Billy Rose News

Albert Schultz, Founding Artistic Director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, today announced that the company's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will run August 29 - October 24, 2009, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

The New York Public Library announces theatre related events for fall 2009, including exhibitions and public programs.

Albert Schultz, Founding Artistic Director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, today announced that the company's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will run August 29 - October 24, 2009, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

The personal theatrical papers of Katharine Hepburn, which were acquired by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2007, will be on view for the first time in the new library exhibition, Katharine Hepburn: In Her Own Files, opening Wednesday, June 10. Her long and rich theater career is documented through typescripts (some, like the script for Coco, annotated in Hepburn?s hand), hundreds of photographs (publicity shots and formal portraits, as well as informal snapshots and rehearsal candids), scrapbooks, promotional ephemera, and sixty years of correspondence (fan mail, congratulatory notes, and general letters from such notable friends and admirers as Judy Garland, Richard Burton, John Ford, Vivien Leigh, Peter O?Toole, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Jeremy Irons, among scores of others. She saved telegrams from her friends and from stage crews and even the cards that come with flower bouquets, including many signed ?Pot,? Hepburn?s pet name for long-time companion Spencer Tracy). The exhibition continues through Saturday, October 10, 2009 in the Vincent Astor Gallery of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, located on the Lincoln Center campus at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free. For exhibition information, call 212.870.1630 or visit the Library?s website at www.nypl.org/lpa. In conjunction with this exhibition, a series of Hepburn films based on stage plays will be screened on Saturday afternoons in July and August at the Library.

'The Leading Men IV,' a benefit concert for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, was held Monday, May 11, at 7pm at Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. As part of the long-running Broadway at Birdland series, it featured top singers from Broadway and cabaret. John Tartaglia (Avenue Q, Shrek The Musical) once again hosted, and Emmy-nominated writer, host and comic Seth Rudetsky returned as musical director, along with director Alan Muraoka (NAATCO's Falsettoland).

roadway Musicals of 1931 on Monday, March 31st, and was presented by The Town Hall (Executive and Artistic Director Lawrence Zucker). Now in its ninth season, the critically acclaimed Broadway By The Year series is known for great singing and spectacular Broadway dancing. The series is created, written and hosted by Scott Siegel for The Town Hall.

Through staged readings, song, dance, panel discussions, and films, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will mark the centennial of the death of famed Irish playwright and poet J. M Synge and examine his 1904 tragedy Riders to the Sea. 'On an Anniversary': J.M. Synge, 1871 - 1909 is a free series of five programs that explore the importance and influence of this writer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.

Through staged readings, song, dance, panel discussions, and films, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will mark the centennial of the death of famed Irish playwright and poet J. M Synge and examine his 1904 tragedy Riders to the Sea. 'On an Anniversary': J.M. Synge, 1871 - 1909 is a free series of five programs that explore the importance and influence of this writer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.

Celebrate Edgar Allan Poe's Bicentennial (1809-2009) with the critically acclaimed, award winning Radiotheatre in a unique event as they perform live, on stage, a year-long presentation of seventeen major works by the grand master of American horror!

Susan Hilferty, costume designer for the Broadway musicals Spring Awakening and Wicked, among many other theatrical productions, will discuss her career at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, on Monday, January 12, at 6 p.m. Hilferty's appearance, presented in conjunction with the League of Professional Theatre Women, is free to the public on a first come, first served basis, and kicks off a series of programs and panel discussions held in connection with the exhibition, Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance, currently on view until May 2, 2009.

Susan Hilferty, costume designer for the Broadway musicals Spring Awakening and Wicked, among many other theatrical productions, will discuss her career at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, on Monday, January 12, at 6 p.m. Hilferty's appearance, presented in conjunction with the League of Professional Theatre Women, is free to the public on a first come, first served basis, and kicks off a series of programs and panel discussions held in connection with the exhibition, Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance, currently on view until May 2, 2009.

Variety has reported the sad news that playwright Dale Wasserman, best known for 'Man of La Mancha' and the stage version of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has died of heart failure in Arizona. He was 94 years old.

Celebrate Edgar Allan Poe's Bicentennial (1809-2009) with the critically acclaimed, award winning Radiotheatre in a unique event as they perform live, on stage, a year-long presentation of seventeen major works by the grand master of American horror!

Tony-Winner, Film Veteran, Raconteur, and Beatles Intimate Tells All (or most) in Three Free Performances of Victor Spinetti: A Very Private Diary at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts-January 5, 8, and 10

As part of their Historic Photos series, Turner Publishing has released Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970 by New York theatre journalist Leonard Jacobs.

Women Designing for Theater, Opera, and Dance Take Center Stage in Exhibition at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts! Everyone loves a backstage story, and none so much as the one about the brilliant but unsung talent who finally makes it into the spotlight. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the League of Professional Theatre Women bring that long-deserved moment to 140 of those stories in Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance . Featuring treasures from the Library's archives, Curtain Call is a multi-media exhibition crackling with creative verve and bursting at the seams with the dazzling works of the little-noted women without whose costume, set, and lighting designs and innovations the show could not have gone on in North America for the past hundred-plus years. This is the stuff that makes the audience gasp in awe. This is the opportunity to meet those responsible for taking our breath away.

Everyone loves a backstage story, and none so much as the one about the brilliant but unsung talent who finally makes it into the spotlight. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the League of Professional Theatre Women bring that long-deserved moment to 140 of those stories in Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance.

Friday, October 24th, THE AFTER PARTY will welcome CBS' 'The Amazing Race' and The Fantasticks' NICK SPANGLER, The Fantasticks' LEWIS CLEALE, as well as the cast of LIKE YOU LIKE IT. The show will also feature special guest pianist STEVEN SILVERSTEIN.

Critically acclaimed Broadway performer Neile Adams ('Kismet,' 'The Pajama Game') returns to The Big Apple with her new cabaret show, 'Something Cool,' an autobiographical musical celebration of her life and early days in New York on Broadway, where she met her late first husband, actor Steve McQueen.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center has acquired the papers of renowned performers and acting teachers Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof. The collection consists of thousands of pages of unpublished correspondence, diaries, scripts and manuscripts, photographs, clippings and other documentation relating to the dynamic theatrical careers of both Hagen and Berghof. This collection of professional and personal papers, spanning nearly 100 years of theater history, is being made public for the first time. To celebrate the bequest, the Library is planning a series of eight free public programs featuring many close friends and colleagues of Ms. Hagen and Mr. Berghof's including such figures as Harold Prince, Edward Albee, David Hyde Pierce and Eli Wallach. Programs take place in the Bruno Walter Auditorium in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center located at 111 Amsterdam Avenue (between 64th and 65th streets). Admission to all programs is free and first come, first served. For information, please call (212) 642-0142 or visit www.nypl.org/lpaprograms. Programs are curated by Alan Pally, Manager of Public Programs at the Library for the Performing Arts.