Joan Marcus News

Broadway In Chicago is thrilled to announce that WAITRESS, the Tony-nominated musical, will be making its Chicago debut at Broadway In Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre (151 W. Randolph) for a limited three-week engagement July 3 - 22, 2018, and will be casting two young girls to perform the role of "Lulu" for the duration of the engagement.

'How're you gonna cap off your prepubescent years?', a stony-faced teacher asks his competitive dance team members, shortly after winning a competition that saw one of their own suffer a season-ending injury.

In this episode: Victoria Bailey, Executive Director of TDF, talks about TKTS celebrating 45 years and parent company TDF celebrating 50 years in 2018. TDF (Theatre Development Fund) is an organization that believes the performing arts should be available to everybody. They sell the idea of going to all theatre, not shows in particular and that Broadway is for everyone. Victoria Bailey has been with the company for 17 years, started at Yale, and was the GM at MTC for 19 years. She believes that theatre creates empathy for lives different than our own, that TDF/TKTS has created theatre goers for generations, and is a prime example of having a successful life in the arts separate from the footlights.

On April 21, 2018, Patrick Marber spoke about Travesties with Education Dramaturg Ted Sod as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's lecture series.

The Old Globe today announced its 2018-2019 Season, a marvelous array of world, American, and West Coast premieres that features hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative works that span eras and continents, genres and cultures, personal experiences and big national themes…and Shakespeare, of course!

Signature Theatre (Paige Evans, Artistic Director; Harold Wolpert, Executive Director; James Houghton, Founder) will host several special events in connection with Dominique Morisseau's Paradise Blue this spring at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues), the company announced today. These events are part of the Signature Spotlight Series.

Producers Scott Rudin and Barry Diller announced today that Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell will reprise their Tony Award®-winning performances in "The Humans" for the last stop of the national tour at the Center Theatre Group / Ahmanson Theatre.

Paradise Blue runs April 24 - June 10, 2018 with a Monday, May 14 opening night in The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10thAvenues). In 1949, Detroit's Blackbottom neighborhood is gentrifying.

Today's subject Judy Kuhn has been living her theatre life as a working actress/singer/recording artist for over thirty years. On May 5th you will be able to see this incredible Tony-nominated talent live in concert at Dumbarton Church in Georgetown as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series. The program is entitled Judy Kuhn: A Broadway Cabaret.

There are many, very obvious spectacular things that stand out while watching LOVE NEVER DIES, Andrew Lloyd Webber's infamously, uh, troubled 2010 musical follow-up to his long-running global hit THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, now continuing its two-week engagement at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through May 5, 2018. While, sure, the show is stunning in its visual artistry and musical performances, the rest is repetitively frustrating. Unless you're a huge PHANTOM fan already or are perhaps maybe morbidly curious as to what the fuss is all about---LOVE NEVER DIES, sadly, doesn't offer much else to audiences beyond its superficial surface beauty.

'Raise your hand if you've ever been underestimated,' instructs Program Director Stephanie Ybarra before every performance of Shakespeare's HENRY V, as performed by The Public Theater's Mobile Unit.

The title character of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan was burned at the stake nearly 500 years before the play premiered at Broadway's Garrick Theatre in December of 1923, but for many viewers there may have been a sense of topicality to the proceedings.

If you don't know the "Mean Girls" meets "Harry Potter" story line, WICKED is a remixed version of the goings-on before the movie, "The Wizard of Oz" and the majority of the story takes place prior to Dorothy's arrival. The story is told as a flashback by Glinda as Ozians celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda then reveals that no only did they know each other in college, they actually friends.

HAMILTON is inarguably fantastic. It is extraordinary in its ability to cross every boundary and connect with audiences from every background. It is a masterpiece, a true work of art. It is visually stunning, musically astounding and, from top to bottom, the very definition of theatrical greatness.

MCC THEATER (Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, Artistic Directors; Blake West, Executive Director) is pleased to announce the extension by popular demand of the World Premiere of Transfers. Inspired by young artists participating in the MCC Theater Youth Company, Transfers is written by MCC Theater's Youth Company Playwriting Lab Director and Obie Award winner Lucy Thurber, and directed by Jackson Gay. Previously scheduled through May 13, Transfers will now play through Sunday, May 20 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).

The Off Broadway Alliance, an organization of Off-Broadway producers, theaters, general managers, press agents, and marketing professionals, has announced the nominees for the 8th Annual Off-Broadway Alliance Awards, honoring commercial and not-for-profit productions that opened Off-Broadway during the 2017-2018 season.

Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard, whose densely intellectual plays may be the most potent argument known for America's need to step up its public education funding, was first noticed on these Atlantic shores in the 1960s for shining a spotlight on two minor Shakespearean characters in ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD.

Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director/CEO) will conclude the New York premiere of Bobbie Clearly by Alex Lubischer, directed by Will Davis, on Sunday, May 6. This is the second play in Roundabout Underground's expanded two-play season, following Too Heavy for Your Pocket by Jireh Breon Holder this fall.

'Now, if you want to sing along, you just go right ahead and sing,' the hostess of Broadway's newest musical advises her audience at the top of the show.  'And if you want to dance, go 'head, flail around!'

The king has landed in Raleigh... that is ALTON FITZGERALD WHITE. White was the longest running Mufasa in Disney's The Lion King, playing over 4300 shows. He sat down with me to discuss The Lion King, his book, My Pride, and his view about deriving happiness from commonplace achievements.