Charles Busch & Julie Halston Host Primary Stage's 'Leading Ladies' Benefit, 11/9

On November 9, Primary Stages will host 'Leading Ladies,' the organization's 25th Anniversary Benefit Gala, honoring influential women who have contributed to the theater's work over the past 25 years. The event will take place at the Grand Hyatt New York and begins at 6:30pm.

The evening will consist of cocktails, dinner, entertainment and a silent auction featuring prizes from the Mirror Lake Inn Resort & Spa in Lake Placid, The Setai Hotel in Miami's South Beach, Saks Fifth Avenue, dinner at some of NYC's best restaurants and tickets to Broadway shows. Charles Busch and Julie Halston will host the event.

Performers include Penny Fuller, Michellle Ragusa, and Isabel Keating Judith Ivey, Elysabeth Kleinhans, Marian Seldes, and Elizabeth Wilson.

"This year's gala is a night to celebrate Primary Stages and our 25 years of commitment to the theater. We are honored to have this distinguished list of leading ladies help us usher in the next 25 years," stated Primary Stages Artistic Director Andrew Leynse.

Past gala honorees have included Patti LuPone and The Baruch-Routh-Frankel-Viertel Group (2008), Daryl Roth and Jack O'Brien (2007), Julie Harris (2006), Susan Stroman (2005), Horton Foote and Primary Stages Founder and Executive Producer Casey Childs (2004), Harvey Fierstein (2003), A.R. Gurney (2001), John Guare (2000), Betty Comden and Adolph Green (1998), Stephen Sondheim (1997), Wendy Wasserstein (1996) and Terrence McNally (1995).

Tickets are $500-$10,000 and can be reserved by filling out an order form here. For additional information on the event and sponsorship opportunities, call 212-840-9705 or e-mail gala@primarystages.org.

A veteran of the stage, Halston first achieved fame through her performances in the comedies of playwright Charles Busch, including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984) and The Lady in Question (1989). She performed in a series of one-woman comedy shows in the 1990s. More recent theater credits include Broadway revivals of The Women, Twentieth century and The Man Who Came to Dinner. She also starred in the 2003 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, Hairspray, and the Tony Award-nominated Best Revival of a Musical, Gypsy. Her performances in White Chocolate and Busch's Red Scare on Sunset both earned her Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She has won four MAC awards for her solo comedy performances.

Busch first came to prominence as both author and performer (as the leading lady, in drag) in plays that simultaneously sent up and celebrated classic film genres. These include Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984), Psycho Beach Party (1987), The Lady in Question (1989), and Red Scare on Sunset (1991). Less well-known are some earlier works in the same vein: Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium (1984), Sleeping Beauty, or Coma (1984) and Pardon My Inquisition, or Kiss the Blood Off My Castanets (1986). He revamped the book for the musical Ankles Aweigh for an 1989 production staged by the Goodspeed Opera House. In 2000, Busch's work debuted on Broadway, when The Tale of the Allergist's Wife opened following an earlier off-Broadway. The play, his first in which he did not star and the first created for a mainstream audience, was written as a vehicle for actress Linda Lavin, who played opposite Michele Lee and Tony Roberts. Allergist's Wife received a 2001 Tony Award nomination for Best Play and ran for 777 performances. Late in the run, Valerie Harper and Richard Kind took over the lead roles. His only other Broadway work to date has been as the rewritten book for Boy George's autobiographical musical Taboo, which lasted 100 performances.

Primary Stages concludes its 25th anniversary season with the New York premiere of Happy Now? by Lucinda Coxon (January 26, 2010 - March 10, 2010) with direction by Liz Dimond.

Primary Stages was founded in 1984 as a New York State non-profit theater company with the mission of producing new plays and nurturing the development of playwrights. In our 24 seasons we have produced over 100 world and New York premieres of plays by such playwrights as Brooke Berman, Lee Blessing, Charles Busch, Constance Congdon, A.R. Gurney, Michael Hollinger, Willy Holtzman, David Ives, Julia Jordan, Romulus Linney, Michele Lowe, Donald Margulies, Melissa Manchester, Terrence McNally, Connor McPherson, John Henry Redwood, Lanie Robertson, John Patrick Shanley and Mac Wellman. We seek to provide a supportive environment where writers are encouraged to explore the scope of their creative vision. Our productions and our artists have received considerable critical acclaim including Tony, Obie, AUDELCO, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel (Outstanding Body of Work), Drama League, Drama Desk, Helen Hayes (Washington, DC), L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation and Joseph Jefferson (Chicago) awards and nominations. Many of our productions have been world premieres and all of them have been New York premieres. Lincoln Center Theater, by special arrangement with Primary Stages, recently produced Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate on Broadway at the Booth Theatre. Primary Stages continues to nurture playwrights through commissions, our weekly PrimeTime Reading Series and our emerging playwrights development program, The Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, now in its 14th year. We offer a wide array of classes and workshops at Primary Stages School of Theater, host free matinee performances for NYC public high school students, and enhance student appreciation of the theater through in-school programming with our Primary Voices program. To learn more about Primary Stages please visit our website at www.primarystages.org.