It’s the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, and the wealthy producer Julia Budder is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs in the bedroom, where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. The group includes the excitable playwright; the possibly unstable wunderkind director; the pill-popping leading lady, treading the boards after becoming infamous in Hollywood; and the playwright’s best friend, for whom the play was written but who passed up this production for a television series. Add to this a drama critic who’s panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer, and you have a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness, and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre—and for comedy. But don’t worry: This play is sure to be the hit they have all been hoping for.
Directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, Children of a Lesser God stars film and television favorite Joshua Jackson and breakout star Lauren Ridloff, alongside Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe Award winner Anthony Edwards, Drama Desk Award nominee and Obie Award winner Kecia Lewis, Julee Cerda, Treshelle Edmond, and John McGinty.
The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has named Airness by Chelsea Marcantel the winner of the 2018 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award. The award, which recognizes an emerging playwright, will be presented at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville on April 7. Airness, which premiered at Humana, concerns a woman entering her first air guitar competition. There she discovers there's an art form at the center of what may seem on the surface like just people pretending to play instruments.
For 2018-19, its second full season in its home at the two-stage Pride Arts Center, Pride Films and Plays will expand to a five-show season, up from the four-show schedule of 2017-18. Artistic Director Nelson A. Rodriguez today announced the company's lineup of four plays and one musical under the theme "We Are Family."
Particularly in light of the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, author and civil rights activist James Baldwin is garnering new attention and appreciation for his astute analyses of race, class, and sexuality in U.S. culture. Our reading group will take up his groundbreaking semi-autobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). Attendees are invited to read this seminal text that brought mid-20th Century African-American literature out of the shadow of Richard Wright while deftly exploring the post-Civil War Great Migration, its southern roots, its religious inflections, and its generational tensions. The suggested edition is the most recent paperback (ISBN 978-0345806543). Traditional New Orleans fare of coffee and beignets at Muriel's Jackson Square with lively discussion to follow led by Festival favorite and Southern literary scholar Gary Richards. Seating is limited to 50 persons; pre-registration is required.
New York City staple Roundabout Theatre Company has just announced that Tony & Emmy Award winner Stockard Channing will return to the New York stage in the Off-Broadway premiere of APOLOGIA, by Alexi Kaye Campbell (The Pride). APOLOGIA will be directed by three-time Obie Award winner Daniel Aukin (Bad Jews, Skintight). Channing returns to the role of "Kristin" in Apologia following an acclaimed run in London's West End in 2017.
National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF), the longest consecutively producing theatre in the United States and the world's oldest continuously operating Yiddish theatre company, today announced that legendary stage and screen actor Joel Grey will direct the United States' premiere of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish this summer.
MCC THEATER (Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, Artistic Directors; Blake West, Executive Director) announced the New York Premiere production of Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, written by Jen Silverman, and directed by MCC alum Mike Donahue (The Legend of Georgia McBride).
A LETTER TO HARVEY MILK, THE MUSICAL is set in San Francisco in 1986, when retired Jewish immigrant Harry Weinberg takes a writing class taught by a young lesbian named Barbara, who encourages him to write a letter to someone who has passed away. He chooses to write to his old friend, Harvey Milk.
After lengthy deliberation, the American Theatre Critics Association has selected six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2017.
What begins as a one-night-stand turns into a tug of war between a short-order cook who sees a lifetime of love and adventure ahead and a waitress who's been burned too many times in the past and is terrified of being hurt again in Terrence McNally's contemporary American classic "Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune", being presented by Catskill's Bridge Street Theatre for eight performances only, Thursdays through Sundays March 29-April 8, 2017.
Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) presents their popular Writer-Producer Speed Date on Sunday, March 4, 2018. In deference to Oscar night, the event will start one hour earlier than usual: from 4:30pm - 8:00pm at NOLA Rehearsal Studio, 244 W 54th St., 11th floor. Application is free, and you must apply prior to purchasing your spot, on sale February 24, 2018. If accepted, there is a participation fee of $70 for TRU Members ($85 for non-members, $25 for each collaborator), and your pitch slot can be purchased at https://truonline.org/events/speed-date-03-04-18/.
The quick-witted American actor and icon, Groucho Marx was a frequent visitor to New Hope and Bucks County. Now nearly 41 years after his death, Groucho makes a hilarious return to Bucks - this time in the form of award-winning actor Frank Ferrante in the global comedy hit, "An Evening with Groucho." The show is presented February 14 - 25 at Bucks County Playhouse as part of the 2018 Visiting Artists Series.
E.M. Lewis's MAGELLANICA, a world premiere now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre, is the theatrical equivalent of a theory of everything. This epic play is about eight people wintering over at the South Pole Research Station in 1986.
National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, celebrates the continuation of the Rolling World Premiere Halftime with Don by Ken Weitzman at Phoenix Theatre. The play will receive a total of three distinct NNPN RWP productions, rolling through Core Members New Jersey Repertory Company (Long Branch; June 24-July 30, 2017), Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis, IN; October 25-November 19, 2017), and B Street Theatre (Sacramento, CA; September 11-23, 2018). Halftime with Don was a finalist for the 2015 National Showcase of New Plays and is NNPN's 65th Rolling World Premiere.
The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Executive Director, Patrick Willingham) announced the line-up today for the 2018 Free Shakespeare in the Park season, continuing a 56-year tradition of free theater in Central Park.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Life Is a Dream: The Films of Ra l Ruiz (Part 2), February 9-18. Following a memorable first part in December 2016, FSLC is pleased to present the next edition of an ongoing retrospective devoted to Ruiz, among the great visionaries in film history and perhaps its most intrepid explorer of the unconscious.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Life Is a Dream: The Films of Raul Ruiz (Part 2), February 9-18. Following a memorable first part in December 2016, FSLC is pleased to present the next edition of an ongoing retrospective devoted to Ruiz, among the great visionaries in film history and perhaps its most intrepid explorer of the unconscious.
In March, New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the regional premiere of Terrence McNally's It's Only a Play, in a newly revised version which marks McNally's eleventh production at NCTC. It's opening night of Peter Austin's new Broadway play, and while at the producer's penthouse for a lavish party, he anxiously awaits the play's reviews. With his career on the line and celebrities pouring in downstairs, he huddles upstairs with the producer, director and star of the show. This gleefully bitchy and affectionate (Entertainment Weekly) love letter to the theatre is the perfect setup for backstabbing comedy.
As we say goodbye to 2017, we remember all of those we have lost in this past year. From actors to directors and musicians, these people have shared their gifts with us and they will not be forgotten. Join BroadwayWorld in remembering some of these people below.
Unexpected Productions Improv opens its holiday classic, A(n Improvised) Christmas Carol, on November 24, 2017. It's a wild, hilarious, holiday ride.
2017 Regional Theatre Tony Award Recipient Dallas Theater Center will present the annual hit production of the holiday classic A Christmas Carol at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre.
Roundabout Theatre Company has announced the complete cast of the world-premiere production Amy and the Orphans, by Roundabout Underground alumna Lindsey Ferrentino (Ugly Lies the Bone), with direction by eight-time Tony Award nominee Scott Ellis (She Loves Me, On the Twentieth Century).
Unexpected Productions Improv opens its holiday classic, A(n Improvised) Christmas Carol, on November 24, 2017. It's a wild, hilarious, holiday ride.
2017 Regional Theatre Tony Award Recipient Dallas Theater Center will present the annual hit production of the holiday classic A Christmas Carol at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre.
And for First Comes The Night -- Isaak's stunning first album of new material in six years -- this gifted singer-songwriter and bandleader is bringing us a bumper crop of strong and intriguing songs from which to choose. There was no mission for this album other than to follow the songs, Chris Isaak explains, and in terms of songwriting, the floodgates really opened this time. My last release was Beyond The Sun -- my tribute to Sun Records with a lot of covers -- so this time around I had a lot of new material that I was thrilled to record. My manager always tells me, We need more songs.' This time, even she realized she's creating a songwriting monster, and had to beg me to stop.
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2014 | Broadway |
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