Jennifer Ehle, Tony Kushner, and More to Appear at Soho Rep's Spring Fete

Soho Rep.'s 2018 Spring Fête, emceed by Ghanaian-American writer and actor Jocelyn Bioh, will honor philanthropists Janice Lee and Stuart Shapiro, Monday, April 16 at The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers (Pier 61, Chelsea Piers) in Manhattan.

The event will feature appearances by actress Jennifer Ehle (Pride & Prejudice), playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (An Octoroon), playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), writer, director and actor Tim Blake Nelson (Leaves of Grass), actress Gloria Reuben (Mr. Robot), actor Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me by Your Name); along with performances by three-time Grammy Award-winner Steve Earle, performance artist Narcissister, and Jomama Jones and the cast of DUAT.

The event will begin at 6:00pm with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Dinner, performances and live auction will begin at 7:00pm with dessert and honoree presentation. Tickets, starting at $750, and tables, starting at $5,000, can be purchased via Sam Horvath at Soho Rep. at 212.941.8632 x 207 and gala@sohorep.org.

The Spring Fête is Soho Rep.'s most important fundraiser. Net proceeds account for 20% of the company's entire annual budget and support raised enables the company to commission and produce innovative, ambitious, and socially relevant new plays while keeping ticket prices affordable.

Janice Lee and Stuart Shapiro are avid theatergoers and engaged philanthropists who first became involved with Soho Rep. in 2008 after seeing the theater's "spectacularly theatrical" and "fierce" (The New York Times) production of Sarah Kane's Blasted. Over the last 10 years, Janice and Stu have remained some of the most steadfast, passionate, and generous advocates of Soho Rep.'s work.

Janice joined the board in 2015 and has taken a leadership role in strengthening the group's fundraising capacity and outlining a strategic vision for the company's future. Soho Rep. has benefitted time and time again from Stu's valuable expertise, and Janice and Stu both played a significant role in enabling the company to renovate and reopen its beloved longtime home in Tribeca this year.

Today's announcement comes amidst the highly acclaimed, sold-out, twice-extended World Premiere of Aleshea Harris's Is God Is, with whichSoho Rep. has reopened its longtime home on Walker Street in Tribeca. In a Critic's Pick review for The New York Times, Ben Brantley describes Harris as a "master of high-octane carnage," praising her "gratifying, lurid new play," which "implicitly asks us to consider the roots, futility and inevitability of cyclical violence, and to question ourselves for wallowing so happily in the stories that traffic in it."

About Soho Rep.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep. has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theater, serving as a vital center for contemporary theatre artists.

Soho Rep. is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays, performing to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over half aged 18-40.

Critics continue to herald Soho Rep. as a go-to theatre destination for new and original works. New York Magazine says, "this indispensable theater offers more excitement per chair than any space in town," Time Out New York says, "Soho Rep is the best theater in NYC," and The New York Times declares Soho Rep. to be "a first-class downtown company" and says, "The downtown powerhouse...regularly outclasses the work done on many of the city's larger stages." In 2015, The Village Voice named Soho Rep. the "Best Off-Broadway Theater Company," and the company was listed in Travel Magazine's 2016 "10 Essential Off-Broadway Theaters."

In 2014, Soho Rep. was honored with a Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement. Over the last decade, Soho Rep. productions have garnered 18 OBIE Awards; the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical; 13 Drama Desk nominations, two Kesselring Awards, The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake and, a special citation in The New York Drama Critics' Circle's 2012-13 awards. In recent years, Soho Rep. has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Alice Birch, debbie tucker green, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Daniel Alexander Jones, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Young Jean Lee, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Anne Washburn.