Ars Nova News

Ars Nova announces its December lineup which will feature new work from 2013 Artists-in-Residence and a climactic New Year's Eve fundraiser event to close out its 10th Anniversary Season. All shows are at 8pm unless otherwise noted. Details below!

Ancient ideals and modern musings rub up against each other in Black Wizard / Blue Wizard, a philosophical musical fantasia.

Barnes & Noble will celebrate the release of the new Ghostlight Records cast recording NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 with a special in-st0re performance and CD signing on Tuesday, December 10, the CD release date. The 5:00 PM event will be hosted by composer/writer Dave Malloy and will include director Rachel Chavkin and members of the original cast. The venue is located on the Upper East Side (150 East 86th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues). Please call (212) 369-2180 for details.

54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents Rob Shapiro's '1 Night Only: A Hanukkah Jamboree' tonight, November 26, 2013.

Coming up this week, 54 BELOW, the performance venue located just below the legendary Studio 54 at 254 West 54th Street, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond:

Joe's Pub at The Public welcomes the faithful and the faithless this holiday season with a winter program that includes Yiddish lullabies, kvetching, yuletide cheer, anti-consumerist sermons, sports, jazz, storytelling and of course Sandra Bernhard's hilarious and entertaining end-of-year free for all.

Negin Farsad, Becky Yamamoto and Kendra Cunningham present the weekly standup show, Comedy School Dropout. In the grand tradition of East Village alternative rooms, Comedy School Dropout brings top-notch standup comics, the occasional comedy musical act, subversive duo, or extremely talented threesome, to the stage for the cut-rate price of zero dollars!

Paper Mill Playhouse will continue its 75th Anniversary Season with the classic Charles Dickens musical Oliver!, with a holiday 'twist' for the entire family. With a book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, Oliver! will be directed by Paper Mill Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Mark S. Hoebee with original choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter. Oliver! will feature David Garrison (Fagin), best known for his role as Steve Rhoades on the hit television series Married...with Children, Betsy Morgan (Nancy), John Treacy Egan (Mr. Bumble), Jose Llana (Bill Sikes), David Hess (MR. Brownlow), Ethan Haberfield (Artful Dodger) and introducing Tyler Moran as Oliver. Oliver! will also feature 16 local boys from across the state of New Jersey who auditioned from a pool of over 200. Oliver! will play the Millburn, New Jersey theater from tonight, November 21 through December 29. The official press opening night is Sunday, December 1, 2013, at 7:00pm.

Poet Elizabeth Alexander and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will hold a wide ranging conversation inspired by August Wilson's Fences as part of Long Wharf Theatre's Sunday Symposium series.

THE DIXON PLACE NON-DENOMINATIONAL, NON-SECTARIAN, NON-PARTISAN, NON-OFFENSIVE HOLIDAY SPECTACLE! is set for Thursday, December 5 at 6:30pm at Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002.

Ars Nova announces its December lineup which will feature new work from 2013 Artists-in-Residence and a climactic New Year's Eve fundraiser event to close out its 10th Anniversary Season. All shows are at 8pm unless otherwise noted. Details below!

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director, Manhattan Theatre Club), Barry Grove (Executive Producer, MTC), Mandy Greenfield (Artistic Producer, MTC), Jason Eagan (Artistic Director, Ars Nova), and Jeremy Blocker (Managing Director, Ars Nova) have announced the 2013-2014 participants for The Writer's Room a new program to commission, develop and support playwrights in the process of creating new work for the stage.

Manhattan Theatre Club's American premiere of TAKING CARE OF BABY by Tony Award winner Dennis Kelly opens tonight, Tuesday, November 19. Directed by Erica Schmidt (Humor Abuse), the cast features Francois Battiste (Magic/ Bird), Reed Birney (Blasted, Our Leading Lady), Kristen Bush (Kin, The Common Pursuit), Tony nominee Amelia Campbell (A Streetcar Named Desire, Our Country's Good), Margaret Colin (The Columnist, "Gossip Girl"), Michael Crane (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson off-Broadway), Ethan Phillips (Golden Age) and Zach Shaffer ("Smash").

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (formerly known as the Du Bois Institute), in conjunction with Hilton Als of The New Yorker, will present a staged reading of Alice Childress's Wedding Band: A Love-Hate Story in Black and White, co-directed by Hilton Als and A.R.T. Artistic Associate Shira Milikowsky. It takes place at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, starting at 7:30pm, and will be followed by a post-reading discussion.

Manhattan Theatre Club presents the American premiere of Taking Care of Baby by Dennis Kelly and directed by Erica Schmidt. Joining previously announced cast members Reed Birney (Blasted, Our Leading Lady), Kristen Bush (Kin, The Common Pursuit), Tony nominee Amelia Campbell (A Streetcar Named Desire, Our Country's Good) and Margaret Colin (The Columnist, 'Gossip Girl'), are Francois Battiste (Magic/ Bird), Michael Crane (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson off-Broadway), Ethan Phillips (Golden Age) and Zach Shaffer ('Smash').

The Meeting* hosted by Justin Sayre - the acclaimed comedy/variety show hailed as 'rambunctious, uproarious and unpredictable' by The Wall Street Journal, 'delicious and delightfully droll' by The New York Post, and 'hilarious and sardonic' by The Village Voice - has moved to 54 BELOW for a six month run after four sell-out seasons in New York's West Village. The next show will be on Wednesday, November 20 at 9:30 PM. Justin Sayre and The Meeting*, known for a signature blend of outrageous comedy, politics, culture and everything in between, were named one of the Top 10 nightclub shows of 2011 by Time Out New York, received the 2012 Bistro Award for 'Comedy Artistry' and a 2011 MAC Award nomination for Best Male Comedy Performance.

KEVIN CARTER, Bobby Cronin, Scott Evan Davis, Drew Gasparini, Julia Meinwald, Blake Pfeil, Jeff Thomson, and Amanda Green star in INSPIRED 2: A Benefit Concert for the Humane Society of NYC and The Last Resort Rescue of NJ, today, Monday November 18th, 7pm at Stage 72/Triad.

Ars Nova has announced this year's New Year's Eve Spectacular, the grand finale to its 10th Anniversary year.

A new musical based on the 2008 movie Bottle Shock is now in development as part of the Ars Nova Uncharted program by writers James D. Sasser and Charles Vincent Burwell. Director Kent Nicholson helms the process.

MCC THEATER today announced that Steven Boyer, previously announced to reprise his celebrated, Obie Award-winning performance in MCC's upcoming Off-Broadway premiere of Robert Askins' Hand to God, will be joined in that production by Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch as well asGeneva Carr, Michael Oberholtzer, and Sarah Stiles. Hand to God, which first appeared in New York to great acclaim at the Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) in 2011, will be directed once again by Moritz von Stuelpnagel and begins at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) on February 20, 2014. An official opening night is set for March 10, 2014.