Chuckie Benson News

McCarter Theatre Center has announced the cast for the revival of the Tony and Grammy award-winning DREAMGIRLS. Learn more here!

Watch video highlights of Goodspeed's DREAMGIRLS, running through Dec 30, 2023 at The Goodspeed Opera House. 

Watch Keirsten Hodgens (Lorrell), Ta-Tynisa Wilson (Deena), Shantel Cribbs (Michelle) and the company of Goodspeed's DREAMGIRLS perform the Disco version of 'One Night Only' here!

Watch a clip from 'Steppin' to the Bad Side' from Goodspeed's Dreamgirls featuring Jos N. Banks, Chuckie Benson, Robert Cornelius, Arnold Harper II, Alfred E. Jackson, Mykal Kilgore, Diva LaMarr, Evan Tyrone Martin and Kwame M. Remy here!

Get the latest news on the star-studded cast of DREAMGIRLS at Goodspeed Musicals, including Ta-Tynisa Wilson, Keirsten Hodgens, and Trejah Bostic. Find out when and where you can catch this highly anticipated production.

The imminent start of the 2022 Oregon Shakespeare Festival season—Artistic Director Nataki Garrett’s first full season—marks a celebratory return to repertory producing. The 2022 lineup features eight on-stage plays and musicals, from classic Shakespeare to works by some of today’s most exciting playwrights.

Porchlight Music Theatre has announced a line up including more than 50 Chicago artists performing, greetings and well wishes from Broadway stars including E. Faye Butler, Sean Allan Krill, Telly Leung, LaChanze, Susan Moniz and Kathy Voyto, a new raffle prize for a weekend in the home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and more as a part of its annual Chicago Sings fundraising concert.

Each year, Porchlight Music Theatre celebrates an individual who has made an exceptional and lasting contribution to the state of the art of Chicago music theatre with the prestigious Guy Adkins Award. This year, Felicia P. Fields is the recipient.

Porchlight Music Theatre has announced Chicago Sings Rock & Roll Broadway, premiering Saturday, March 20 at 7 p.m. CDT.

It's symptomatic of SPAMILTON's inconsistency: quite funny and thoughtful in one moment, down a rabbit hole the next. For every inspired sequence in which Lin-Manuel engages 'Stephen Sondheim as Ben Franklin' in a lengthy debate about the density of rhymes, there's a lazily written riff like 'not throwing away my pot' (an extended refrain that comes out of nowhere and exists only for the cheap laugh of a weed joke). Too many of the rhymes are moon-and-June; too many of the jokes are merely references in disguise; too many of the allusions are a crutch.

Porchlight Music Theatre's 25th Anniversary Mainstage season continues with Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies, January 24 a?" March 6, 2020 at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn St. Featuring music by Duke Ellington, concept by Donald McKayle, direction and choreography by Brenda Didier and Florence Walker Harris, and music direction by Jermaine Hill.

Porchlight Music Theatre's 25th Anniversary Mainstage season continues with Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies, January 24 – March 6, 2020 at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn St. Featuring music by Duke Ellington, concept by Donald McKayle, direction and choreography by Brenda Didier and Florence Walker Harris, and music direction by Jermaine Hill. 

Porchlight Music Theatre's 25th Anniversary Mainstage season continues with Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies, January 24 - March 6, 2020 at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn St. Featuring music by Duke Ellington, concept by Donald McKayle, direction and choreography by Brenda Didier and Florence Walker Harris, and music direction by Jermaine Hill.

Experience true Southern hospitality at Celie's Southern Tea before the matinee performance of the Tony Award-winning musical The Color Purple on October 26, 2019, at 1:00 p.m. Enjoy scrumptious Southern comfort food like fried green tomatoes, cornbread muffins, and hummingbird cake, and meet a?oeCeliea?? and her sister a?oeNettie,a?? played by Eben K. Logan and Kyrie Courter. Celie's Southern Tea is $37.00 for adults and $27.00 for children 12 and under. Reservations must be made 24 hours in advance.

Spamilton: An American Parody tour launched at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH on December 20, 2018 and is now playing ten multi-week engagements in its first season. Tickets are on sale NOW at Playhouse on Park's box office (860-523-5900 x10) or online at www.playhouseonpark.org.

The mad headiness of Gerard Alessandrini's SPAMILTON abounds on the stage of The Phoenix Theatre Company's Hormel Theatre as a cast of dynamos, accompanied by the amazing Curtis Reynolds on piano, tears through the author's imaginative, crisp, and uproarious lyrics. Runs through August 11th.

After performing all over the United States - from Ohio, to Vegas, and Boston to Tampa, the cast of the acclaimed musical comedy, Spamilton: An American Parody, arrives in West Hartford to Playhouse on Park from August 14-September 8, 2019! This exciting engagement is a co-production of The Bushnell and Playhouse on Park.

Seven Performers enter, a Pianist is introduced. Set to the backdrop of the history of the Great White Way from past to present, and set to a gut punching-hilarious score based off of one of the greatest musicals to date Spamilton took off full speed ahead. From hilarious lyrics devised by the great minds behind Forbidden Broadway, and including a Lin-Manuel look a-like the audience experienced 90 minutes of unadulterated laughter, song, and dance.

Needham native Gerard Alessandrini has been practicing the craft of parody professionally for nearly four decades, ever since FORBIDDEN BROADWAY debuted in New York in 1982. Numerous iterations later, he has pointed his pen at perhaps the biggest target on Broadway, the award-winning juggernaut, Hamilton, and its creative genius, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Following its 2016 premiere and successful run at the Triad Theater in New York, Huntington Theatre Company presents the extended Boston engagement of the national tour of SPAMILTON: AN AMERICAN PARODY on its Wimberly Stage in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Huntington Theatre Company will present the North American tour of the acclaimed musical comedy, Spamilton: An American Parody from February 12 through March 10, 2019 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. The tour launched at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH on December 20, 2018 and is now on tour across the country, playing ten multi-week engagements in its first season.