Al Holbrook News

One Hundred and Twenty-Five years ago this New Year's Eve, America's most celebrated actor, Edwin Booth gave the Deed of 16 Gramercy Park South to The Players. The Players tradition has been to read the deed in front of the Great Hall fire place echoing back to Edwin Booth and the Founding Members. This year, this tradition continues along with live music, dancing, and more festivities as The Players kicks off a new era, sharing a toast to its founders and celebrating 125 years at 'A Certain Club.'

Tickets for American Idiot, West Side Story, STOMP, Mamma Mia!, Blue Man Group, and Hal Holbrook In Mark Twain Tonight! at the National Theatre go on sale Monday, October 28.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has selected Academy Award nominee Elizabeth McGovern as the 2013 recipient of The William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre (Will Award). KPMG, LLP will be awarded the Sidney Harman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. McGovern & KPMG, LLP will be honored at the Harman Center for the Arts Annual Gala, hosted by STC at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F Street NW), tonight, October 6, 2013.

Buffalo Theatre Ensemble (BTE) presents the first work of its 2013 - 2014 Season, Ken Ludwig's 'Leading Ladies,' directed by BTE Ensemble member Kurt Naebig, in the Building K Theatre at the College of DuPage 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn, Ill. tonight, Sept. 6 - 22. A preview will be held Thursday Sept. 5. Press opening is Friday, Sept. 6, 8 p.m. Single tickets go on sale Wednesday, August 14.

Signature Theatre is pleased to announce the casting of award winner Christine Lahti (Running on Empty, Swing Shift,Chicago Hope) in this fall's world-premiere drama Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill, written by Paul Downs Colaizzo (Really Really). Lahti, whose acclaimed 30-year career in theatre, television and film places her in the highest echelon of American actresses, joins this fall's production under the direction of Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn, who returns to Signature for the first time in nearly twenty years. Casting for the remaining three roles will be announced shortly.

'Picture a down-at-their-heels theatrical family led by a drunken womanizer married to a wacky fading beauty,' says director Michael Leeds. 'Toss in a deaf grandmother determined to get 'back on the boards' and a daughter who's vowed never to act again. They band together for one last shot at stardom, performing a riotous mash up of Cyrano and Private Lives for a TV weatherman they've mistaken for Frank Capra! That's the plot of Moon Over Buffalo!'

The NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK (NNPN), the country's alliance of non-profit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, announces three new At Large Board Members: Mark Bly, Gary Heisserer, and Manny Strauss will join the thirty-two member Board of Directors effective immediately.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has selected Academy Award nominee Elizabeth McGovern as the 2013 recipient of The William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre (Will Award). KPMG, LLP will be awarded the Sidney Harman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. McGovern & KPMG, LLP will be honored at the Harman Center for the Arts Annual Gala, hosted by STC at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F Street NW), on Sunday, October 6, 2013.

Buffalo Theatre Ensemble (BTE) presents the first work of its 2013 - 2014 Season, Ken Ludwig's 'Leading Ladies,' directed by BTE Ensemble member Kurt Naebig, in the Building K Theatre at the College of DuPage 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn, Ill. Sept. 6 - 22.

'Picture a down-at-their-heels theatrical family led by a drunken womanizer married to a wacky fading beauty,' says director Michael Leeds. 'Toss in a deaf grandmother determined to get 'back on the boards' and a daughter who's vowed never to act again. They band together for one last shot at stardom, performing a riotous mash up of Cyrano and Private Lives for a TV weatherman they've mistaken for Frank Capra! That's the plot of Moon Over Buffalo!'

The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF) takes pride in announcing the2013-14 Arts and Ideas Season: an exciting line-up of today's acclaimed writers, renowned scientists and thinkers, and fascinating entertainers. Theatrical and musical highlights include popular actor John Goodman talking about his career, the world premiere of Brenda Wong Aoki's MU, soprano Patricia Racette with her program Diva on Detour,and Isabella Rosellini live on stage with Green Porn.

Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Our Town, is to get its official 75th anniversary UK production - its first major London revival in a generation - at the King's Head Theatre from Wednesday 26 June - Saturday 20 July.

Film and stage actor Val Kilmer, best remembered for his now classic movie roles in the 80s and 90s including Top Gun, Jim Morrison in The Doors, Doc Holliday in Tombstone, and Bruce Wayne/Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, is set to workshop an engagement of his Mark Twain evening Citizen Twain at the Kirk Douglas Theatre from June 28 - July 28. In our chat he discusses how it all began and how he feels about inhabiting the skin of one of the world's greatest humorists.

Broadway Icon and nine time TONY Award winner, Tommy Tune, hosted The Actors Fund's 17th Annual Tony Awards Viewing Party at the Taglyan Cultural Complex on Sunday, June 9th, 2013. Produced and written by David Rambo and directed by Luke Yankee, the event featured the only approved live TONY Award feed direct from New York to California, allowing guests of the Actors Fund to view the awards before the rest of West Coast viewed the delayed broadcast.

Beginning in July 2013, the Alley Theatre will produce Agatha Christie's The Hollow during its popular ExxonMobil Summer Chills series. Under the direction of Gregory Boyd, the Alley's resident company of actors will bring to life the colorful cast of characters in Agatha Christie's The Hollow.

The National Theatre has just announced its first subscription series in more than a decade with the announcement of Broadway at the National. Boasting the pre-Broadway world premiere of If/Then, the Washington premiere of American Idiot, and the historic return of the Tony Award-winning The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, the 2013-14 season at The National Theatre includes eight productions, and runs November 2013 through June 2014.

If you haven't had the chance to catch up on your theater news, look no further than today's recap of all things theater - exclusive features, interviews, reviews and more! - around the Broadway World for the week of April 29!

PBS today unveiled a summer line-up that features a diverse array of new programming. A summer of intrigue presents new episodes of MASTERPIECE MYSTERY! productions.