Morrie Ryskind News

Goodman Theatre's Board of Trustees proudly announces Patricia Cox as the new Chairman-Elect. Cox, whose involvement with the Goodman spans two decades, is currently its Vice Chairman. A founding member of Chicago's legendary St. Nicholas Theatre Company (with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet and actors William H. Macy and Stephen Schachter), Cox was among the city's first performing arts marketing, development and management leaders to emerge under the late, great Lyric Opera impresario Danny Newman. She has since worked with and consulted for a wide range of not-for-profit arts organizations in Chicago and across the country. Cox will assume chairmanship in the fall, as current Chairman Shawn M. Donnelley concludes her two-year tenure.

'Hooray for Joey Slotnick!' Director Henry Wishcamper has tapped Chicago native Joey Slotnick for the lead role of the African explorer 'Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding'-the heightened vaudevillian persona created by Groucho Marx for the 1929 stage and screen original-in Goodman Theatre's season opening musical Animal Crackers, written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, with music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

Goodman Theatre is the proud recipient of an unprecedented $275,000 gift from the Shubert Foundation, marking the largest annual general operating support grant in the theater's 84-year history. The grant, which represents a $35,000 increase for the Goodman over last season, is part of a record $17.6 million funding that the Shubert Foundation announced for not-for-profit companies in 2009.

For the fifth consecutive summer, Goodman Theatre welcomes young people from the Chicagoland area as participants in its General Theater Studies program (GTS), a free, six week intensive introduction to the theater arts.

Goodman Theatre proudly concludes its 2008/2009 season with José Rivera's newest play, Boleros for the Disenchanted, 'an epic study of wedded life that is simply?and not so simply?marvelous' (Variety). A true love story inspired by Rivera's parents' courtship and eventual migration from Puerto Rico to Alabama, Boleros for the Disenchanted makes its Chicago premiere directed by Henry Godinez?the Goodman's Resident Artistic Associate who was named 2008 Latino of the Year by the Chicago Latino Network. Chicago actors Elizabeth Ledo and Sandra Marquez command the stage in the role of Flora, based on Rivera's mother, at various points in her life. Godinez's cast also includes Liza Fernandez, Joe Minoso, Rene Rivera and Felix Solis. Boleros for the Disenchanted is performed in English in the Albert Theatre June 20 ? July 26, 2009. Tickets are $25 ? $70. A complete performance schedule including dates, times and ticket prices appears at the end of this release. Meet the playwright and director at a free post-performance discussion on Thursday, June 25, moderated by Myrna Salazar of the International Latino Cultural Center. Tickets and information: 312.443.3800 or GoodmanTheatre.org. The Chicago Community Trust is the Major Production Sponsor.

Artistic Director Robert Falls announced today the final production of Goodman Theatre's 2009/2010 season-The Good Negro, Tracey Scott Wilson's 'thunderous...stunning' (Variety) new play, comes to Chicago fresh from its off-Broadway run at The Public Theater. Resident Director Chuck Smith, who previously collaborated with Wilson on the Goodman's 2004/2005 Chicago-premiere production of The Story, will direct The Good Negro in the Albert Theatre in Spring 2010.

Artistic Director Robert Falls proudly announces a diverse line-up-from musical hilarity and classic yarns, to memory pieces and family dramas, to stories with ethnic roots that reflect today's world-in Goodman Theatre's new 2009/2010 season.

The Friend Center for the Arts at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF) offers Several Theatrical Presentations for 2009 The Hub at the JCCSF presents Fabrik: The Legend of M. Rabinowitz Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida Street

A Broadway musical based on My Man Godfrey may be on the way

American Century Theatre presents a fascinating staged reading of Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's claws-out 1936 comedy Stage Door

The Opening Doors Theatre Company's premiere production of their Closing Notice series is the infamous sequel to Bye, Bye, Birdie

Encores!'s latest production helps prove this classic and wholly original musical deserves a higher place in the standard American theatre repertory

The Gershwin's 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing opens May 11th at Encores!

The Encores! production of the Gershwins' Of Thee I Sing, starring Victor Garber, Jefferson Mays and Jennifer Laura Thompson, plays May 11th through 15th

Jenny Powers has been cast as Diana Devereaux in the Encores! production of Of Thee I Sing, running from May 11th through 15th

Victor Garber will play John P. Wintergreen in the Encores! production of the Gershwins' Of Thee I Sing, which will run from May 11th through 14th, 2006

The Gershwins' satiric musical Of Thee I Sing will be the third entry in City Center's Encores!' 2006 season

The classic musical political satire gets a fast and funny re-mounting

He's gone from being the Phantom and the Scarlet Pimpernel to president of the U.S.