Helen Hayes News

Williamstown Theatre Festival announces additional casting and full creative teams for productions

The Hub Theatre, specializing in new plays that highlight our common humanity, is thrilled to present the world premiere of American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables by playwright Sam Hamashima, directed by Kathryn Chase Bryer.American Spies will run from July 12 - August 4, 2019 on the stage of NextStop Theatre in Herndon.

Bay Street Theater is pleased to announce the cast of SAFE SPACE (June 25 - July 21) is now in rehearsal.The new play is by Alan Fox; directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien (All My Sons, Henry IV, Hairspray, The Coast of Utopia). The play will star Mercedes Ruehl (Torch Song, Hustlers, Bay Street's Viva la Vida!), Sasha Diamond (Blindspot, The Romanoffs, Murphy Brown) and Rodney Richardson (The Day Shall Come, CBS's FBI, Somebody's Daughter). Tickets are now on sale by calling the Box Office at 631-725-9500 or online at www.baystreet.org.  The Box Office is open daily from 11 am - show time.

Described by the Los Angeles Times as a "cultural phenomenon," Dear Evan Hansen comes to Playhouse Square June 11-30, 2019, as part of the KeyBank Broadway Series. In advance of the start of performances, the production announced today that it will host a digital ticket lottery offering fans the chance to purchase a limited number of $25 tickets available per performance.

The world's tallest and hairiest drag queen and her band, the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret, make their Wilma Theater mainstage debut with their trademark masterful musical stylings and uproarious comedy. Played by Pig Iron Theatre Company co-founder Dito van Reigersberg, Martha Graham Cracker has been hailed as the 'drag queen king of Philadelphia' by The Philadelphia Inquirer and received Philadelphia Magazine's Best of Philly award for her one-of-a-kind unscripted show. This June, she will grace the stage of the Wilma for two groundbreaking performances, including a Martha Graham Cracker show like never before: a matinee performance for children and the young at heart. Tickets are on sale for this limited engagement event, running from June 28-June 29.

Tiger Style! by Mike Lew, an outrageous and cutting satire of Asian-American identity, completes Olney Theatre Center's 81st season in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab (July 17 - August 18, 2019). The production is directed by the boundary-pushing director Natsu Onoda Power, who recently pulled off the rare feat of winning two Helen Hayes Awards (one for direction, one for design) in a single evening. Invited press night is Saturday, July 20 at 7:45pm.

Heidi Schreck's Tony Award nominated play and Pulitzer Prize finalist What the Constitution Means to Me, directed by Oliver Butler, will embark on a national tour in January 2020, beginning at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and playing 40 weeks in 22 cities including Charlotte, Hartford, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, with more to be announced. All venues, dates, and casting for the national tour will be announced at a later date.

Alice Ripley will star as Norma Desmond in North Shore Music Theatre's upcoming production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Masterwork, SUNSET BOULEVARD, playing for two-weeks only from Tuesday, September 24 thru Sunday, October 6, 2019. Casting is ongoing and a full cast and creative team will be announced at a later date.

The Walt Disney Company UK and Ireland has today announced the principal company for the UK and Ireland tour of the landmark musical THE LION KING which will open in Bristol in September 2019 before moving on to Edinburgh in December 2019. Further cities will be announced in due course.

There's several places to see Greek theatre in DC right now. It's not uncommon for artists to find relevance in the centuries-old works of Aeschylus and Sophocles and use their stories as a way of examining our lives today. But Klytemnestra: An Epic Slam Poem, now playing at Theater Alliance, does more than simply find truth in an ancient work: it tells a story existing in many places and many times, of now and then, not one or the other but both living and breathing at once.

The Folger Shakespeare Library will host the DC premiere of Ghost Light, a new dark comedy by filmmakers John Stimpson and Geoffrey Taylor. The film, a Feature Film Award-winner at the Austin Film Festival, will be shown in the historic Folger Theatre located on Capitol Hill. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at www.folger.edu/talks or by calling the Folger Box Office at 202.544.7077.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) announces three winning plays for the The 2019 TRU Voices New Plays Reading Series: Passing Parades by Fengar Gael, The New Galileos by Amy Berryman, and Three Months with Pook by Jack Feldstein on Mondays, June 17- July 22, 2019 at 7pm at The Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, NYC

The Tony Award nominated play and Pulitzer Prize finalist What the Constitution Means to Me is proud to announce a new partnership with The Mayor's Fund to launch the NYC Civics and Arts Fund that will subsidize tickets for hundreds of students through the rest of the show's Broadway run through August 24, 2019.

Rorschach Theatre returns to KLECKSOGRAPHY, an annual event that brings together six theatre companies and more than forty artists (including six filmmakers) to make something unimaginable. Inspired by the ink-blot test for which Rorschach Theatre was named, all participating artists will be shown a single, distinctive piece of visual art.

Washington DC's premiere arts education institution The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts presents it's second world premiere musical as part of its Summer Musical Institute for Teens program.

The Ogunquit Playhouse announces that Broadway veteran Rachel York returns to the Playhouse to star alongside Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner Sally Struthers in 42nd Street.

This summer Goodspeed Musicals will produce the heartwarming new musical Because of Winn Dixie. This touching tale based on the award-winning novel by Kate DiCamillo will run June 28 - September 1 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn.

San Diego Repertory Theatre (San Diego REP) announced today the return of San Diego's beloved artist, Hershey Felder for a strictly limited engagement celebrating one of the world's greatest composers in Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin. Originally created in 2006, followed by a sold-out national tour, this intimate theatrical event returns to San Diego in a newly updated production featuring the romantic story and music of the Polish pianist-composer, Fryderyk Chopin. Directed by Joel Zwick, performances of Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin run September 13 - 29, 2019, in the Lyceum Space Theatre. Monsieur Chopin begins previews on September 13, with press opening on Saturday, September 14, 2019, at 8:00 p.m.

This fall, artists and audiences from the Washington, D.C. area, the U.S., and around the globe come together at the nation's cultural capital to dance, sing, create, collaborate, listen, learn, talk, share, and celebrate the opening of the REACH, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts's unprecedented new expansion. At a preview event today, May 29, which marks both President Kennedy's 102nd birthday and 100 days until the historic opening, the Kennedy Center unveiled preliminary details of the free 16-day REACH Opening Festival on September 7-22.

Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop) has announced that it will produce Intimate Apparel, a new opera with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and a libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her critically acclaimed play.  The production, which will be directed by Bartlett Sher, will begin previews Thursday, February 27 and open on Monday, March 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street).