Joe DiPietro News

Broadway's smash hit musicalMemphis, winner of four Tony Awards® including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book and Best Orchestrations, will open at The Gateway on July 6th and run through July 21st with preview performances on July 5th.

Peninsula Players Theatre, America's oldest professional resident summer theater and Door County's theatrical icon, is proud to announce it has received a $15,000 award from The Shubert Foundation. The Shubert Foundation awarded a record total of $26.8 million to 533 not-for-profit performing arts organizations across the United States. The Shubert Foundation provides grants only to organizations that have established artistic and administrative track records, as well as a pattern of fiscal responsibility.  

Trustus Theatre brings the Tony Award-winning hit musical, Memphis by Joe Dipietro and David Bryan, to the Thigpen Main Stage this summer. Showing from June 29 - July 28, 2018, this show brings two unlikely characters together on Beale Street, although the world isn't quite ready for their love or their rock 'n' roll music. Memphis will open on Friday, June 29 and will run through Saturday, July 28, 2018. Tickets may be purchased at www.trustus.org, or by calling the Trustus Box Office at 803-254-9732.

The 1950s was a period of racial stress in much of the south. Lynchings, school segregation, separate lunch counters and drinking fountains, blacks to the back of the bus, laws against black and white mixing. Even separate black and white radio stations was the custom, as were black and white musical styles. Patty Page, Perry Como and 'nice music' was the white style. Rock and Roll was for blacks.

Penguin Rep Theatre, the award-winning professional Equity theatre under the leadership of founding artistic director Joe Brancato and executive director Andrew M. Horn, presents Clever Little Lies, a comedy by Joe DiPietro, the Tony Award-winning author of Memphis and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, June 29 through July 22 in Stony Point, New York.

Pride Films and Plays has announced a series of discussions in conjunction with its American premiere of PINK ORCHIDS -  a British play in which five eloquently interwoven and often funny monologues explore the experience of living with HIV from the perspectives of those living with the virus and those who care for and care about HIV+ persons. Staff members from Test Positive Awareness Network (TPAN) and other HIV activists will lead the weekly discussions about living with in a world with HIV - either as someone who has tested positive for the virus or is vulnerable to it. 

Vassar & New York Stage and Film will soon present the 34th Powerhouse Season, which brings together some of the most influential theatrical voices working today for fully-staged productions, workshop presentations, and readings of new plays and musicals in progress.

George Street Playhouse welcomes Debra Monk (Tony Award winner for Redwood Curtain, Emmy Award winner for NYPD Blue) to the star-studded cast of a special benefit play reading of Eugene Pack's hysterical new comedy Night with Oscar on Friday, June 8, 2018, at 8 p.m.

Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre has opened sales for the 2018 - 2019 Mainstage Season on Friday, June 1, 2018. Patrons will now have the first opportunity to buy tickets to the company's exhilarating new season, online at www.actorsplayhouse.org, by telephone (305) 444-9293, and in person at the Miracle Theatre Box Office.

The 2010 Tony® Award-winning Best Musical, MEMPHIS rocks the Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley Theatre, 3201 Southwest Trafficway in the Science and Technology Building, Kansas City, MO 64111, May 31 - June 24, 2018, for a limited engagement!

Derby Dinner Playhouse will present the hit comedy OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE WOODS, opening May 30 and running through July 8, 2018.

Beginning Monday, June 4th at 10am, single tickets for Riverside Theatre's exciting 2018-2019 Season will go on sale. Building on the incredible success of last season's productions with sold out performances of Gypsy, Million Dollar Quartet and Mamma Mia, Riverside is proud to present another ambitious season of music, comedy, and drama.

George Street Playhouse has announced that three-time Golden Globe nominee and two-time Emmy Award nominee Rob Morrow (TV's Northern Exposure, Billions), two-time Emmy winner Robert Wuhl (Bull Durham, TV's Arli$$), and Talia Balsam (TV's Mad Men, Homeland) will star in a special benefit play reading of Eugene Pack's hysterical new comedy Night with Oscar on Friday, June 8, 2018, at 8 p.m.

Over 400 guests including current and past New York City high school students, and the performing arts professional mentors who have participated in TDF Open Doors, the theatre arts mentoring program that TDF founded in 1998 with playwright Wendy Wasserstein, will attend this year's graduation at 5:30pm on Monday, June 4 at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College (524 West 59th Street, NYC).  

Aside from warm pool weather and bright green foliage, this spring also brings the Union County Performing Arts Center's Wine, Cheese & Chocolate Party back to Rahway. This event is an annual fundraiser for the UCPAC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission statement reads: to 'provide quality programming and performances that strive to be educational, affordable, and enrich the arts within our diverse communities.'

Full casting has been announced for Pride Films and Plays' production of the landmark British drama THE GREEN BAY TREE, which premiered in London's West End in 1933 and later that year made Laurence Olivier an international star when he played the lead on Broadway opposite his then-wife Jill Esmond. It was a scandalous hit in both London and New York. In THE GREEN BAY TREE, an infamous comedy of manipulation, a charming young man is forced to choose between the love of his fiancee, the lifestyle of his male mentor, and the prescription of his upbringing.

Casting has been announced for Pride Films and Plays' American premiere of PINK ORCHIDS - the first play of the "PAC Pride Fest" - a summer season of five plays. PINK ORCHIDS, by Patrick Cash, is a British play in which five eloquently interwoven and often funny monologues explore the experience of living with HIV - a virus that attacks the emotions as well as the body. It premiered in London in 2016 under the title THE HIV MONOLOGUES. This production will be directed by Brennan T. Jones and will open to the press on Friday, June 8 at 7:30 pm, in the Pride Arts Center's Buena space. Jones directed JUMPERS FOR GOALPOSTS for Pride Films and Plays in summer 2017 and was Assistant Director for TimeLine Theatre's THE AUDIENCE last fall.

George Street Playhouse's Annual Gala Benefit, held Sunday, May 6, at the Heldrich in downton New Brunswick, saw GSP Board President Dr. Penelope Lattimer honored with the Thomas H. Kean Arts Advocacy Award. The black-tie event also celebrated the work of renowned playwright and friend of the Playhouse, the late Arthur Laurents, who would have turned 100 this year, with performances of songs from West Side Story, Gypsy, La Cage aux Folles, and his other Broadway hits.

Dennis Grimaldi will present Tony®Award-winner Len Cariou (Sweeney Todd) in two staged readings ofHarry Townsend's Last Stand, a new play by George Eastman.  Directed by two-time Emmy®Award-winner Peter Scolari (Wicked) and featuring Warren Bub ('Gotham'), the readings will be held on Monday, May 21 and Tuesday, May 22 at 3pm at Nola Studios (250 West 54th Street - 10th Floor/Studio 1).

Every spring for the last 40 years, something very special has happened in Rockland County: the Penguin Rep, the not-for-profit professional Equity theatre started by artistic director Joe Brancato in 1977, begins its season. This year will be their 41st season! Brancato along with with executive director Andrew M. Horn -- has grown Penguin from a small summer theatre into what the New York Times calls: 'the gutsiest little theater!' - one of the Hudson Valley's most influential nonprofit cultural institutions, and nearly half a million theater-goers have passed through its doors during that time.