Andrew Jackson News

Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd announces the cast and creative team for the "hysterically funny" (New York Post) new musical The Toxic Avenger.

The Public Theater has just announced the return of PUBLIC SINGS! on March 5, 2012, an unforgettable evening that celebrates the rich history of musicals produced by The Public Theater, including HAIR, A Chorus Line, and Caroline, or Change, as well as new musicals in development like February House premiering at The Public this May. This intimate evening at Joe's Pub will welcome to the stage many popular Public Theater and Joe's Pub artists, including Laura Benanti, David Byrne, Raul Esparza, Jesse L. Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Steven Pasquale, as well as offer a sneak peak at upcoming musicals. PUBLIC SINGS! tickets can be purchased by calling the Development Office at (212) 539-8554.

NETworks Presentations will present a new production of Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical SOUTH PACIFIC, making its Nashville debut at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, playing February 7 to 12 as part of the HCA/TriStar Broadway series.

Named as First Night's Outstanding Musical of 2011 was Lipscomb University Theatre's production of Hairspray, directed and choreographed by Justin Boccitto. ACT 1's production of American Buffalo, directed by Ryan Williams, claimed top honors as First Night's Oustanding Play of 2011, and the national touring company's Memphis, the Musical, which played Andrew Jackson Hall at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, was named as First Night's Outstanding Touring Production of 2011, besting productions of Spring Awakening, In The Heights, Wicked and Les Miserables.

With a capacity crowd of 200 people on hand at The Keeton Theatre, First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis, who covers theater, opera and dance throughout Tennessee for BroadwayWorld.com, unveiled his choices via First Night's Top 11 of 2011, while the winners of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville and Tennessee Theatre Awards were announced by co-hosts Britt Byrd, Jamie Free, Katherine Sandoval Taylor and Lar'Juanette Williams.

Playwright Nate Eppler, Mas Nashville's FIVE, the Boiler Room Theatre, Lipscomb University's Hairspray, ACT 1's American Buffalo and the national touring company of Memphis, the Musical were the top winners at Sunday night's Midwinter's First Night at Nashville's Keeton Theatre, which also featured the presentation of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville and Tennessee theatre awards.

Joe's Pub has announced the following upcoming events.

BroadwayWorld.com has learned that the hit open-air production of INTO THE WOODS that played London's Regent's Park Theatre in 2011 is now planning for a transfer to Central Part's Delacorte Theater as part of the Public Theater's Summer 2012 programming. Casting is said to be underway already for the role of 'The Witch' and that the producers are seeking a big name. Nothing officially has been announced on a possible transfer, as The Public is expecting to announce the 2012 summer season at the Delacorte sometime next month. The Public Theatre had no comment by press time.

According to Variety, Broadway director Alex Timbers will directthe upcoming big screen adaptation of Dale E. Basye's Children's book- Heck. THe movie will feature a screenplay by Bob Iserson and will be produced by Karen Rosenfelt.

Playwrights Horizons just announced complete casting for the New York premiere of ASSISTANCE, a new play by Leslye Headland (Bachelorette). Directed by Trip Cullman (A Small Fire, The Drunken City and Manic Flight Reaction at Playwrights Horizons, Bachelorette), the production will begin previews Friday, February 3 at 8PM with an Opening Night set for Tuesday, February 28 at 7PM. The limited engagement will play through Sunday, March 11 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street).

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Patrick Willingham) will present the return of GATZ, the theatrical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, this spring for a limited seven-week engagement.

The Civilians will present Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy Wall Street, Part II. Following the company's first Occupy Wall Street cabaret at Joe's Pub, Civilians' artists continued to conduct interviews with demonstrators about the movement's recent events, including the mass police action that cleared the protests out of Zuccotti Park and what the movement's future holds.

With an alluring and gorgeous Morticia (played by Broadway diva Sara Gittelfinger) and a charming and swellegant Gomez (Great White Way heartthrob Douglas Sills) leading the charge, the onstage iteration of Charles Addams' cartoon family is surely a dysfunctional lot. But, more importantly, they are enormously winning-their interpersonal relationships are not so unlike your own, I daresay-and composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa and book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have crafted a storyline that broadens the family's appeal, while more deeply etching the family's brand (particularly in these days of all-encompassing marketing ploys) on American pop culture.

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Patrick Willingham, Executive Director), Producer Mark Russell, and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP President and CEO Mario Garcia Durham) will begin performances for the 2012 UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL on Wednesday, January 4.

We're Gonna Have to ask You to Leave...(a benefit concert to kick out cancer) to be presented at Birdland Jazz Club on January 23rd, 2012 at 7pm.

Sara Gettelfinger may have a resume that other actresses covet-now starring as the mysterious, intriguing, maybe even a little bit frightening Morticia Addams in the national tour of The Addams Family, she's been on Broadway in A Free Man of Color, Seussical the Musical, The Boys from Syracuse, Nine and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and she's toured in Fosse and 101 Dalmatians-but, truth be told, the highlight of her resume for me, at least, is a stint on the storied, now lamented and defunct, CBS soap opera Guiding Light.