OSLO Stars, DEAR EVAN HANSEN Team to Appear on THEATER TALK This Week

This week THEATER TALK features the lead actors, playwright and director of the acclaimed play Oslo at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater - Jennifer Ehle, Jefferson Mays, writer J.T. Rogers, and director Bartlett Sher - and continues with Part 2 of an interview with the creators of the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen - librettist Steven Levenson and composer/lyricists Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, who perform songs from Dear Evan Hansen, Dogfight, and La La Land. Co- hosts for Oslo are Michael Riedel of the New York Post and Susan Haskins; Haskins and guest co-host Jesse Green of The New York Times continue with Dear Evan Hansen.

Oslo is the true story of a married Norwegian couple, Mona Juul (Ehle) and Terje Rød-Larsen (Mays), who HATCHED the idea of attempting to bring peace between the state of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1990s. The top- secret meetings culminated in the signing of the historic 1993 Oslo Accords. The couple's untold story was dramatized by Rogers after a meeting between he and Rød-Larsen, engineered by Sher. (The latter two both had children in the same New York City school - and Sher had heard amazing stories in the course of soccer games and other parental events.) Oslo opened to acclaim at Lincoln Center's smaller Newhouse Theater last year and re-opened in the larger space in April.

In the second half of the program, focus returns to the new musical Dear Evan Hansen, continuing the previous week's episode with the writers of the show. Composer/lyricists Pasek & Paul perform "Sincerely, Me" from Dear Evan Hansen, "Some Kinda Time" from their earlier Off-Broadway musical, Dogfight, and "City of Stars" (music by Justin Hurwitz) from the film La La Land, for which they won an Academy Award.

This week's Oslo / Dear Evan Hansen, Pt. 2 episode of THEATER TALK premieres Friday, May 12 (2017) on PBS station Thirteen/WNET at 1:30 AM (Saturday morning) and repeats there on Sunday 5/14 at 11:30 AM; it re-airs on CUNY TV* Saturday 5/13 at 8:30 PM, Sunday 5/14 at 12:30 PM, and Monday 5/15 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM; and also airs on WLIW/21 on Monday 5/15 at 5:30 PM and on NYCLife/25 on Thursday 5/18 at 11 PM.

Emmy Award-winning THEATER TALK is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV & Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The CUNY TV Foundation, and The Friends of Theater Talk.

*CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is broadcast in the NYC metropolitan area on digital Ch. 25.3 and cablecast in the city's five boroughs on Ch. 75 (Spectrum & Optimum/Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN), and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). THEATER TALK episodes are available online anytime at www.cuny.tv and www.theatertalk.org and via iTunes.

Pictured: Oslo's Jennifer Ehle, Jefferson Mays, playwright J.T. Rogers, director Bartlett Sher (Images courtesy Theater Talk Prod./CUNY TV)