'Hello Out There' Reading at Playwrights Horizons Today

An invitation-only reading of the musical Hello Out There will be held Friday March 4 at Playwrights Horizons.

The cast will feature Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Mary Poppins), Ann Harada (Avenue Q), Etai BenShlomo (Wicked), Dana Steingold (Spelling Bee), Erik Liberman (LoveMusik), Emily Shoolin (Enter Laughing), and Jim Poulos (Rent).

The first people to commit stock market fraud over the Internet weren't criminals. They were teenagers. Inspired by real-life events, Hello Out There is a new musical comedy that follows three unlikely friends who launch a scheme on the stock market using the newly-created World Wide Web. Two-hundred fifty thousand dollars later, the S.E.C. shows up and all hell breaks loose. This coming-of-age story begs the question, "If Wall Street hotshots can act like greedy children, why can't children act like Wall Street hotshots?"

Hello Out There has book and lyrics by Eric Price and music by Frank Terry. It is directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein and music direction is by Aaron Gandy.

The reading is presented in cooperation with the Adirondack Theatre Festival, which is slated to produce the first full production of the musical this summer. Hello Out There was previously developed at Goodspeed Musicals in the 2010 Festival of New Artists.

Eric Price has written book and lyrics to The Sixth Borough, Around the World, and Porcelain & Pink. He is currently the full-time assistant to Harold Prince, who he also assisted on the premiere productions of Sondheim's Bounce and on Paradise Found starring Mandy Patinkin.

Frank Terry is the former Playwrights Horizons Musical Theater Resident. Previous shows include: For Love of the Boy, Grimm, Jude, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Devil on the Cross, and Waxing West.

Benjamin Endsley Klein was Associate Director of The Coast of Utopia, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Love Never Dies. He directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas at The Old Globe and Hairspray at the Charlottetown Festival.

Eric Price and Frank Terry both earned their MFA degrees from NYU in Musical Theatre Writing.

The reading is by invitation-only and will take place at 2:00pm on Friday March 4 in the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street. Interested industry members should contact HelloReadingMarch@gmail.com

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