THEATER TALK Welcomes Tommy Tune This Week

An all-new THEATER TALK welcomes 10-time Tony® Award winner Tommy Tune, recipient of a Tony Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's June ceremony. Tune visited THEATER TALK the afternoon after the awards, still aglow with his natural effervescence and warmth, and the conversation moved smoothly from an acknowledgement of his special award to an entertaining chronicle of his roots and love for musicals.

Tune tells co-hosts Michael Riedel of the New York Post and Susan Haskins that he "danced before I walked" as a baby - the child of "wonderful ballroom dancers." Growing up in Houston, Texas, he was not exposed to a Broadway show, however, until he saw a revelatory production of The King and I. Tune would later go on to stage and/or star in his own shows including Seesaw, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine, Nine, My One and Only, Grand Hotel, The Will Rogers Follies and Tommy Tune Tonite!

Tune shares fascinating anecdotes about his two brilliant mentors - director/choreographer Michael Bennett and director Mike Nichols. Bennett hired Tune in 1966 for the chorus of A Joyful Noise, the first show he choreographed. (It ran 12 performances.) In 1973, Bennett hired Tune again, this time for the musical Seesaw, which was struggling out-of-town in tryouts. Casting Tune turned the show around; both he and Bennett went on to win Tonys for Seesaw. Tune also reminisces about other stops-and-starts of his early career, including directing the Patio Revue as a teenager on his parents' front porch and later moving to New York where he was hired after his first audition, the beginning of his meteoric and now legendary Broadway career.

The latest edition of THEATER TALK premieres in the New York metropolitan area on Friday, July 10 (2015) at 1 AM (early Saturday morning) on Thirteen/PBS, with repeats on CUNY TV* on Saturday 7/11 at 8:30 PM, Sunday 7/12 at 12:30 PM, and Monday 7/13 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM.

THEATER TALK is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The CUNY TV Foundation and The Friends of THEATER TALK.

*CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is broadcast over-the-air in the New York metropolitan area on digital Ch. 25.3, and cablecast in THE FIVE boroughs of New York City on Ch. 75 (Time Warner and Cablevision/Optimum Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN), and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). The show is available online anytime at www.cuny.tv and www.theatertalk.org, and via iTunes podcasts.

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