Anna-Deavere Smith News

Producers Angelo Fraboni and Daryl Roth have announced that the New York premiere of Vigil, written by Morris Panych and directed by Stephen DiMenna, will begin performances Sunday, September 20, at 3pm at the DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15 Street, east of Union Square. The opening is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29 at 7pm.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, recognized by U.S. Congress as a vital American 'Cultural Ambassador to the World,' returns to the stage of New York City Center from December 2, 2009 - January 3, 2010 with exciting performances that have become a joyous holiday tradition.

Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) will launch its 31st season this fall with the New York premiere of Anna Deavere Smith's LET ME DOWN EASY. Conceived, written, and performed by Ms. Smith and directed by Leonard Foglia, LET ME DOWN EASY will begin preview performances on Tuesday, September 15 and will officially open on Wednesday, October 7 at 6:45pm.

Women's Project, the 32-year-old non-profit theater dedicated to producing plays written and directed by women, will increase main stage production next season by 50%. The theater's board of directors authorized Julie Crosby, producing artistic director, to increase main stage productions from two to three at the company's Julia Miles Theater on West 55th Street.

New York's OBIE Award-winning Epic TheatreEnsemble (Zak Berkman, Melissa Friedman, Ron Russell, Founding Executive Directors) has announced its 9 th Anniversary Season of new works: the world premiere of Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven by Russell Davis, and the New York Premiere of Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl. Also scheduled is Shakespeare Remix MacBeth a collaboration with Epic's unrivaled After School Shakespeare Program at Chelsea High School.

Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) in association with Long Wharf Theatre presents Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie, directed by Gordon Edelstein with Patch Darragh (Tom Wingfield), two-time Tony® Award winner Judith Ivey (Amanda Wingfield), Keira Keeley (Laura Wingfield).

At the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic welcome today's edgiest and most eminent critics, artists, administrators and patrons to the Arts and Culture programming track. They will offer fresh and dynamic perspectives on the status of the arts in the face of unprecedented economic, social and technological changes.

At the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic welcome today's edgiest and most eminent critics, artists, administrators and patrons to the Arts and Culture programming track. They will offer fresh and dynamic perspectives on the status of the arts in the face of unprecedented economic, social and technological changes.

MEMPHIS, an original Broadway musical, will open Monday, October 19, 2009 at the Shubert Theatre (225 W. 44th Street) following critically-acclaimed and sold-out engagements at La Jolla Playhouse and Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre. Previews begin on Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

Fela!, the critically acclaimed musical that had audiences on their feet during its world premiere last summer at Off-Broadway's 37 Arts, will arrive on Broadway this fall where it begins performances at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre (230 West 49th Street) on Monday, October 19. The official opening is set for Monday, November 23. This new musical, based on the life of groundbreaking African composer, performer and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is directed and choreographed by Tony® Award-winner Bill T. Jones (Spring Awakening), with a book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones. Sahr Ngaujah will return in the title role for which he received universal acclaim, while the world renowned Antibalas and other members of the NYC Afrobeat community, under the direction of Aaron Johnson, will again perform Kuti?s rousing music live onstage. Winner of this year?s Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Fela! was conceived by Bill T. Jones, Jim Lewis and Steve Hendel.

On Monday, June 8th, at 10:30 PM ET/PT, SHOWTIME will premiere the new, half-hour dark comedy NURSE JACKIE, marking the triumphant return to premium television of Emmy Award-winning actress Edie Falco. The series, inspired from the provocative journal of a real-life Manhattan ER nurse, is executive produced by Caryn Mandabach, John Melfi, Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem.

The star-studded roster for the 2009 World Science Festival's Opening Gala Performance on June 10 at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall has been finalized. This salute to the intersection of science and the arts - a recurring theme throughout the Festival's five days of programming - encompasses nearly all forms of the performing arts, and includes some of the top names in show business.

The World Science Festival (www.worldsciencefestival.com) today announced a sweeping line-up of cutting-edge and innovative science programming, designed to make science captivating and accessible to the general public.

The Literature to Life® program of The American Place Theatre (APT) will kick off its newest campaign, Project 451, with a celebrity gala May 17 and 18 in Theater at St. Clement's, 423 West 46th Street, Manhattan.

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) announces the final show of its 2008-09 season: Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo, staged by acclaimed director Rebecca Bayla Taichman (world premieres of Theresa Rebeck's The Scene and Mauritius and Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone). This new spellbinder by the master playwright who also penned Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A.C.T.'s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, is a meticulously calibrated and dangerously brutal look at relationships intimate and unexpected. The story opens with Peter, a tweedy book editor, and his wife, Ann, whose everyday conversation takes an unexpected turn into dangerously personal territory. It's the kind of conversation that can drive a husband out for a walk-to Central Park, where Jerry, a desperate outcast, awaits. An unforgettable pairing of Albee's original The Zoo Story with a freshly penned prequel, At Home at the Zoo (formerly titled Peter and Jerry) bares its teeth to threaten the delicately balanced world its characters inhabit. Artistic Director Carey Perloff has put together an all-star artistic team on this production, featuring Tony Award-nominated actor Manoel Felciano (Ragtime at The Kennedy Center, A.C.T.'s Rock 'n' Roll, and Sweeney Todd on Broadway) as Jerry and scenic designer Robert Brill, who received a Tony Award nomination last week for his work on Guys and Dolls on Broadway. Hailed by critics as 'a thoroughly satisfying package of jagged-edged provocation' (Newsday) and 'an essential and heartening experience' (The New York Times), Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo plays at A.C.T. June 5-July 5, 2009. Opening night is Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at 8 p.m. Tickets-starting at $14-are available by calling A.C.T. Ticket Services at 415.749.2228, or at www.act-sf.org.

Following a critically acclaimed season which included the Pulitzer Prize finalist Becky Shaw and the Broadway transfer of its musical hit Next to Normal, Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director; Ellen Richard, Executive Director) has announced three of the four plays scheduled for its upcoming 31st Season.

A new play written and directed by Paul Weitz and the rain-check run of the latest Douglas Carter Beane play are set for the 2009-10 season at Off Broadway's Second Stage Theater according to a report in Variety.

Is Sadie Hawkins Day a women's project? This is 2009, right? Well, it is a Women's Project project, especially when its goal is to raise money to support women theatre artists. So, in keeping with the dictum that anything a man can do, a woman can do just as well, but backwards and in heels, Women's Project's spring fund-raiser is a Sadie Hawkins Dance Spectacular Wednesday, April 29, from 9:00 pm at Touch Nightclub, 240 West 52nd Street.

The Literature to Life® program of The American Place Theatre (APT) will kick off its newest campaign, Project 451, with a celebrity gala May 17 and 18 in Theater at St. Clement's, 423 West 46th Street, Manhattan.

On Monday, June 8th, at 10:30 PM ET/PT, SHOWTIME will premiere the new, half-hour dark comedy NURSE JACKIE, marking the triumphant return to premium television of Emmy Award-winning actress Edie Falco. The series, inspired from the provocative journal of a real-life Manhattan ER nurse, is executive produced by Caryn Mandabach, John Melfi, Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem.