Lucille Lortel News

ONCE, winner of eight Tony Awards including Best Musical and winner of the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, begins a strictly limited engagement from November 26 - January 5 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. Media night is Thursday November 28, 8pm.

Chromolume Theatre has announced its next production, The Musical of Musicals, The Musical! The show has a book by JoAnne Bogart and Eric Rockwell, music by Rockwell, and lyrics by Bogart, and will be directed for Chromolume by Kristin Towers-Rowles. With choreography by Anna Rubin and music direction by Richard Berent, opening is set for tonight, November 8 at 8pm. The Musical of Musicals will play a strictly limited engagement through December 8 only.

Westchester Broadway Theatre presents Irving Berlin's WHITE CHRISTMAS, based upon the Paramount Pictures film, featuring music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by David Ives & Paul Blake, and directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner with musical direction by Andrew Smithson. The show runs tonight, November 7, 2013 - January 12, 2014.

Tonight, November 6 at 5:00pm: Mel Gordon: 'Shakespeare on the Experimental Russian Stage', The Daniel Gerould Memorial Lecture at CUNY.

Primary Stages has announced that their annual Gala will take place Monday, November 11, 2013 at The Edison Ballroom (240 W. 47th Street). The event will honor Tony Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang and President of the General Counsel at Dramatists Play Service, Stephen Sultan. The Gala Chairs are Catherine Adler and HBO. The Tony nominated star of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Kristine Nielsen, will offer a tribute to Mr. Durang. Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley will offer a tribute to Mr. Sultan. The evening will feature performances by Rachel DeBenedet (Catch Me If You Can, Addams Family), Alan Paul (Grease, Oliver!, Manhattan Transfer), Michele Ragusa (Urinetown, Ragtime, A Class Act, Adrift in Macao), and Alton F. White (The Color Purple, The Lion King, Ragtime).

MCC Theater presents the New York Premiere of John Pollono's celebrated Small Engine Repair, the comic thriller that premiered to rave reviews and sold-out audiences at L.A.'s Rogue Machine Theatre, where it won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Playwriting, among many other honors. Keegan Allen, James Badge Dale, playwright/actor John Pollono, and James Ransone star in the production directed by longtime MCC collaborator Jo Bonney(MCC's The Break of Noon, Fat Pig). Small Engine Repair at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) has its official opening night on November 20, 2013. For more info, please visit www.mcctheater.org. BroadwayWorld brings you a first look at the cast in action below!

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (formerly known as the Du Bois Institute), in conjunction with Hilton Als of The New Yorker, will present a staged reading of Alice Childress's Wedding Band: A Love-Hate Story in Black and White, co-directed by Hilton Als and A.R.T. Artistic Associate Shira Milikowsky. It takes place at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, starting at 7:30pm, and will be followed by a post-reading discussion.

Next Wednesday, November 6 at 5:00pm: Mel Gordon: 'Shakespeare on the Experimental Russian Stage', The Daniel Gerould Memorial Lecture at CUNY.

The opening production of Square One Theatre's 24th Season is the 'Lively, Provocative and Witty (New York Magazine) play Freud's Last Session by Mark St. Germain. Described as a humorous, insightful character study about psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud and professor/author C.S. Lewis, Freud's Last Session opens tonight, November 1 and continues on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through Saturday, November 16 (2013) at Square One's home base, the Stratford Theatre, located at 2422 Main Street inStratford, Connecticut.

Tony Award-winning actors Christian Borle (Peter and the Starcatcher, Spamalot) and Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone, Elf), Tony nominee Annaleigh Ashford (Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde), and Broadway stars Heidi Blickenstaff ([title of show], The Little Mermaid) and Derek Klena (Wicked, Dogfight) are all scheduled to take part in the developmental reading. Dog and Pony will receive its World Premiere at The Old Globe next spring, running May 28 - June 29, 2014; casting for that production will be announced at a later time.

Goodman Theatre announces the complete line-up for its 2013 New Stages festival, this year celebrating Latino playwrights. Three staged readings-The Rooster Room by Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegria Hudes, Feathers and Teeth by Charise Castro Smith and Another Word for Beauty by Jose Rivera-complement the previously-announced two fully-staged workshop productions, The Upstairs Concierge by Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz and The Solid Sand Below by former Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit member Martin Zimmerman.

Theatre Horizon begins their 9th Season with a production of Doug Wright's Pulitzer Prize winning play, I Am My Own Wife. This thought-provoking work begins previews tonight, October 31, opens Today, November 7 at 7:30 p.m., and closes Sunday, November 24. This will be the second season in Theatre Horizon's new home at 401 Dekalb Street. Tickets cost $22-$35. Tickets for students are $25. Tickets for seniors ages 62 and up are $29. Tickets and more information are available online at www.theatrehorizon.org or by calling (610) 283-2230.

MCC THEATER begins performances today, October 30th, for the New York Premiere of John Pollono's celebrated Small Engine Repair, the comic thriller that premiered to rave reviews and sold-out audiences at L.A.'s Rogue Machine Theatre, where it won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Playwriting, among many other honors. Keegan Allen, James Badge Dale, playwright/actor John Pollono, and James Ransone star in the production directed by longtime MCC collaborator Jo Bonney (MCC's The Break of Noon, Fat Pig). Small Engine Repair at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) has its official opening night on November 20, 2013. For more info, please visit www.mcctheater.org.

Over 450 elementary and secondary school students who are either deaf or hard of hearing from 17 schools in the tri-State region, will attended one of the next three Wednesday matinee performances of the hit musical Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella. Three upcoming matinee performances (today, October 30, November 6 and 13) of the show will be simultaneously sign language interpreted and open captioned by TDF's Accessibility Programs (TAP), which is bringing the students with mild to severe hearing loss to the theatre through their 'Access for Young Audiences' program. Additionally, earlier this month, TAP brought 100 students who are blind or have low vision to the Wednesday matinee performance on October 9, which featured audio description.

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS, the comedic adaptation of the 1960's sexploitation film, will make its off-Broadway debut tonight, October 30, 2013 at Dixon Place.

The Drama League announced today that they will honor Golden Globe Nominee and Emmy Award winner Neil Patrick Harris at the 30th Annual Musical Celebration of Broadway, to be held on Monday evening, February 3, 2014 at the famed Pierre Hotel (2 East 61st Street). The black-tie gala, which features dozens of stars from Hollywood and Broadway in a one-night-only evening of musical selections drawn from Mr. Harris' career in theater, film and television, supports The Drama League's educational initiatives for promising young artists. Tickets are available by calling (212) 244-9494.

ONCE, winner of eight Tony Awards including Best Musical and winner of the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, will play the Academy of Music for a limited engagement from tonight, October 29- Sunday, November 10. The press opening is tonight, October 29 at 8 p.m.

The Old Globe will present a one-night-only event, Barry Edelstein In Conversation with Jack O'Brien, on Monday, Dec. 2 at 7:00 p.m.

"Sounds of Desire" is as play that features monologues by nine highly distinctive Iraqi women, all played by one in a tour-de-force, highly reviewed actress. "Sounds" tells a story of what it means to be a woman in a strongly-Muslim country - torn apart by war -- with views different form our own of a woman's place in society. Ms. Raffo will be performing the concert version of this play which was originally commissioned and performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During this performance, she will be accompanied by acclaimed Middle Eastern instrumentalists and vocalists. The one-night-only and only-in-Lancaster performance is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2013 at 7:30 p.m., the Ware Center, 42 North Prince Street, Lancaster.