John Gassner News

Hell in a Handbag Productions is pleased to announce casting for its Chicago premiere of THE DIVINE SISTER, the hilarious comic homage to nearly every Hollywood nun film ever made, by the divine high priestess of camp Charles Busch and directed by Shade Murray.

TACT kicks off its 2016 - '17 season with its 6th annual newTACTics New Play Festival (Owen Thompson and Yetti Steinman, Producers, with Lauren Miller, newTACTics advisor), a fresh collection of four unpredictable and engaging new works. The original plays at newTACTics always invite you to expect the unexpected, and this year's offerings are no exception.

Premiere Stages at Kean University will launch its much-anticipated 2016 Season with a free staged reading of Jeff Talbott's provocative new play, Three Rules for the Dragon, June 17-19 in Kean's Murphy Dunn Theatre. Selected from over 400 submissions, Three Rules for the Dragon is the first of two scripts scheduled for expanded development as part of the 2016 Premiere Stages Play Festival.

Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie has set the 2016-2017 season at the CTG/Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

Marin Shakespeare Company, Marin County's professional and award-winning outdoor summer Shakespeare festival, opens its 2016 season with Bay Area playwright Lauren Gunderson's smart and funny 'The Taming.'

The Drama Book Shop will welcome back playwright and actress Halley Feiffer for an intimate discussion about her craft and her new play, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City. The play is currently receiving its world premiere at MCC's Lucille Lortel Theatre.  Feiffer and Playwright and Drama Book Shop employee Steven Carl McCasland will discuss her work on Friday, May 27th at 5:00pm. The event is free to the public. The 

Women's Project Theater (WP Theater), under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Lisa McNulty and Managing Director Maureen Moynihan, has announced the 31st ANNUAL WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS GALA.

Theater J will bring playwright Anna Ziegler back to DC with the insightful, wry drama, Another Way Home, which plays June 23 through July 17, 2016. Another Way Home, directed by Shirley Serotsky, follows the Nadelman parents (Rick Foucheux and Naomi Jacobson) at summer camp visiting day which quickly turns into a family emergency. Their son Joey (Chris Stinson), is nowhere to be found and they are left wondering - where has he gone, why is their marriage lacking, and what might have happened if they had taken a different path. Join us as we transform Theater J into Camp Kickapoo and discover a little bit more about the strangers we all live with - our family.

Just In! The Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators for media covering New York theatre announced today its award winners for the 2015-16 season in 25 categories.

Hudson Theatre Works, North Jersey's most innovative professional theater company, announces its upcoming spring production and its slate for Playworks, its annual new play reading series.

?Premiere Stages will celebrate its 12th year as the professional theatre in residence at Kean University with an intriguing season of plays, all presented professionally for the first time in the Garden State, featuring innovative new alliances and exciting community-based partnerships.

Marin Theatre Company closes its 49th Season with Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand. The play had its world premiere at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in March 2012, and was nominated for the Steinberg/ACTA Best New Play Award that same year. The play was produced at ACT Theatre in Seattle in September 2014, and opened Off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop on December 7, 2014. In association with ACT Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland presented the play in March 2015. It received both the 2015 Outer Critics Circle Award and the John Gassner Award. Berkeley Rep produced Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced this past fall, to great acclaim.

Meet Caroline, a cynical high school senior in need of a new liver. Meet Anthony, an idealistic high school basketball star in need of a partner for his project on Walt Whitman. In the poignant and insightful play I and You, two teens who could not be more different form an unlikely friendship.

Just this morning, Something Rotten and Spotlight star Brian d'Arcy James along with this season's break-out and genuflecting sensation Jennifer Simard from Broadway's Disaster announced the The Outer Critics Circle nominees for the 2015-16 season from New York's legendary Algonquin Hotel (59 W 44th Street.)  Outer Critics Circle nominations are the first major Broadway/Off-Broadway award nominees of the New York theater season.

Hudson Theatre Works, North Jersey's most innovative professional theater company, announces its upcoming spring production and its slate for Playworks, its annual new play reading series.

Shaleeha G'ntamobi's stirring new play about an alcoholic black mother and her card sharp son trying to get out of the projects has just been accepted into the nation's preeminent theater festival. Trouble is, Shaleeha G'ntamobi doesn't exist. Except in the imagination of a young gay playwright named Danny Larsen, who created her as a kind of affirmative-action nom-de-plume.

For a brief moment when the opening night performance of IN A WORD ended there was quiet. A stillness fell as the audience collected itself, took a breath, and processed the intensity of the experience. Then, after a beat, the well-deserved applause began.

The Lion, the highly acclaimed, Drama Desk Award-winning musical written and performed by Benjamin Scheuer, is searching for a new star, producer Eva Price announced today. Scheuer, who has been performing the piece in various productions since 2014, will play his final performance in his autobiographical musical on February 19, 2017 at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, CA. Due to popular demand, The Lion will continue its tour across America, and the search is underway for a new star.

Two River Theater, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Dias and Managing Director Michael Hurst, announces the lineup of productions for its 2016/17 Season, which will launch in September with August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by Tony Award-winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Full-season 6-play subscriptions are on sale now from 732.345.1400 or 21 Bridge Avenue, Red Bank. Subscribers save 25% on tickets, receive prime seating and a number of additional benefits. Visit tworivertheater.org for more details. Single tickets will go on sale in August 2016.

Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) and Page Seventy-Three Productions (Page 73) have announced complete casting for KENTUCKY, written by Leah Nanako Winkler, and directed by Morgan Gould.