Mary Rodgers News

A nostalgic trip based on a 1976 Disney movie

It's a freaky Friday once more! Disney has released the full trailer for the eagerly anticipated Freakier Friday, the upcoming sequel to the 2003 fan-favorite film. Watch it now!

The Sharon Playhouse will continue its tradition of pairing extraordinary talent from Broadway, television and film with talented local theater artists from the region and beyond, proudly announces casting for the 2025 season.

Candela has announced the opening of applications for its Third Annual Playwrights Summer Fellowship, a.k.a. Summer Jam, taking place July 13-20, 2025 at the Dramatists Guild of America's Mary Rodgers Room in New York City.

Cowley College’s Summer Theatre Program is thrilled to announce its upcoming production of Disney’s Freaky Friday, a heartfelt and hilarious musical comedy that explores the challenges of growing up—and parenting—with a magical twist.

It’s not out of the ordinary these days for worthwhile musicals that originally premiered off-Broadway and then entered the canon to receive their Broadway debuts decades later. Floyd Collins shares this journey with shows including Assassins, Gutenberg! The Musical!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Last 5 Years, Little Shop of Horrors, and Violet.

The 1962 feature film “Light in the Piazza” was shot on location at the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Via Veneto and Roma Ostiense railway station in Rome, making its technicolor splendor a hard act to follow when the story, based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, was developed for the stage in 2003.

Broadway figures Shaina Taub, Jeanine Tesori, and Helen Park have withdrawn from the Library of Congress’s StageStruck! VI conference following recent political turmoil, forcing major programming changes.

The Library of Congress will host “StageStruck! VI: Women and the American Musical,” a free three-day conference May 14-16 featuring Jeanine Tesori, Shaina Taub, Helen Park, Julie Taymor, Camille A. Brown, and Marjuan Canady.

The Drama League announced the 2025 Drama League Awards Nominees for Outstanding Production of a Play, Outstanding Revival of a Play, Outstanding Production of a Musical, Outstanding Revival of a Musical, Outstanding Direction of a Play, Outstanding Direction of a Musical, and the much-coveted Distinguished Performance Award. We have the full list of nominees here!

Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, Daniel Breaker, Will Chase, Ana Gasteyer, and Nikki Renée Daniels will appear at The Museum of Broadway on April 22nd to perform a few selections from the Once Upon a Mattress cast recording and to sign CDs.

The Broadway Cast Recording for the New York City Center Encores! revival of Once Upon a Mattress is available now! The album has been released physically and digitally, and can be purchased and streamed now!

Disney has dropped the teaser trailer for the eagerly anticipated Freakier Friday, the upcoming sequel to the 2003 fan-favorite film starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. The movie will be released exclusively in theaters on August 8, 2025. Watch the trailer now!

Liberation Theatre Company  will host four nights of public readings of plays written by writers who participated in LTC's Writing Residency Program for 2024-2025. Learn more.

The 40th Annual Bistro Awards Gala will honor Grammy Award-nominated jazz-cabaret singer Sandy Stewart, and more. Learn more about the awards and see how to attend.

Once Upon a Mattress will be presented at Wagner College Theatre in March. Learn more about the show and see how to purchase tickets to the production here!

California School of the Arts - San Gabriel Valley (CSArts-SGV) students are preparing to present the school's seventh-annual all-school musical, 'Once Upon a Mattress.'

Some of the shows that the Orpheum has been best known for are Stomp, which ran there for an astounding 29 years, from 1994 to 2023, and the original production of Little Shop of Horrors which spent over five years at the theater from 1982 to 1987. 

The 2025 Sharon Playhouse MainStage lineup has been revealed, featuring classics like Annie and many more. See the full lineup and learn how to purchase tickets.

This time, the reader question was: Other than Old Friends, what are the other Sondheim revues and what makes them different? This marks the theatre world’s fifth major Sondheim revue and the first since the theatre legend passed away in 2021.