmann Theatre (314 West 54^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues)

Oct  5, 9:30pm; Oct 6, 9:30pm; Oct 7, 9:30pm

TICKETS: $15

 

 

Jim Caruso’s Cast Party

Jim Caruso’s Cast Party, the wildly popular weekly soiree, brings a sprinkling of Broadway glitz and glamour to the legendary Birdland in New York City.  Every Monday night showbiz superstars hit the stage alongside up-and-comers, creating an impromptu variety show with jaw-dropping music and general razzle-dazzle.  The buoyant, sharp and charming Caruso guides the entire affair, and the audience is invited to participate in the musical fun.  It’s the party that would happen if somehow David Letterman and Ed Sullivan threw a hip house party around a nine-foot concert grand piano.  CBS-TV called it “Extreme Open Mic!”  For more information, go to www.CastPartyNYC.com.

Birdland (315 West 44^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues) 

WHEN: September 28, October 5, and October 12 at 9:30pm

TICKETS: $10 cover plus a 1-drink minimum

 

 

Musicals on Television

As part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, The Paley Center for Media will screen a sampler of musicals written exclusively for television including The Bachelor (1956), starring Hal March, Jayne Mansfield, Julie Wilson, and Carol Haney, with music and lyrics by Steve Allen (plus additional songs by Ervin Drake); Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1958), starring Tab Hunter, Dick Button, Carmen Mathews, and Peggy King, with music and lyrics by Hugh Martin; and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966), with an all-star cast including Jimmy Durante, Nanette Fabray, Jack Palance, Ricardo Montalban, Tom & Dick Smothers, and Agnes Moorehead, and music by Moose Charlap and lyrics by Elsie Simmons. In addition, the Paley Center will also screen the 1967 television adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, starring Robert Goulet, Pernell Roberts, and Patricia Neway.

SCHEDULE:

Saturday, October 10 at 1 p.m.         The Bachelor (“The Sunday Spectacular,” 1956)

Saturday, October 10 at 3 p.m.         Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates  (“Hallmark Hall of Fame,” 1958)

Sunday, October 11 at 1 p.m.            Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966)

Sunday, October 11 at 3 p.m.            Carousel  (“Armstrong Circle Theatre,” 1967)

The Paley Center for Media (25 W. 52^nd Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues)

TICKETS: Suggested donation: $10, $8 for seniors and students, $5 for children under 14

(212) 621-6600; www.paleycenter.org

 

 

GIRLS NIGHT Extended!

Girls Night: The Musical


EXTENDS AGAIN! NOW TO OCTOBER 4th!

NEW BATCH OF TICKETS NOW ON SALE

 

“So ladies, get on a train, bus and if you drive, make sure you have a designated driver to see the hit show Girls Night The Musical!”  

- Stewart Lewis, WCBS 880

 

“Well if you’re a female and are looking to have an irreverent good time, this off the wall show, about five gals waiting to celebrate the engagement of one of their daughters, is loads of fun. The night I went every seat was taken – mostly by women by the way – and everyone was having a fantastic time dancing, swaying and drinking (yes there’s a bar in the back which gets a lot of traffic) to the performers singing to all the music you ever loved including “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “I Am What I Am,” “It’s Raining Men” and “We Are Family.” The cast is super and everyone I talked to, including two or three men who ventured in, had the time of their lives. Girls Night is great fun.” 

- David Richardson, WOR Radio

 

Entertainment Event Productions today announced that the Off-Broadway premiere of the smash UK hit GIRLS NIGHT: THE MUSICAL, written by Louise Roche and directed by Jack Randle, will continue through October 4th. Performances began June 2^nd, and was scheduled for a limited engagement runs through July 26^th at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre at Sofia’s (227 West 46th Street, next to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre).

Girls Night: The Musical has earned rave reviews playing packed houses throughout the United Kingdom since 2003.  It premiered in the US in May 2007 and has toured across the country since then. It has been described as “’Desperate Housewives’ meets Mamma Mia!” (Applause Magazine), “a boisterous, bust-out, bawdy musical revue” (Wisconsin State Journal),  “An infectious, exhilarating sense of intoxication!” (Hollywood Reporter) and “As funny and outrageous as ‘Sex and the City’!” (The Advocate).

Hilarious and touching, Girls Night: The Musical follows five friends in their 30s and 40s during a wild and outrageous girls night out at a karaoke bar. Friends since their teens, they have all had their fair share of heartache and tragedy, joy and success. Among the characters are Carol the party girl, blunt Anita who tells it like it is, Liza with her marital (and eating) issues, boring Kate the designated driver, and Sharon, the not-so-angelic angel who just couldn’t resist tagging along.  Together, they reminisce about their younger days, celebrate their current lives and look to the future, all the while belting out an array of classic anthems such as “I Will Survive,” “Lady Marmalade,” “It’s Raining Men,” “Man I Feel Like a Woman,” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

The Off-Broadway premiere marks the latest chapter in Girls Night’s meteoric rise from an idea in a Milton Keynes’ mom’s kitchen, through a community production, medium scale tour and culminating in 2006 in an extensive National Tour starring Lucy Speed (“EastEnders”) and Gwyneth Strong (“Only Fools and Horses”). The story behind Girls Night is an inspiration to any writer still waiting for their big break.  One night, four years ago, Louise Roche, a mother of three children under five, went out with a group of friends to see a musical.  She looked around the theatre, saw that the audience was mostly women and thought “I could do this…I could write a show that lots of women will enjoy watching.” So she did.  She went home and wrote her first play, Girls Night, a musical comedy about a group of friends who relive the past on a wild night out at a karaoke club! She put it on with some of her friends at the local community theatre.  Five old friends from school did the acting. She got a woman that she met at her daughter’s playgroup to design the posters and the set.  Her mom did the costumes and she dressed the auditorium up like a nightclub herself.  It sold out its entire run and gained legendary status in the area.  One audience member claimed that it made her laugh so hard that her Tampax fell out! Bolstered by this success, she hired the much bigger Milton Keynes Theatre to mount a spectacular performance of Girls Night.  Not one to do things by halves, our heroic housewife put her money where her mouth was and ploughed her life savings of £10,000.00 into the show.  Every one of the fourteen hundred seats in the building sold and she made back just over £10,000.00. Since then, Girls Night has gone from success to success.

Performances are Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday through Friday evenings at 8PM, Saturday at 5 PM, and Sunday at 3 PM.  Tickets for all performances will be $55 and may be purchased online at www.girlsnightthemusical.com or by phone at 212/947-9300.

Kristen Johnston & Anna Chlumsky Star in SO HELP ME GOD!

 

Drama Desk Award-Winning Mint Theater

Presents

So Help Me God!

by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Directed by Martin Platt

At the Lucille Lortel Theatre

Featuring Kristen Johnston & Anna Chlumsky

 

Mint Theater Company will present its second offering of the season, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins, (the author of Chicago, the play upon which the musical is based), at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street), beginning November 18^th, with opening night set for December 3^rd.  Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in “3rd Rock from the Sun,” will perform the role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy, played by Anna Chlumsky (My Girl films).  Watkins’s play was written 20 years before All About Eve.

Martin Platt directs a cast that includes, in addition to Ms. Johnston and Ms. Chlumsky, Brad Bellamy, Catherine Curtin, Amy Fitts, Jeremy Lawrence, Ned Noyes, Kevin O’Donnell, John G. Preston, Allen Lewis Rickman, Kraig Swartz, Peter Van Wagner, Matthew Waterson, Margot White, and John Windsor-Cunningham. Scenic design will be by Bill Clarke, with costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Robert Wierzel, and sound design by Jane Shaw.

This past June, the Mint presented a one-night reading of So Help Me God! starring two-time Emmy Award-winner Kristen Johnston, which demonstrated that this lost work deserved a full production.  Ms. Johnston will reprise her role as Lily Darnley, “the star to whom all wagons are hitched,” as the author describes her.

For this one production Mint will venture out of the W. 43rd St. space that has been its home for more than 15 years, to the Lucille Lortel Theater in the Village, which has a larger stage and twice the seating capacity.  Mint artistic director Jonathan Bank says, “With its rich history and wonderful theatrical atmosphere the Lucille Lortel Theater is the perfect setting for this play about a classic (not classy) Broadway diva.” 

Maurine Dallas Watkins (1896-1969) remains a mysterious figure.  She was a successful journalist, a Broadway playwright, and the screenwriter of Oscar-nominated films, but much of her story is unknown.  There is no critical biography of her life, no definitive collection of her work.  Part of this neglect is Watkins’ own doing.  She avoided publicity. Watkins faded into obscurity in the 1940s.  In her later years, She developed a disfiguring facial cancer and by 1968 was reclusive, leaving her apartment only when heavily veiled. She became a born-again Christian and left her fortune of over $2.3 million to found contests and chairs in classical and biblical Greek at a number of universities. Watkins died a recluse in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969.

Early in her career, when promoting her plays, Watkins did give interviews, but they were perfunctory, not revelatory. In them, she recalled her origins in details as angelically vague as the fake past cooked up for Chicago’s murderous heroine, Roxie Hart. In Watkins’ play, tough-talking Roxie gains sympathy by posing as a poor, convent-educated orphan girl.  Similarly, Watkins, a ruthless crime reporter and writer of shocking plays, was portrayed as a bewildered innocent who accidentally wound up famous.  Watkins stressed her strict upbringing as a minster’s daughter in genteel Louisville, Kentucky.  She dressed modestly, refused to bob her hair, never drank, and never swore.

To all outward appearances, she was the antithesis of the hard-boiled heroines she created.  One reporter observed, “To see Miss Watkins, whose beauty is fresh and sweet as a primrose, one wonders how she ever accumulated the mass of profanity less loose in her play.”  (In fact, Watkins did not provide the profanity in Chicago—or in So Help Me God! Her original manuscript is peppered with “blankety-blanks” which were filled in by the director.)

Watkins aspired to be a playwright since her early 20’s, when she moved to Chicago in hopes of writing plays for celebrated touring actor, Leo Dietrichstein.  When Dietrichstein and his wife went on tour to Europe, she was out of a job prospect.  She applied to work at the Tribune, and wound up covering murders. Her big break came covering the Leopold and Loeb murder case.  She was first reporter granted an interview with the accused, and the only reporter to cover the funeral of the murder victim, Bobby Franks.

After eight months covering murders, Watkins wanted a change of scene. She moved to New York as a drama/motion picture critic.  She also enrolled in George Pierce Baker’s prestigious 47 Workshop at Yale University. Baker’s workshop trained playwrights who would transform the landscape of twentieth century American drama.  Alumni included Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, and George Abbott (who would later director Watkins’ Chicago on Broadway).

For her first year assignment at the workshop, Watkins began writing a play about the murder trials she had covered.  She called it Play Ball, but the title was later changed to Chicago.  Baker gave it a grade of 98%—the highest ever given at the workshop up to that time—and produced it at New Haven’s Shubert Theater.  Its gritty, profanity-laden seriocomic expose of American justice stirred a succes de scandale, and the play transferred to Broadway in 1926.

In early 1929, she wrote a backstage comedy, So Help Me God! which was promptly optioned for production.  At some point in rehearsals, the title was changed to An Old-Fashioned Girl.  It was headed for Broadway in late October 1929, starring Helen MacKellar as Lily Darnley and Sylvia Sydney as Kerry.  Prior to Broadway, it played the “Subway Circuit” in Brooklyn and Queens, then a popular option for “out-of-town” try-outs. An Old-Fashioned Girl played out its week-long Brooklyn run, closing on October 14.  It then moved on to Jackson Heights, and it was slated to open on Broadway on October 28.

Mysteriously, on October 16, a notice appeared in The New York Times that the comedy was being “withdrawn for revision on Saturday night.”  Days later, on October 24, the stock market crash began, escalating to the “Black Tuesday” disaster of October 29.  The Great Depression had begun, and any Broadway hopes for An Old-Fashioned Girl were dashed. Watkins never made the intended revisions.  She was already working as a screenwriter, and after the stock market crash she wrote almost exclusively for films.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, Watkins wrote at least 19 Hollywood screenplays including Libeled Lady (nominated for Best Picture in 1936), Up The River (directed by John Ford and starring Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart in their debuts), No Man Of Her Own (starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard), Professional Sweetheart, and Roxie Hart (her own film adaptation of Chicago) starring Ginger Rogers.

Kristen Johnston has appeared on and off-Broadway in The Women, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Skin of Our Teeth. Anna Chlumsky’s NY stage credits include Unconditional (LAByrinth Theater Company), and The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero (DR2), among others. Her films include In The Loop, Blood Car, My Girl 1 & 2, as well as the upcoming My Sweet Misery and Eavesdrop.

Mint Theater Company, “that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past” (Village Voice), has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992. The Mint was awarded an Obie for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition.”  Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for “Unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.”  

The Lucille Lortel Theater is located at 121 Christopher Street. Performances for So Help Me God! will be Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55. To purchase tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200.

 

Visit www.minttheater.org         

 

 

ZERO HOUR, Written by and Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel, Directed by Piper Laurie,To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere

ZERO HOUR,

Written by and Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel,

Directed by Piper Laurie,

To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere

To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere At The Theatre at St. Clement’s

Performances Begin November 14^th With Opening Night Set For November 22^nd

 

ZERO HOUR, Jim Brochu’s award-winning play about the life of theatre legend Zero Mostel will make its Off-Broadway premiere at Theatre at Saint Clement’s (423 West 46^th Street) beginning Saturday. November 14^th.  Produced by Kurt Peterson and Edmund Gaynes in association with The Peccadillo Theater Company, the show will have its Opening Night on Sunday, November 22^nd at 7 p.m.  The limited engagement of ZERO HOUR will continue through January 31^st.

Three-time Academy Award nominee Piper Laurie directs the production which has played enormously successful engagements in Washington DC, San Francisco, Houston, and a 16-week sold-out run in South Florida which garnered Brochu the 2009 Carbonell Award as Best Actor in a Play.  ZERO HOUR, originally produced in Los Angeles, received the LA Stage Ovation Award for Best New Play.

Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel, ZERO HOUR is set at Mostel’s West 28^th Street painting studio where a naïve reporter attempts to interview the famously volatile actor, prompting an explosion of memory, humor, outrage, and juicy backstage lore.  It is July 1977 and the actor is giving his final interview before leaving for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Merchant in Philadelphia.  Mostel only played one performance as Shylock before his sudden death at the age of 62.

ZERO HOUR traces Mostel’s early days growing up on the Lower East Side as the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, through his rise as a stand-up comedian, from the Borscht Belt to Manhattan’s most exclusive supper clubs, and from the devastation of the blacklist to his greatest Broadway triumphs, most notably as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and working through his love-hate relationship with Jerome Robbins.

Brochu has said, “Zero had a great influence on my life and I was fortunate to get to know him when I was first starting out.  His life was filled with great laughter, great drama and great life lessons for all of us. Few people in show business had more obstacles to overcome than Zero Mostel.  He was disowned by his own parents, by his profession and even by his own country.”

With partner, composer Steve Schalchlin, Jim Brochu penned the award-winning Off-Broadway musicals The Last Session and The Big Voice: God or Merman?  In addition to his theatrical work, Brochu’s acting credits also include appearances on “All My Children,” “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Cheers,” “Wings,” and “Bram and Alice.”

Piper Laurie has appeared on stage in Mornings at Seven (Lincoln Center Theatre), as Laura in The Glass Menagerie with Maureen Stapleton; Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me; Molly Kazan’s Rosemary and the Alligators; William Luce’s one-person play, The Last Flapper about as Zelda Fitzgerald; Twelfth Night, Macbeth and The Cherry Orchard, among many others. She received Oscar nominations for The Hustler opposite Paul Newman as well as the fanatical mother in Carrie, and Mrs. Norman in Children of a Lesser God. She was nominated for an Emmy for the original live TV broadcast of Days of Wine & Roses, directed by John Frankenheimer and won the Emmy for “Promise” and the Golden Globe for her work on  “Twin Peaks.”  She has starred in over 60 films, including Tim opposite Mel Gibson and Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp. Piper wrote and directed her first film, Property and recently filmed Hesher with Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Zero Mostel was nominated for a Tony Award for his work in Ulysses in Nighttown and won Tonys for his performances in Fiddler on the Roof, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Rhinoceros.  His film credits include The Front, Rhinoceros, The Hot Rock, The Great Bank Robbery, The Producers, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Performances of ZERO HOUR will be Monday at 7 pm, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m., with matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Theatre at Saint Clement’s, 423 West 46^th Street (between Ninth & Tenth Ave.)  Tickets are $35 and $55 and are available through Telecharge.com 212-239-6200. For more information, visit www.ZeroHourShow.com.

 

ZERO HOUR TO HOST “SURVIVORS OF THE BLACKLIST: A PANEL DISCUSSION”

ZERO HOUR 

TO HOST FREE SPECIAL EVENT:

“SURVIVORS OF THE BLACKLIST: A PANEL DISCUSSION”

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24^th AT THEATRE AT ST. CLEMENT’S

Congressman Jerrold Nadler to Introduce a Panel that Includes Lee Grant, Jules Feiffer, Victor Navasky, Christopher Trumbo, Joe Gilford, Jean Rouverol, and Cliff Carpenter; Robert Osborne (TCM Host) to Moderate

 

ZERO HOUR, Jim Brochu’s award-winning play about the life of theatre legend Zero Mostel, will host ”Survivors of the Blacklist: A Panel Discussion” on Tuesday evening, November 24th at 7 p.m. at Theatre at St. Clement’s (423 West 46th Street).  This very special event is free to the public (reservations strongly suggested).

Following a sneak peek of Zero Hour, performed by Jim Brochu, film historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne will moderate a discussion of the notorious Blacklist among a group of distinguished guests, many of whom were actually blacklisted in the 1950s. Scheduled to appear on the panel are Lee Grant (actor, director), Jules Feiffer (playwright, cartoonist), Victor Navasky (former editor of The Nation, author of Naming Names), Christopher Trumbo (playwright, son of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo), Joe Gilford (playwright, son of Madeline Lee and Jack Gilford), Jean Rouverol (actor, author), and Cliff Carpenter (actor).

The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, US Congressman and senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, will introduce the panel. This historic gathering of those targeted by the blacklist, either directly or by relation, will address many of the issues taken up in Zero Hour, such as who was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and why. The discussion will also focus on the numerous parallels between the communist “witch hunts” of the 1950′s and today’s “war on terror.”

ZERO HOUR will make its Off-Broadway premiere at Theatre at St. Clement’s beginning Saturday, November 14th.  Produced by Kurt Peterson and Edmund Gaynes in association with The Peccadillo Theater Company, the show will have its Opening Night on Sunday, November 22nd.  The limited engagement is set to run through January 31st. Three-time Academy Award nominee Piper Laurie directs ZERO HOUR, which was originally produced in Los Angeles, where it received the Ovation Award for Best New Play.

Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel, ZERO HOUR is set at Mostel’s West 28th Street painting studio where a naïve reporter attempts to interview the famously volatile actor, prompting an explosion of memory, humor, outrage, and juicy backstage lore.  It is July 1977 and the actor is giving his final interview before leaving for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Merchant in Philadelphia.  Mostel only played one performance as Shylock before his sudden death at the age of 62.

ZERO HOUR traces Mostel’s early days growing up on the Lower East Side as the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, through his rise as a stand-up comedian, from the Borscht Belt to Manhattan’s most exclusive supper clubs, and from the devastation of the blacklist to his greatest Broadway triumphs, most notably as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and working through his love-hate relationship with Jerome Robbins.  For more information about Zero Hour, visit www.zerohourshow.com

For reservations to Survivors of the Blacklist: A Panel Discussion, please call 212/633-6533 or e-mail: thepeccadillo@aol.com

Just in Time for the Holidays!

SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM:The Mystery of the Magi’s Gold”

Created By and Starring Maripat Donovan,
Is Coming to NYC 

Entertainment Events Productions will present the long-awaited Off-Broadway premiere of SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM by the creator of the long-running smash hit Late Nite Catechism and starring everyone’s favorite “Sister” Maripat Donovan.  Performances begin Saturday November 28th at The Downstairs Theatre at Sofia’s (227 West 46th Street, next to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre).  Opening Night is December 3rd.

This is the comedy sensation that has been playing to sellout holiday crowds all over the country since 2005.  Written by Maripat Donovan with Marc Silvia and Jane Morris, the limited Off-Broadway engagement of SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM is set to run through January 3rd.
 
It’s “CSI Bethlehem” in this holiday mystery extravaganza as Sister takes on the mystery that has intrigued historians throughout the ages – whatever happened to the Magi’s gold?  Retelling the story of the nativity, as only Sister can, she poses the burning question, “We know what happened to the myrrh and the frankincense – Mary used them as a sort of potpourri. They were in a barn after all. But who was the culprit who made off with the gold coins and left Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus in that lousy stable without any chance to upgrade to a suite?”  Employing her own scientific tools, assisted by a local choir as well as audience members, Sister creates a living nativity unlike any seen before.  With gifts galore and bundles of laughs, SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM is sure to become a must-see holiday tradition.
 
Maripat Donovan was born in Chicago, attended Catholic grammar school and high school on the South Side of Chicago, and Loyola University on the city’s North Side. After working in both her high school and college theater departments, often building and designing sets, she developed her own construction company and renovated houses for a number of years.  In 1985, she returned to theater as an understudy in Portrait of a Shiksa, a role for which she earned a Jeff Citation for Best Supporting Actress. She earned another Jeff Citation for her work in the ensemble of The Good Times Are Killing Me.  In 1993, Maripat created Late Nite Catechism. She also originated the role of Sister in Late Nite Catechism, subsequently starring in the show in London, Dublin, Toronto, and major cities throughout the United States.
 
Performances of SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM will be Tuesdays at 7:30 PM, Wednesday at 2pm and 8 pm, Thursday at 8 PM, Saturday at 5 PM, and Sunday matinees at 3 PM. Tickets will be $55 and may be purchased online at www.entertainmentevents.com or by phone at 212/947-9300.
  

Mint Theater Featured in NY TIMES

December 2, 2009

Waiting 80 Years, Diva Takes a Bow

By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

 

Dramatists have long understood the visceral appeal, and box office draw, of stories about powerful people behaving badly.

As the lead in “So Help Me God!,” a long-forgotten 80-year-old play that opens on Monday at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Kristen Johnston tries not to disappoint. She plays Lily Darnley, a towering figure of the Broadway stage, who chews out her director, shoos her supporting actors into the rain so she can make a private phone call, refuses to read lines that she deems unworthy and bullies her playwright into changing her character from a professor’s wife into a British aristocrat who has her own butler — all because she can.

“I’m going to be a lady, goddamn it, or the whole show can go straight to hell,” she practically growls at the cast.

Producers are banking on the star appeal and comedic talents of Ms. Johnston, a regular on the hit television show “Third Rock From the Sun,” and Anna Chlumsky, the film actress who plays Ms. Darnley’s ambitious understudy, to help sell the play, written in 1929.

But the two Teacup Yorkies who take turns appearing onstage as Ms. Darnley’s prize pooch, Frou-Frou, are named Velma and Roxie — cast in a nod to the actual playwright, Maurine Dallas Watkins, who, roughly three years earlier, had written the much better-known “Chicago.” That 1926 play went on to become a Broadway musical in the 1970s, the current long-running revival and an Oscar-winning movie, built around the fictional foibles of two publicity-hungry murderesses, characters Ms. Watkins named Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart.

“So Help Me God!” faced a far lonelier path to the New York stage. It was originally scheduled to open on Broadway in October 1929. Its backers withdrew the play for revisions and never regrouped once the stock market crashed. Eighty years passed before the play got a second chance through the collaboration of two theatrical veterans. One was Murray Weiss, a businessman who sifted through Ms. Watkins’s papers looking for forgotten gems.

“I figured anyone who wrote the dialogue for ‘Chicago’ must have written other things of note,” said Mr. Weiss, installed last year as the president of Literal Media, a New York company that manages literary rights for authors and their successors.

The other was Jonathan Bank, artistic director of the Mint Theater Company, whom Mr. Weiss sought out because of the Mint’s expertise in reviving lost, neglected and forgotten plays. “This is as forgotten as it comes,” Mr. Bank said of “So Help Me God!” “We’re talking about a play that was never produced successfully and never published. It was just put into a drawer.”

According to Ms. Watkins’s relatives and heirs, the play was one of many scripts, short stories and papers they inherited after her death in 1969, none of which enjoyed the cachet of “Chicago.”

The only child of a Protestant minister, Ms. Watkins grew up in Crawfordsville, Ind., and attended several colleges before landing at Radcliffe, where she pursued, but did not complete, a doctoral degree in the classics.

She made a brief living as a crime reporter for The Chicago Tribune, in which her colorful coverage of two local women accused of murdering loved ones turned the women into media darlings, and both won acquittals. That experience is thought to have shaped the play that Ms. Watkins then turned in as a student of the theater professor George Pierce Baker, a founder of the Yale School of Drama. Her submission earned his highest praise and his help in taking the play to Broadway as “Chicago.”

Now it was Ms. Watkins’s turn in the spotlight. Magazine profiles contrasted the play’s lurid content and cynicism with her staid upbringing, marked by her refusal to type mild curse words into her scripts, her avoidance of alcohol and cigarettes, and her disciplined work habits.

She followed “Chicago” with a play called “Revelry,” which had a brief run on Broadway. Adapted from a novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, it was an irreverent, thinly veiled take on Warren Harding’s administration that raised hackles among some who considered the material unpatriotic. “So Help Me God!” had tryout performances in the fall of 1929 on what was called the subway circuit in Brooklyn and Queens. There it was fine-tuned in anticipation of the Broadway opening that never was.

The play is full of knowing wisecracks about the Broadway stage and its high-strung denizens. Consider, for instance, the stage manager’s comment during one brouhaha that he never takes sides till he knows who’s won. “Saves me a lot trouble,” he explains.

It also contains elements of Ms. Watkins’s improbable odyssey from the Midwest to New York. In pitting Lily Darnley, the globe-trotting sophisticate, against that character’s wide-eyed, Cincinnati-born understudy, Ms. Watkins appears to be projecting aspects of the person she became and the person she had been.

“So Help Me God!” may also have been something of a farewell to Broadway, according to Mr. Bank, who directs the current production. Notations made on old scripts of the play show Ms. Watkins’s address as the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. Mr. Bank theorizes that by the time the show was in tryouts, its creator may already have arranged her affairs to embark on a moderately successful screenwriting career that would occupy her for another decade or so.

Once the Hollywood experience wound down, Ms. Watkins essentially retreated from public life. She spent her last years in Jacksonville, Fla., wearing a veil to conceal a disfiguring disease, her relatives said.

Of the half-dozen finds that Mr. Weiss shared with Mr. Bank, they both agreed that “So Help Me God!” had the most potential because of its themes: society’s obsession with celebrities, the gulf between their public images and private selves, and New York as the ultimate battleground for those seeking fame and fortune.

In addition, Mr. Bank said, he thought Ms. Watkins had “created a character we love to hate”: the diva who is impossible but not mistaken in thinking that her public will continue to follow her every move, no matter how outrageous.

There was a lot that Mr. Weiss and Mr. Bank acknowledge they did not know and are still learning about the play they rescued. For instance, they realized only belatedly that its title had been changed to “An Old Fashioned Girl” in September 1929, which they learned when Peter L. Brown, one of Ms. Watkins’s heirs, attended a preliminary reading of the play in June and brought them marked-up scripts from his own cache.

In adapting the work for modern tastes, Mr. Bank said, he trimmed heavily but never altered the writer’s words. Laugh lines about Mussolini and Calvin Coolidge stayed put. Mr. Bank also left in a reference to George Jean Nathan, a leading drama critic of the early 20th century. Mr. Bank said the name would probably sail over the heads of most theatergoers, but he figured critics might enjoy hearing that one of their own also had some staying power.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

ZERO HOUR Will Move to The DR2 Theatre for An Open-Ended Run

ZERO HOUR,

The Hit New Play Written by and Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel,

Directed by Piper Laurie,

Moves to The DR2 Theatre for An Open-Ended Run

Performances Set to Begin One Day Earlier – February 23rd

Gala Re-Opening Night Set for March 7th

 

ZERO HOUR, Jim Brochu’s acclaimed play about the life of theatre legend Zero Mostel, will begin an open-ended Off-Broadway run at the DR2 Theatre (103 East 15^th Street) beginning February 23^rd, one day earlier than originally planned, with opening night set for March 7th.

“In this solo bioplay directed by Hollywood veteran Piper Laurie, writer and performer Brochu is freakishly convincing as the blustery, brilliant Mostel. It’s more than just the ridiculous comb-over, the bug eyes and the Tevye beard. Brochu seems to have captured the soul of the bombastic clown who could wring laughs out of an audience with a bit of mime or a booming punch line…a funny tribute to a funny man.” – NY1

“Singularly captivating. Zero Hour is a success. Brochu is the spitting image of the bearish Mostel, down to the strands of hair barely covering his head. His wildly expressive gestures are particularly spot on. It brings Mostel back to life, just the way his fans want him.” - The New York Times

“Very funny. Brochu’s living restoration has brought Mostel’s larger-than-life personality back into the spotlight for a laugh-filled, much-welcomed presentation. - Associated Press

“It all flows and provides plenty of big laughs as well as hushed drama. After a while, you stop caring whether a particular line is Brochu’s or Mostel’s; all you know is that you’ve been privy to the work of a great comedian.” - The New Yorker

****(FOUR STARS/Critic’s Pick) “We owe Jim Brochu a debt of gratitude for Zero Hour, an extraordinary act of reincarnation that restores the outsize actor to us in all of his daunting dimensions. From the moment that Brochu spins around to face the audience, he is a Hirschfeld drawing come to pulsing life. You can’t help being swept up in the tornado of energy as Brochu’s star turn conjures forth a Zero larger than life and death.” - Time Out New York

“The rumors of Zero Mostel’s death have apparently been greatly exaggerated. Jim Brochu recalls his subject so uncannily in looks, voice and anarchic spirit that one immediately wants to see him in revivals of Forum and Fiddler. Thirty-two years after Mostel’s untimely death, it’s a pleasure to have him back on the boards.” - New York Post

Three-time Academy Award nominee Piper Laurie directs the production. Starring Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel, ZERO HOUR is set at Mostel’s West 28^th Street painting studio where a naïve reporter attempts to interview the famously volatile actor, prompting an explosion of memory, humor, outrage, and juicy backstage lore.  It is July 1977 and the actor is giving his final interview before leaving for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Merchant in Philadelphia.  Mostel only played one performance as Shylock before his sudden death at the age of 62. ZERO HOUR traces Mostel’s early days growing up on the Lower East Side as the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, through his rise as a stand-up comedian, from the Borscht Belt to Manhattan’s most exclusive supper clubs, and from the devastation of the blacklist to his greatest Broadway triumphs, most notably as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and working through his love-hate relationship with Jerome Robbins.

The DR2 Theatre is located at 103 East 15 Street (just east of Union Square). Performances will be Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday matinees at 2 PM, Thursday & Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 PM  & 8 PM, and Sunday matinees at 3 PM. Tickets for all performances are $59.50 and $35.50 (including a 50-cent facility fee) and are available through Telecharge.com 212-239-6200. For more information, visit www.ZeroHourShow.com

TUSKEGEE AIRMEN TO SOAR OFF-BROADWAY

TUSKEGEE AIRMEN TO SOAR OFF-BROADWAY

IN BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE,

A NEW PLAY BY LAYON GRAY

Featuring Lamman Rucker from Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?

Performances Begin January 29 at St. Luke’s Theatre With Opening Night Set for February 15^th

Layon Gray’s historical drama Black Angels Over Tuskegee will make its Off-Broadway premiere at St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 West 46^th Street (between Eighth & Ninth Ave.), beginning performances Friday, January 29^th, with Opening Night set for February 15^th.

Based on true events, six men explore their collective struggle with Jim Crow, their intelligence, patriotism, dreams of an inclusive fair society, and brotherhood as they become the first African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. Army Air Forces.  Black Angels Over Tuskegee goes beyond the headlines of the popular stories of the Tuskegee Airmen and exposes the men who exhibited the courage to excel in spite of all the overwhelming odds against them.

Writer and director Layon Gray continues to make his mark in traditional African-American theatre with Black Angels Over Tuskegee. His natural flow for dialogue has been compared to August Wilson’s work by many critics and audiences on both the east and west coast.  Featured in the cast of Black Angels Over Tuskegee are film star Lamman Rucker from Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, Demetrius Gross, Thom Scott II, Antonio Charity, Layon Gray, David Wendell Boykins, Derek Shaun, Jay Jones, and Rich Skidmore.

In addition to being an official selection of the 2009 National Black Theater Festival, the play recently won a 2009 NAACP Award for Best Ensemble and a 2009 Artistic Director Achievement Award for Best Play.  Black Angels Over Tuskegee was presented at the 2009 National Tuskegee Airmen Convention in Las Vegas for over 30 chapters.  Original Tuskegee Airmen Ted Lumpkin, President of the Los Angeles Chapter, said, “I love this play.  It’s real and it reminded me of my times at Tuskegee. [It’s] a great show.”

Black Angels Over Tuskegee is being produced Off-Broadway by The Black Gents, Edmund Gaynes, and The Layon Gray Experience.

Performances will be Monday, Friday and Saturday evening at 8 PM, and Sundays at 5 PM.  Tickets will be $31.50 and $56.50 and are available through Telecharge.com or by calling 212-239-6200.

Red Bull Theater To Present Rare Revival Of THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

Red Bull Theater Presents a Rare Revival

Of John Webster’s THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

Limited Engagement Begins February 23 at Theater at St. Clement’s

Red Bull Theater (Jesse Berger, Artistic Director) will present John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Mr. Berger, for a limited engagement beginning February 23^rd and continuing through March 14th, at Theater at St. Clement’s (423 West 46^th Street, between 9^th and 10^th Avenues).

A great romance turns to horror as the Duchess of Malfi seeks true love in a world of forbidden passions.  A play for our time as much as its own, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi examines sexual repression, honor, class, and the true value of the human spirit, in this explosive drama of Italian intrigue.  Red Bull Theater’s production is the first New York revival of this Jacobean masterpiece in over 50 years.

Jesse Berger directs a company that includes Heidi Armbruster (Drama League nomination for Tea & Sympaty), Jason C. Brown, Clark Carmichael (seen on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers directed by David Leveaux), Keith Hamilton Cobb, Matthew Greer (Broadway: Cabaret, The Real Thing, The Judas Kiss), Carol Halstead (Broadway – Gore Vidal’s The Best Man), Eric Hoffmann, Patrick Page (seen on Broadway in  A Man For All Seasons, The Lion King, Julius Caesar, and as The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas), Matthew Rauch (Prelude to a Kiss at Roundabout), Christina Rouner (Coram Boy on Broadwy), Gareth Saxe (The Homecoming on Broadway), and Haynes Thigpen.

The Duchess of Malfi will have set design by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Jared B. Leese, lighting design by Jason Lyons, sound design by Nathan Leigh, puppetry & masks by Emily DeCola, hair & make-up design by Erin Kennedy Lunsford, choreography by Tracy Bersley and stage violence by J. David Brimmer, with original music by Scott Killian. Casting was by Stuart Howard.

Red Bull Theater, hailed as “the most exciting classical theater in New York” by Time Out New York, is the not-profit Off-Broadway theater company specializing in plays of heightened language, with a unique focus on the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.  Red Bull embraces the imagination of theatergoers through intimate, evocative productions of great classic stories.

Red Bull Theater, acclaimed as “a troupe that lovers of classic theater should put on the must-watch list,” by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times, has staged acclaimed productions of Shakespeare’s seldom-seen Pericles, a bold new adaptation of The Revenger’s Tragedy, and a striking revival of Edward the Second.  The New York Times called Pericles “the stuff of dreams,” The Revenger’s Tragedy “Dynamite!” and Edward the Second “fired with excitement.”  All three productions enjoyed extended sold-out Off-Broadway runs.  Red Bull Theater has staged over 30 readings through its ongoing Obie Award-winning Revelation Readings, named by the Village Voice “Best Play Reading Series.” Red Bull Theater reaches out annually to middle school students in the Bronx through its Direct Address education program, teaching dramatic and literacy skills using the plays of Shakespeare. Red Bull Theater inaugurated a new play workshop called In The Raw, dedicated to developing new plays of heightened language and the classics of the future.

Performances of The Duchess of Malfi will be Tuesday & Wednesday evenings at 7 pm. Thursday & Friday evenings at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm & 8pm, Sundays at 3pm & 7pm (schedule varies – visit redbulltheater.com for complete calendar). Opening Night, Saturday February 27, 8pm, will be a benefit performance & reception with special guests Lee Blessing, Brian Murray, Roberta Maxwell, John Douglas Thompson, and others TBA.

Tickets may be purchased online at www.redbulltheater.com or by phone at 212/352-3101. Tickets are $60 Regular / $80 Premium Seating / $30 Age 30 & under (w/ID) / $30 Industry (w/ID) / $20 Student (w/ID)/ 20% discount for seniors (all discounts must be purchased at the Box Office with proper ID one hour before curtain time).

David Esbjornson to Direct First Broadway Revival of Aaron Sorkin’s A FEW GOOD MEN

David Esbjornson to Direct First Broadway Revival of

Aaron Sorkin’s A FEW GOOD MEN

Slated for 2010/11 Season,

Produced by Ken Davenport

David Esbjornson will stage the first Broadway revival of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, slated for the 2010-11 Broadway season, at a theater to be announced. Production details will be announced as soon as casting is confirmed.

• Why A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men launched the career of Aaron Sorkin, who went on to great success in Hollywood (his films A Few Good Men, Malice, The American President and Charlie Wilson’s War grossed about $600 million worldwide) and TV (the cult favorite “Sports Night,” the Emmy Award-winning “The West Wing,” and most recently, the acclaimed “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”). He has not been seen on Broadway since the premiere of The Farnsworth Invention, which MTVcalled “the most exciting new play on Broadway” and “a rousing theatrical experience.” A Few Good Men ran almost 500 performances (November, 1989-January, 1991), making it one of the longest running Broadway plays in the last twenty years. In addition to Sorkin, it also made stars of Tom Hulce, Timothy Busfield, and Bradley Whitford, as well as launching the directing career of Don Scardino.  The film rights were purchased before the first performance!

• Why A Few Good Men now?

Playwright Aaron Sorkin explains: “I’m thrilled that A Few Good Men could be headed back to Broadway. While I’m very proud of the play and the success the original production enjoyed, I wrote it when I was much younger and it’s always felt a little to me like looking at my high school yearbook picture so I’m particularly excited about the idea of being able to go back into rehearsal, do some re-writing and help make this the best production of the play that’s ever been seen. Sadly, nothing can be done about my yearbook picture.”

Producer Ken Davenport adds: “It has been twenty years since Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men played Broadway, and I couldn’t think of a better time to bring it back.  For me, there has to be a reason to do a revival.  The piece has to resonate differently now than it did when it premiered.  A Few Good Men asks the difficult question of how far we’re willing to let our military go to protect our freedom.  That’s never been more relevant than today, especially for a play that deals with Guantanamo Bay.  Add to that the fact that Aaron wants to roll up his sleeves and get his pen dirty, and you’ve got the recipe for a thrilling revival.”

• Why David Esbjornson?

Mr. Esbjornson has staged Much Ado About Nothing (starring Jimmy Smits, Kristen Johnston, and Sam Waterston) in Central Park and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, both for the Public Theater. Other credits include the world premieres of Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway, Neil Simon’s Rose and Walsh at the Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles, Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues at the Guthrie, Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher’s Tuesdays With Morrie Off-Broadway, Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood for the Public Theatre, and Part 1 of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul for the Chelsea Center in London. Among his New York premieres are Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby, Israel Horowitz’s My Old Lady, and the Tony Award-nominated The Ride Down Mt. Morgan by Arthur Miller at the Public Theater and on Broadway. Other world premieres include the first production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, and the first staged presentation of Perestroika, both at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco. He will direct the American premiere of Moira Buffini’s World War II-set drama Gabriel for Atlantic Theater Company this spring. Currently, he is in rehearsal for the premiere of Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, starring Tony Award nominee Kathleen Turner.

Casting Announced for THE IRISH CURSE

Dan Butler, Roderick Hill, Scott Jaeck, Brian Leahy, and Austin Peck To Star

Sarahbeth Grossman and Craig Zehms today announced that Dan Butler (best known as Bulldog on “Frasier”), Roderick Hill (Butley on Broadway opposite Nathan Lane), Scott Jaeck (“Charmed”), Brian Leahy (“The Junior League of Superheroes”), and Austin Peck (“Days of Our Lives”) would star in the Off-Broadway premiere of Martin Casella’s acclaimed comedy THE IRISH CURSE at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street (between Avenue of the Americas & Varick Street). Performances begin on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17^th.  Opening Night is set for Sunday, March 28th.  Matt Lenz will direct.

THE IRISH CURSE had its world premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival with a sold-out run in 2005, garnering rave reviews and winning the Overall Excellence Award for Playwrighting.  The play was also acclaimed in its European premiere at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  This production subsequently transferred to The Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival.

Size matters to the Irish-American guys who meet every Wednesday night in a support group…for men with very small penises.  This raucously new comedy tackles the male obsession with body image, masculinity, and sex as it examines the fundamental question on the minds of men since the beginning of time…”How do I measure up to the next guy?”

Lauren Helpern will serve as Set Designer, Michael McDonald as Costume Designer and Traci Klainer as Lighting Designer. Additional members of the design team will be announced shortly.

Performances will be Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8 PM, Sunday evenings at 7 pm, with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 3 PM. Tickets are $59 for all seats/all performances.  For tickets and more information visit www.TheIrishCurse.com.

Dan Butler is probably best known as Bulldog from the TV series, “Frasier.”  His one-man show The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me… garnered critical acclaim across the country, as well as Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk nominations. In 2006, Dan produced, co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the faux documentary Karl Rove, I Love You which The Huffington Post called “hilarious and unsettling – a political Blair Witch Project.” Dan has also been extremely active with suicide prevention, and in 1995 was the National Coming Out Day spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign.

Roderick Hill has appeared as Mr. Gardner in the Broadway production of Butley starring Nathan Lane, Dorian Gray in Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s new adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray at The Round House Theater, Eustace Jackson in The Mint Theater’s critically acclaimed production of The Return of The Prodigal, and Nicolas in the Broadway production of Elton John’s musical Lestat.

Scott Jaeck appeared on Broadway in “August: Osage County” and “The Night of the Iguana.”  His numerous TV credits include “Charmed,” “ER,” “Seinfeld,” “Santa Barbara,” “Prison Break,” “NYPD Blue,” “Party of Five,” “Mad About You,” and “An Early Frost.”

Brian Leahy originated the role of Rick in the 2005 NY Int’l Fringe Festival production of The Irish Curse. He can currently be seen in the comedic web series The Junior League of Superheroes, which he also wrote and co-produced. FILM: Earthship, 4:41, Mrs. Lovejoy, The Layabouts. Theatre: the East Coast premiere of Mat Smart’s The Hopper Collection, Iatrophobia, A Night of Dialogue. As a writer, his political satire Sketch premiered in LA as part of Acorn Pictures’ LIVEworks2008; his one-woman play, Cranberry, was produced by the Intentional Theatre Group in NY. Brian is a graduate of NYU and the Atlantic Theater Acting School and is the author of The Groom Says blog.

Austin Peck is best known for his starring roles on the popular daytime dramas “Days of Our Lives” and “As the World Turns.”   Other TV credits include “The District,” “Charmed,” “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” and “Strong Medicine.”   As a member of Theater 40 in Beverly Hills, Austin recently appeared in Plastic, Blue Silence and Japanese Death Poem, as well as Forever September, Burn This, Henry V, and Mythomania.

Martin Casella’s other plays include Scituate (Best New Play, SCFTA); Mates (LA Weekly Award, Best New Play), Paydirt, Desert Fire, Beautiful Dreamer, Grand Junction, The Big Enchilada and George Bush Goes to Hell. He wrote the book for the musicals Paper Moon, Happy Holidays, Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, Saint Heaven, Doo-Dah! and co-wrote the book for the new jazz musical Play It Cool (GLAAD nomination).  His plays have been seen at, among others, the Pasadena Playhouse, Coast Playhouse, Coronet (LA); TBG, Linhart and Access Theatres (NYC); Village Theatre, Group Theatre (Seattle); Bailiwick, Theatre Building (Chicago); Stage One (Wichita); Paper Mill Playhouse (NJ); Goodspeed Opera House, Stanford Center for the Arts (Connecticut); Walnut Street Theatre (Philadelphia); Ford’s Theatre (Washington); and in Tokyo, Dublin and Edinburgh.  His current theatrical project is the musical Free Money, a musical about the invention of credit cards, with composer/lyricist Keith Gordon and documentary filmmaker Barbara Wellin-Multer. In film and TV, Casella has written for Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Dan Petrie Jr., John Milius, John Badham, Francis Ford Coppola, Herbert Ross, Bruce Cohen, Anthony Edwards, The Walt Disney Company, Universal Pictures, Ladd Company, HBO, Roger Corman, Kerry Washington and Paulist Productions.  TV projects include the film “Behind the Lens” for CBS, and “Daddy’s Girl,” an HBO pilot, and a stint as a writer on the ABC daytime drama “One Life To Live.” His feature screenplay One Night Stand was directed by Talia Shire and starred Ally Sheedy and Frederic Forrest.  Casella is currently adapting David Johnson’s play Busted Jesus Comix for the big screen; and is writing the feature film Tom’s Dad for Emmy Award-winning producers Joni Levin and Keith Clarke. In addition to having taught playwriting at the California Institute of the Arts, Casella’s happiest – and proudest –recent adventure is teaching playwriting at the Harvey Milk High School. Casella is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild, Writer’s Guild of America, Actors’ Equity and Screen Actors Guild.

Matt Lenz’s Broadway credits include Hairspray (associate director; also for national tours, South Africa, Las Vegas, Toronto, Germany), Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (resident director), The Yellow Brick Road Not Traveled: Wicked’s 5^th Anniversary (director). Off-Broadway: Idaho! (NYMF – Winner of “2008 Best of Fest” and Best Director Awards), Alan Ball’s The Amazing Adventures of Tense Guy. Regional: Saint Heaven (a new musical by Martin Casella and Keith Gordon), Scituate by Martin Casella (Stamford Center), Aida (MUNY, Gateway), The Full Monty, Beauty and the Beast (MUNY, North Carolina Theatre, Michigan Opera Theatre), South Pacific (Casa Manana, NCT) Confidentially, Cole (LA), Dirty Blonde, Love! Valor! Compassion! (Austin). Member SDC.

Lauren Helpern’s NY credits include Bug (Obie Award), None of the Above (Hewes nomination), The Amish Project (also tour), Mother Load (also tour), Underneath the Lintel, Dragapella, Slipping, MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Ars Nova, Atlantic, Naked Angels, Second Stage, Cherry Lane, and the Broadway production Voices In The Dark. Regional (selected): Blue Man Group/Live at Luxor (Eddy Award), Always… Patsy Cline starring Sally Struthers, Gypsy starring Andrea McArdle, Prince Music Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Portland Center Stage, ATF, Laguna Playhouse, Stamford Center for the Arts, TheatreworksUSA, and Anchorage Opera.  Lauren is part of New Georges’ Kitchen Cabinet and a partner in the design firm Luce Group.

Michael Mc Donald received Tony Award, Drama Desk and Hewes Design Award nominations for his costumes for the 2009 Tony Award winning Best Musical Revival of Hair. The Public: Hair (Delacorte Theater). Off-Broadway: Tartuffe (Tribeca Playhouse), Amahl and the Night Visitors (Lincoln Center), Measure for Measure (Expanded Arts). Regional: Take Me Out (The Repertory Theater of St. Louis); Dirty Blond (Matt Lenz, dir.), Omnium Gatherum and Crowns (Zachary Scott Theatre); Amadeus, Sweeney Todd, The Laramie Project, Angels in America (Chatham Playhouse).  Broadway: Assistant Costume Designer for two Tony Award winning Best Plays: The Goat and Take Me Out, as well as Arthur Miller’s The Ride Down Mt. Morgan. And he’s Irish.

Traci Klainer’s NY credits include The Asphalt Kiss (59E59, Drama Desk nomination); Broadway production of Prune Danish (Royale Theatre); Four (MTC, Lucille Lortel nomination); Dov and Ali (Cherry Lane); Sand (Julia Miles Theatre); 2 Girls For 5 Bucks (Ars Nova); Echoes Of The War (Mint Theater); Dragapella (Upstairs Studio 54) and How to Be a Good Italian Daughter (Cherry Lane).  Regional credits include:  Hartford Stage, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Prince Music Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Capital Repertory, and City Theatre.   Traci is also a partner in the design firm Luce Group, which specializes in architectural, exhibit and event lighting design.

Sarahbeth Grossman is President of Sobelle Productions and a Managing Member of Brooklyn Basement Theatricals, LLC.  Ms. Grossman served as Associate Managing Director of the Yale Rep, where she produced the annual WinterFest of new plays, and was Producing Director of the Los Angeles Stage & Film Company, where she produced the LA Premiere of Time On Fire: A Comedy Of Terrors by Evan Handler.  Film and TV work includes stints at Showtime Networks and Viacom Pictures, production work on “Me and Veronica” dir. by Don Scardino, “Bopha!” dir. by Morgan Freeman, “Strapped” dir. by Forest Whitaker, Three Wishes and Out To Sea (Associate Producer) dir. by Martha Coolidge.  Sarahbeth also served as VP of Development & Production for Ms. Coolidge’s Ozma Productions under a television development deal with Pearson Entertainment.   Ms. Grossman was Executive Director of Global Brand Strategy & Business Development at Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, and spent a short time as VP of Marketing at Variety.

Craig Zehms produced The Irish Curse for the 2005 NY International Fringe Festival.  He began his career as an actor and appeared at regional theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson, Ford’s Theatre, Goodspeed, and Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.  His TV credits include “Newhart,” “Hooperman,” and “V-The Series.”  He currently serves as the National Spokesperson for Lalique North America and has produced and appeared at events for luxury retailers for twenty years.

look what Jim and Jen & Diana at NASDAQ did for my birthday

LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere at The Midtown Theater

LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY
To Have Its Off-Broadway Premiere at The Midtown Theater
Performances Begin March 14 With Opening Night Set For March 24

SAVING DEMOCRACY ONE LAUGH AT A TIME!

LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY, a new evening of comedy with music and multi-media presentations, will make its Off-Broadway debut beginning March 14th at the Midtown Theatre, 163 West 46th Street (just east of Broadway). Opening night is set for Thursday, March 24th at 7 p.m. This strictly limited engagement is set to run through May 22nd only.

LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY is a comedy extravaganza, which mixes humor, musical numbers, video, and political satire, to spread understanding of liberal ideas and advance progressive values. Showcasing the brightest progressive comedians from The Onion, Comedy Central, Showtime, MTV, Huffington Post, and C-SPAN, LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY will save democracy one laugh at a time. Original songs for LAUGHING LIBERALLY: THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY are written and composed by Jamie Jackson.

Under the direction of Justin Krebs (author of 538 Ways to Live, Work & Play as a Liberal), the show will feature a rotating roster of today’s hottest comedians including John Fugelsang, Jim David, Dean Obeidallah, Baratunde Thurston, Negin Farsad, Lee Camp, Katie Halper, and Elon James White.

LAUGHING LIBERALLY is presented by Living Liberally, which builds progressive communities through social networks and events. Living Liberally also runs Drinking Liberally, the national network of over 200 progressive social clubs; Screening Liberally, a series of socially-conscious films; Eating Liberally, environmentally conscious food events with good gab and great grub; and Reading Liberally, book tours for progressive authors. Living Liberally is led by a New York-based team and fueled by the energy of hundreds of volunteers and partners around the country.

Low-priced preview performances ($10-$20) will be Monday through Thursday at 7PM, and Saturday at 7PM (through March 23rd). Post-opening (tickets will be $20 – $40), the schedule will be Monday, Friday and Saturday at 7PM, and Sunday at 5PM.

Tickets may be purchased online at www.laughingliberallynyc.com or by calling 212/967-8278. Group rates also available.