Scott Frankel News

Peter Huntley Productions and W14 Productions present AS YOU LIKE IT, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Derek Bond.

Just as central character J. M. Barrie needs to find his true voice in order to break through the writer's block that is hampering his playwriting career, FINDING NEVERLAND, the new musical about the family that inspired the beleaguered author to create Peter Pan, needs to find its voice, too. Teetering abruptly between empty frivolousness and genuine pathos, FINDING NEVERLAND is an uneven adventure in its current pre-Broadway tryout at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

After a national search, Playwrights Horizons announced today the appointment of Kyle Sircus as the institution's new Director of Marketing. Beginning Monday, September 22, Mr. Sircus will join the acclaimed theater company direct from Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, CA, where he currently serves as Marketing Manager, a position created especially for him in July 2012. Mr. Sircus will lead the theater company's seven-person Marketing Department.

Custom Made Theatre announces its 2014-2015 season. The award-winning company will stage six exciting works, opening with the Bay Area premiere of Eric Simonson's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse- Five, or The Children's Crusade and closing the season with Grey Gardens: The Musical. Two of the shows are Bay Area Premieres and one, Plautus's The Braggart Soldier, or Major Blowhard, adapted and directed by Evren Odcikin, is a World Premiere.

SpeakEasy Stage Company Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault announced today that Boston actress Jennifer Ellis will assume the role of Cathy Whitaker in the company's upcoming New England Premiere production of FAR FROM HEAVEN, running September 12 to October 11 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

On Saturday, July 19 @ 7pm, The Staten Island GLBT Center on Victory Boulevard in Staten Island welcomed Walter Newkirk, founder of Walter Newkirk Public Relations LLC and author of memoraBEALEia : A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens Mr. Newkirk's book is endorsed by Broadway veterans Scott Frankel, Michael Korie ,Doug Wright, and Christine Ebersole ; of the Tony award winning Grey Gardens musical , Bryan Batt, star of the AMC TV-series MAD MEN, and Tony nominated actress Sheryl Lee Ralph ( Dreamgirls, Thoroughly Modern Millie).

Tonight, July 19 at 7pm, The Staten Island GLBTQ Center is featuring very special guest Walter Newkirk, founder of Walter Newkirk Public Relations LLC and author of memoraBEALEia : A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens, as he takes you into the world of Grey Gardens. The event is free and open to the public.

On Saturday, July 19 at 7pm, The Staten Island GLBTQ Center is featuring very special guest Walter Newkirk, founder of Walter Newkirk Public Relations LLC and author of memoraBEALEia : A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens, as he takes you into the world of Grey Gardens. The event is free and open to the public.

Playwrights Horizons has announced initial casting for its upcoming 2014/2015 Season. The announcement includes casting for the first two shows of the season: initial casting for BOOTYCANDY, the New York premiere of a new play written and directed by Obie Award winner Robert O'Hara (In the Continuum, Antebellum, Insurrection: Holding History); and initial casting for GRAND CONCOURSE, the World Premiere of a new play by playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actress Heidi Schreck (There Are No More Big Secrets, Creature), directed by Kip Fagan (The Revisionist, Asuncion).

A little over 50 years ago, on Aug. 31, 1962, an African American sharecropper who had spent most of her life working in Mississippi fields traveled to her district's county seat to register to vote. She was denied the right. So began the public activism of Fannie Lou Hamer, whose struggles for voting and civil rights spanned the next 15 years. This coming fall, excerpts from a new musical inspired by Hamer's life and work, written by playwright/composer Felicia Hunter, will be presented in concert format on one of Carnegie Hall's iconic stages. The one-night-only special event also will serve as a benefit for the Center for Law and Social Justice, Medgar Evers College, CUNY.

In his forthcoming memoir, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER NEWKIRK, a veteran publicist confronts all aspects of his life including bouts with depression from 1978-2013, 4 hospitalizations between 2004-2012, the paralyzing and overwhelming fear of becoming homeless in 2011, his gay relationships from 1978-present day, in addition to his PR career in the fine and performing arts with backstage stories.

based upon the 1976 documentary of the same name, by Albert and David Maysles, the offbeat and somewhat perplexing musical Grey Gardens acts as a pseudo-documentary of the rise and fall of the reclusive mother/daughter duo of 'Big' Edith Bouvier Beale and 'Little' Edith Bouvier Beale. Aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the story follows their lives from high society to abject poverty, living in a decomposing mansion overrun with flea-infested cats.

South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company ended its season with a poignant and ambitious production of the Tony-award-winning musical, Grey Gardens. A musical is a bit of a departure for the small theatre company and its tiny black box space, but they acquitted themselves with both substance and aplomb. Premiered in New York in 2006 with music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie, and book by Douglas Wright, the play tells the heartbreaking story of Jacqueline Kennedy's reclusive aunt and cousin, whose eccentric lives descend into disarray and squalor. With a script that is part Long Day's Journey into Night and a score that is part Stephen Sondheim, Grey Gardens is laden with pathos and a bittersweet humor. The lyrics are mordant; the music through composed as an extension of the dialogue, it is a theatre piece which calls for sensitive singing-actors and a director who can plumb its depths. Fortunately, the Mad Horse Theatre has both!

Mad Horse Theatre Company will be producing its first musical in 17 years, as well as a Maine Premiere, and one of such depth and beauty.

Mad Horse Theatre Company will be producing its first musical in 17 years, as well as a Maine Premiere, and one of such depth and beauty.

Playwrights Horizons is now accepting entries for its popular LIVEforFIVE online lottery for up to two $5 tickets each to the New York premiere of FLY BY NIGHT: A NEW MUSICAL, conceived by Kim Rosenstock (Tigers Be Still); written by Will Connolly (performer, Once), Michael Mitnick (Sex Lives of Our Parents, the upcoming film The Giver) and Ms. Rosenstock; choreographed by Sam Pinkleton (Mr. Burns at PH; Natasha, Pierre…); and directed by Carolyn Cantor (The Great God Pan and After the Revolution at PH, Pumpgirl, Orange Flower Water).

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) announces nine awards granted from their National Fund for New Musicals, a major funding program to support NAMT member not-for-profit theatres in their collaborations with writers to create, develop and produce new musicals. Now in its sixth year, the Fund will provide grants totaling $35,500 to nine organizations across the country.

Playwrights Horizons is now accepting entries for its popular LIVEforFIVE online lottery for up to two $5 tickets each to the New York premiere of FLY BY NIGHT: A NEW MUSICAL, conceived by Kim Rosenstock (Tigers Be Still); written by Will Connolly (performer, Once), Michael Mitnick (Sex Lives of Our Parents, the upcoming film The Giver) and Ms. Rosenstock; choreographed by Sam Pinkleton (Mr. Burns at PH; Natasha, Pierre…); and directed by Carolyn Cantor (The Great God Pan and After the Revolution at PH, Pumpgirl, Orange Flower Water).

Acclaimed Off-Broadway theater company Playwrights Horizons just held its annual Spring Gala on Monday evening, May 5 at the event space 583 Park Avenue. Titled 'IN THE BEGINNING', the evening honored the theater company's Founding Artistic Director Bob Moss. An artistic director, stage director and teacher for thirty-seven years, Bob founded Playwrights Horizons in 1971 and gave the theater its unique and enduring mission. Three years later, Bob moved the theater to then-derelict West 42nd Street. He founded the 42nd Street Gang, which, with the 42nd Street Development Corporation, envisioned and spearheaded the renovation and creation of 42nd Street's Theatre Row, and gave Playwrights a permanent home. He served as the company's Artistic Director for ten years through 1981. He was also the director of the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, an affiliate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He continues to direct and teach at theaters and colleges across the country, and has mentored hundreds of young theater actors, writers and directors.

BAY STREET THEATRE NEW WORKS FESTIVAL will take place this weekend, April 25-27 at the Bay Street Theatre on the Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, NY. The Festival is produced in Association with SPACE on Ryder Farm.