Ethan Hawke, Cynthia Nixon, Rosie Perez, Billy Porter and Anika Noni Rose will perform at a November 3rd benefit performance for the Public Theater at
Esquire Downtown (at Astor Place, 445 Lafayette Street). The benefit, for which a few tickets remain, will help to fund new shows at the New York theatre institution.
The benefit, which is a collaboration between the Public's Late Nite Committee and Esquire House, will begin at 7 PM with hors d'oeuvres and an open bar before performances commence at 7:45 PM. Esquire House "has assembled 13 top
designers who have each styled a section of two penthouse suites in the
new Sculpture for Living building at Astor Place. The Public Theater is
one of ten New York City charities Esquire has chosen. . . . For this
one-night-only event, the Late Nite Committee is creating an evening of
'site specific' scenes and musical numbers performed in the spaces,
throughout the party," according to press notes.
Tony Award-winner Anika Noni Rose (Caroline, or Change, the upcoming Dreamgirls film) will get the performances off to a start in the Game Room at 7:45 PM; she will sing "The Lowdown Down" from The Wild Party by Michael John LaChiusa. LaChiusa is, of course, the creator of the Public's current show--the musical See What I Wanna See. At 8 PM in The Great Room, Nixon (the upcoming play Rabbit Hole, "Sex and the City") will perform monologues from A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner, while at 8:15 PM in the Master Bath, a bathtub scene from John Patrick Shanley's The Big Funk will be performed. At 8:30 PM in the Master Bedroom, Perez (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, films such as Do the Right Thing) will act in a scene from Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Stephen Adly Guirgis will a scene from his play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot in the Game Room at 8:45 PM, and The Great Room will host Hawke's (Henry IV, Hurlyburly) performance of a scene from Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian and Porter's (Grease, Miss Saigon) rendition of a song from Hair, a landmark Public Theater production.
Tickets, priced at $250 (tax deductible), can be purchased by calling (212) 539-8633. For more information, visit this link.