Helen Hayes News

London Playwrights' Workshop is partnering with musical theatre writing team Barlow & Smith to create the Women's Musical Theatre Initiative (WMTI), a new development programme for female musical theatre writers. The WMTI will launch with a cabaret 'Celebrating Female Songwriters' at The Pheasantry on 12 February 2018. The evening will be hosted by songwriters Barlow & Smith and will bring together a group of accomplished female songwriters to showcase new writing and to raise funds to support the initiative.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev go head-to-head in Blind Date, a new play by Rogelio Martinez directed by Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls. Today, Falls announced his cast for the world-premiere production, which features as characters some of the figures who shaped the political landscapes of the 1980s and beyond.

The Ordway Center for Performing Arts announced today that producer and director Rod Kaats will assume the position of Producing Artistic Director beginning February 1, 2018. Mr. Kaats succeeds James A. Rocco, who stepped down from the Ordway last year.

New Repertory Theatre and Boston Center for American Performance present Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, performed January 27-March 3, 2018 in the BlackBox Theater at the Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown. Tickets may be purchased by calling the New Rep Box Office at 617-923-8487 or visiting newrep.org. Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act will be performed in repertory with Lonely Planet by Steven Dietz as part of New Rep's Statements of Survival Series.

As previously announced, Feinstein's/54 Below will present the rarely heard musical A Pound in Your Pocket as part of its popular Second Act Series on Wednesday, January 24th at 7:00pm. The very first collaboration from acclaimed songwriters Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, best known for Bye Bye Birdie, A Pound In Your Pocket is a delightful, Dickensian story about friendship and redemption. Strouse will be on hand at the one-night-only concert to greet fans and sign copies of his memoir, Put On A Happy Face.

BREAK THE FLOOR PRODUCTIONS and TRAVIS WALL are pleased to announce casting for the 2018 winter tour dates of their groundbreaking new show SHAPING SOUND After The Curtain, which comes to Washington, D.C.'s National Theatre for one performance only on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 7:30pm.

On Monday, February 12 at 6:00 pm, the League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW), dedicated to championing women in theatre since its inception and an authority at the forefront of the conversation about gender parity in American theatre for 35 years, is presenting Broadway Performer, Director, and Choreographer, BAAYORK LEE. Lee, who originated the role of Connie in A Chorus Line, will be discussing her extensive life and work in the theatre with theatre writer ROBERT VIAGAS, her collaborator and biographer on their book, 'On the Line: the Creation of A Chorus Line'.The event will take place in the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on 65th Street & Amsterdam Avenue. Admission is free, seats are available on a first-come-first-seated basis. Doors open at 5:30PM, and it is recommended that members of the public arrive at the Bruno Walter Auditorium by 5PM to secure a seat.

Beginning Tuesday, January 30th, the Broadway blockbuster WICKED will welcome, to the Gershwin Theatre, Tony Award nominee ISABEL KEATING as Madame Morrible and Obie Award winner Martin Moran as Doctor Dillamond.

Avant Bard's acclaimed production of The Gospel at Colonus, a critical and audience favorite a year ago, returns in all its glory to Gunston Arts Center February 22 to March 25, 2018. The exhilarating African American musical will again star renowned Arlington actor and judge William T. Newman (pictured above) in the role of Oedipus.

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Doyle and Executive Producer Jeff Griffin, will present the world premiere of Fire and Air, a new play by Tony Award winner Terrence McNally, directed by John Doyle, beginning performances tonight, January 17 at CSC (136 East 13th Street) for a limited engagement through Sunday, February 25. Opening night is Thursday, February 1.

Following the enormous success and critical acclaim of their season opener, Venus in Fur and in keeping with this year's theme of 'Romance: Real or Imagined, The Coachella Valley Repertory (CVRep) has announced it will present Romance/Romance, a delightfully savvy and tuneful musical comedy as the second production of its 2017-18 season.

Mosaic Theater Company of DCtakes its acclaimedVoices From a Changing Middle East Festival on tour this winter, bringing several of its seminal Festival productions (I SHALL NOT HATE, VIA DOLOROSA, and the recent film adaptation of WRESTLING JERUSALEM) to the University of Oklahoma, Grinnell College, and Eastern Mennonite University for presentations of each project, and culminating in a special evening at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts where excerpts from all three works will be shared in a single evening. The tour reflects different dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the efforts to achieve reckoning and reconciliation through live performance and discussion, in works performed in English, Arabic, and Hebrew (with translated surtitles).

French dramatist and playwright Jean Anouilh opens the IRC's 12th season in Philadelphia, presenting and celebrating seldom-produced works of absurdist authors and their forebears.

Classic Stage Company presents the world premiere of Terrence McNally's Fire and Air, directed by John Doyle. The production begins performances tomorrow, Wednesday, January 17 at CSC (136 East 13th Street) for a limited engagement through Sunday, February 25. Opening night is Thursday, February 1.

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Constellation Theatre is a thought-provoking, skillfully-rendered reminder that chaos and uncertainty are not unique to our time or to any single time. In the sure directorial hands of Mary Hall Surface, Thornton Wilder's masterpiece is a wild time-traveling, allegorical tragicomedy, without the Pepperidge Farm and Hallmark overtones we've now come to associate with the OUR TOWN playwright.

Washington, DC's premier cabaret series awards Lawrence Grey, Jr. the inaugural Joel Markowitz Audience Award, and celebrates six years of supporting the metropolitan area's brightest artists.

Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, a summer '17 off-Broadway hit, is currently playing a limited engagement at Westport Country Playhouse, January 9 - 20. The joyful, touching, and tumultuous tale of 'America's greatest folk poet' is told using Guthrie's own words and over two dozen of his indelible songs, including 'This Land Is Your Land,' 'Union Maid,' 'Deportees,' and 'This Train Is Bound for Glory.'

The Drama League announced today the expansion of their annual event, DirectorFest, into a multi-week, city-wide festival focusing on the art of contemporary stage directing.

Writer/director Theresa Rebeck has tackled everything from movies to novels, and now brings her cunning adaptation of William Congreve's The Way of the World to Folger Theatre as part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival.

Queens Theatre (Taryn Sacramone, Executive Director) will present Broadway Valentine, a concert-style revue produced by Stephen DeAngelis exclusively for Queens Theatre, located at 14 United Nations Avenue South in Flushing Meadows Corona Park for two performances only on February 17 at 8pm and February 18 at 3pm.