Elaine Stritch & More at TRU Love Benefit, Honors Wiesenfeld

Theater Resources Unlimited is pleased to announce the sixth annual TRU Love Benefit honoring producer and friend, Cheryl Wiesenfeld.  On Sunday afternoon, November 11 from 1-4PM at the legendary Sardi's (234 W. 44th Street in Manhattan), Wiesenfeld will be given the TRU Spirit of Theater Award, which TRU gives each year to a person in the performing arts community who has demonstrated noteworthy generosity and helped nurture young producers.

The star-studded event will include a performance from Tony winner and 2007 Emmy Award winner Elaine Stritch (schedule permitting).

Additional performances include: Tonya Pinkins (Tony Award winner for Jelly's Last Jam), who will perform a song from Caroline, or Change, recreating her Tony Award nominated performance; Mia Dillon and Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey and David and Lisa) will perform an excerpt from The Exonerated with an introduction by the playwright, Jessica Blank; Laura Marie Duncan will perform a song from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with which she toured; and Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter will perform an excerpt from In the Continuum which they co-wrote and performed in New York and in South Africa. Performances will also include songs from Legally Blonde and two upcoming new musicals that have been selected for this year's TRU Voices new musicals reading series.

Wiesenfeld has been a supporter of TRU for over five years, helping to underwrite the annual scholarships TRU gives to aspiring producers who wish to attend the Commercial Theater Institute's 14-week training program. She was the first official mentor in TRU's Producer Mentorship Program, and has mentored a half dozen emerging producers in the last two years. The Benefit Co-Chairs are all people Wiesenfeld has mentored: Mari Carras, Van Dean and Hillary Cutter of Van Hill Productions (Saint Heaven), Janet Pailet (The Grinch Who Stole Christmas), Melissa Maxwell and Jean Marie Donnelly (who Wiesenfeld advised on a recent production of the show Black Man Rising which garnered four Audelco Award nominations).

Tickets for the benefit, including a full luncheon at Sardi's, are $150 for "Circle of Angels" seats at the Honoree Tables (includes a Patron Gift Bag) and $100 for unreserved tables. A Silent Auction will include tickets to Legally Blonde, The Color Purple and the Broadway production of In the Heights, as well as a $5,000 photo portrait sitting from Renaissance Portraits, massages, acting coaching and assorted gift items. Tickets may be purchased online at www.truonline.org/store.htm, additional details of the event may be found by visiting the TRU website at www.truonline.org and click the link for the 2007 TRU Love Benefit.

The benefit will raise money to support TRU's programs, including the upcoming TRU Voices New Musicals Series and the Spring New Plays Reading Series, in which TRU offers producers an opportunity to do a developmental reading of a new work. Plays in the series have gone on to be part of the New York International Fringe Festival, the Midtown International Theater Festival, NYMF and NAMT, several have had productions in New York. Several have even found producers and productions as a result of the series. As the series is only 9 years old, TRU expects that many more works will go on to even greater success in the coming years.