Manhattan Theatre Club News

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Happy Friday! Help get yourself through this final day of the week before your weekend, by catching up on the latest Broadway news!

This land was made for you and me" - Woody Guthrie. IAMA Theatre Company partners with the Latino Theater Company to bring the world premiere of Canyon by Jonathan Caren (The Recommendation, Need To Know) to The Los Angeles Theatre Center. Previews begin Feb. 22, with the press opening scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 28 and performances continuing through March 24.

First Floor Theater announces casting for its Chicago premiere of Halley Feiffer's blisteringly funny play I'M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD, directed by Cole von Glahn.

Rob Rokicki (The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical) and Eric Price (The Violet Hour) will present two new musicals at Molloy College/CAP21 this Spring. Experience Marianas! and Emma! will be workshopped this March using students from the college.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (Kelli Lynn Harrison and Catherine Porter, Co-Presidents), an organization which has been leading the gender parity conversation and championing women in the professional theatre for over 35 years, will present the 2019 Theatre Women Awards at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012) on Monday, March 25 at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm). For more information on the 2019 Theatre Women Awards, and to purchase tickets, please visit www.theatrewomen.org. 

Tony Award-winning producer Daryl Roth (Kinky Boots, The Normal Heart, Indecent) announced today that Patricia Kalember ("Power," "Sisters," "thirtysomething") will put on the aviator glasses of iconic activist Gloria Steinem in GLORIA: A Life beginning Today, January 29. Christine Lahti will play her final performance as Gloria on January 27.

New York Stage and Film announces the programming line-up for their 2019 Winter Season at The Lark/Barebones Studio (311 West 43rd Street, 5th Floor): Halley Feiffer's Saying Goodbye to the People I Love From My Bathtub, 2015 Founders' Award Recipient Harrison David Rivers' the bandaged place, and Sharr White's Pictures From Home.

ACTUALLY, WE'RE F**KED, a new play by Matt Williams, will be given its world-premiere production at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in Manhattan), with previews starting on February 26 prior to an official opening on March 7, it has been announced by Cherry Lane founder Angelina Fiordellisi and artistic director Seri Lawrence. The play is directed by John Pasquin, with whom Mr. Williams has a long-standing collaboration, including the popular television series "Home Improvement."

Get a look behind the scenes as the full cast of "Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical" record one of the original tracks from the show - "Advertising Ruins Everything." Watch the video below!

Berkeley Repertory Theatre today announced the full cast and creative team for Metamorphoses. This co-production with the Guthrie Theater is led by nationally and internationally renowned writer and director Mary Zimmerman.

Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway premiere of Choir Boy, by Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Trip Cullman, will extend for two additional weeks, now playing through Sunday, March 10 at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Next up in Kansas City Repertory Theatre's 2018/2019 season is the multiple award-winning Off-Broadway hit SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY, written by Jocelyn Bioh and directed by KCRep's Artistic Associate/Resident Director, Chip Miller. Bioh's hilarious reimagining of Tina Fey's Mean Girls story is a once joyful and heartbreaking, bitingly funny, and poignant. SCHOOL GIRLS, running February 22 through March 17, 2019, at Copaken Stage, is a loving exploration of the real lives of young African women trying to negotiate the confusion around Western ideas of beauty.

William Shakespeare's enduring romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet comes to the Huntington Theatre Company as a thrillingly modern event helmed by Artistic Director Peter DuBois. Performances begin March 1 at the Avenue of the Arts / Huntington Avenue Theatre (264 Huntington Avenue, Boston) and will run through March 31. Tickets are now on sale to the general public.

Set to open at the Atrium in Rancho Mirage on January 23 and run through February 17, 2019, White is a funny, 90-minute play that draws on both life and art to examine issues of racism, sexism, gender and identity - a perfect fit for CVRep's 2018/19 seasonal theme of 'a handful of isms.'

The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, having been performed at the Huntington Theatre Company and Manhattan Theatre Club, makes its way to McCarter Theatre Center's Berlind Theatre, a fitting arena for a play set during a history professor's office hours.

Next week, from 23 January 2019, and after a sell-out run in June last year Laura Linney returns to the Bridge to reprise the title role in Richard Eyre's production of My Name is Lucy Barton. For a strictly limited 26 performances until 16 February 2019, this haunting dramatic monologue is adapted by Rona Munro from Pulitzer Prize-winning Elizabeth Strout's 2016 New York Times best-selling short novel of the same name. Evening performances are Monday to Saturday at 7.45pm with Saturday matinees at 2.30pm.

Set to open at the Atrium in Rancho Mirage on January 23 and run through February 17, 2019, White is a funny, 90-minute play that draws on both life and art to examine issues of racism, sexism, gender and identity - a perfect fit for CVRep's 2018/19 seasonal theme of 'a handful of isms.'

The Playwrights Realm (Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira) announces Beyond the Realm (February 2019), a month-long festival showcasing bold new works-in-progress by four boundary-pushing playwrights, with four workshops of new plays by MJ Kaufman, Nia Witherspoon, Michael Yates Crowley, and Asiimwe Deborah Kawe. Responsiveness and a commitment to playwrights' needs are at the heart of the Realm's practice; with the launch of this new program-in lieu of a second full-length production this season-the Realm seizes the opportunity to devote the beginning of the year to these four playwrights testing and honing their exhilarating new works. Throughout a month of programming, the definitions of theater will be challenged as the festival creates new ways of presenting live storytelling and blurs the lines that divide creators from spectators. Tickets for the Festival are free and reservations open to the general public on Tuesday, January 22nd. Donors receive early access starting January 17th. For more information, visit http://www.playwrightsrealm.org/beyond/.

Nashville Story Garden presents the Nashville premiere of Ironbound by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok January 26-February 2 at the former Inglewood United Methodist Church, 3511 Gallatin Pike, Nashville. Starring Joe Mobley (Vik), Gerald Pitts (Maks), Tamara Todres (Darja) and Ted Welch (Tommy), Ironbound is directed by Kristin McCalley.

The top growing current Broadway musicals were The Prom (2.55%), The Cher Show (1.42%), King Kong (1.04%), My Fair Lady (1.03%) and Pretty Woman (1.03%). The top growing current Broadway plays were The New One (8.45%), To Kill A Mockingbird (8.09%), Network (7.02%), The Waverly Gallery (3.54%) and The Ferryman (3.16%).