Lileana Blain-Cruz News

On Friday, May 28, Houston Grand Opera will release Hansel and Gretel on HGO Digital.

This Thursday, April 29 (8pm ET) 'Spotlight on Plays' series will continue with Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, starring Emmy Award winner Eric McCormack, Brandon Burton and Mary-Louise Parker, and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.  Paula Vogel's comic and dramatic fantasia based on the love and adventures of a brother and sister, one of whom has a fatal disease. Winner of the 1992 Obie Award for Best New American Play.

The “Spotlight on Plays” series announces the full company for Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine starring Academy award winner Ellen Burstyn, Alan Cox, Sasha Diamond, Alfred Enoch, Carla Gugino, Luca Padovan, Tony Award nominee Mary Beth Peil, Gabriella Pizzolo, Neel Sethi & Tony Award nominee Jeremy Shamos, directed by Sarna Lapine. 

Performance Space New York, with co-production partner New Georges, announces details surrounding AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, a group activation of Black femme theater artists in celebration of each other.

New York Theatre Workshop announced today that Artistic Director James C. Nicola will depart the theater on June 30, 2022. Nicola has been the Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop since 1988.

Beginning Thursday, May 13 at 7pm TALES FROM THE WINGS: A Lincoln Center Theater Celebration!, a virtual gala, will take a look back at the theater's iconic productions featuring performance footage and insider anecdotes from those productions' artists about their experiences on LCT's stages.

The Broad Stage has announced a new chapter in its artistic future – as a commissioner and producer of new work – centered around dynamic partnerships with a diverse mix of performers, directors, choreographers, composers, librettists, and arts venues – in the 2021-2022 through 2023-2024 seasons, with exact production dates to be announced.

PRIVATE REELS: FROM THE LCT ARCHIVES, streamed recordings of LCT productions in their entirety, will continue on Thursday, April 22 at 7pm with Lincoln Center Theater’s 2016 production of Marco Ramirez’s THE ROYALE, directed by Rachel Chavkin.

Today’s subject Lileana Blain-Cruz is currently living her theatre life as the director of Signature Theatre’s latest Signature Features streaming offering entitled Daniel J.Watts’ The Jam: Only Child. The show recounts Watts’ life as the only child of a single mother. From the fierce growing pains of boyhood innocence to the awkwardness of teenage years to a proud Black man, Daniel digs through his memory’s attic in a powerful and playful story of metamorphosis. The production is available for streaming through May seventh on Marquee TV.

The 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been awarded to U.S. playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza for her play about the Flint, Michigan water crisis, cullud wattah. Awarded annually since 1977, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the largest and oldest international prize honoring Women+ playwrights.

The “Spotlight on Plays” series has announced Emmy Award winner Eric McCormack and Brandon Burton will join previously announced star Mary-Louise Parker in Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.  The Baltimore Waltz will premiere on Thursday, April 29 at 8PM EST/5PM PST and will be available for a limited time only.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced plans for its 50th Anniversary season, slated to begin in September 2021 with a grand reopening of its stages and campus and culminate in September 2022 with a fresh interpretation of the seminal work that opened the Center in 1971, Leonard Bernstein’s MASS.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will present a virtual presentation to announce the 2021 winner of one of the most prestigious playwriting awards, and the oldest and largest prize awarded to women+ playwrights, today, April 7, 2021 at 3pm EST/ 8pm BST. Tune in right here at BroadwayWorld to watch the presentation, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner (1983) Marsha Norman.

New Georges announced today two upcoming productions for the Spring 2021 season—Dream/Home, presented as part of Post Theatrical; and All the Different Ways Commodore Matthew Perry Could Have Died Before Opening Japan But Didn’t, a new play commissioned from Julia Izumi, presented in a co-production with Theater in Quarantine.

The spring “Spotlight on Plays” series will soon welcome six celebrated, award-winning actresses. Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn & SAG nominee Carla Gugino will star in Watch on the Rhine, Emmy Award winner Kathryn Hahn will star in The Sisters Rosenweig, Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will star in Ohio State Murders, Tony Award winner Mary-Louise Parker will star in The Baltimore Waltz and Academy Award winner Meryl Streep will star in Dear Elizabeth.

Broadway’s Best Shows is proud to present the third season of Spotlight on Plays, a starry series of livestream readings of Broadway’s best plays to benefit The Actors Fund. 

Signature Theatre has announced the full cast and streaming dates for Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only Child, the second production in the Signature Features 2021 Season. Written and performed by Daniel J. Watts and featuring DJ Duggz, The Jam: Only Child is the fifth in Watts’ The Jam series.

Lincoln Center Theater has announced that it will inaugurate PRIVATE REELS: FROM THE LCT ARCHIVES, streamed recordings of outstanding LCT productions in their entirety, as part of its LCT Spotlight Series. PRIVATE REELS: FROM THE LCT ARCHIVES will kick off on Thursday, March 18 with Christopher Durang’s VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE.

Jeffrey Richards has just announced Broadway’s Best Shows, a home for entertaining, engaging content, long form features and exclusive access to Broadway’s Best, will continue its “Spotlight on Plays” series this spring on Thursday, March 25, 2021 to benefit The Actors Fund.

Playwrights Horizons is continuing their new Public Art Series—the inaugural initiative in the organization’s Lighthouse Project—with an installation of images by Ken Gonzales-Day, whose photography illuminates how difference, otherness, and identity emerge through acts of seeing.