McCarter Theatre News

Upcoming Theatre Communication Group Member Shows - 4/10 for New Jersey

THE UMBRELLA PLAYS closes Sunday, April 10 at the Tank.

Two River Theater Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Dias, continues its season with George Bernard Shaw's classic Candida, directed by David Staller. Performances will end Sunday, April 10.

Award winning vocalist ERIC MICHAEL GILLETT will close out the 2010/2011 season of CABARET CARES, with I WON'T SING A SONDHEIM SONG...or will I? at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Sunday, April 17th at 7pm. The evening will be presented as a benefit for Cabaret Cares.

La Muse Venale presents a musical tale of dreams, possibilities and heartbreak in Robert L. Hecker's Honestly Abe, which shines a spotlight on a little-known early chapter in the life of President Abraham Lincoln. Directed by Joshua A. Kashinsky, Honestly Abe will begin performances at the Mint Theater at 311 West 43rd Street.

Broadway and Regional favorites Suzzanne Douglas (Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill), Robert Cuccioli (Jekyll & Hyde), and Garth Kravits (The Drowsy Chaperone) will headline The Best of Times: A Star-Studded Salute to the Tony Awards, on Saturday, April 9, 8 p.m., at the Bickford Theatre at the Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morristown, NJ.

The Best of Times: A Star-Studded Salute to the Tony Awards, the 2011 Benefit Fundraiser at the Bickford Theatre, 6 Normandy Heights Road in Morristown, NJ, stars Tony Award-nominee Robert Cuccioli (Jekyll & Hyde), and Broadway and Regional favorites Suzzanne Douglas (3Penny Opera, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill), Christine Marie Heath (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change), Garth Kravits (The Drowsy Chaperone), Rob Richardson (A Tale of Two Cities), Joel Robertson (Les Miserables), David Sabella-Mills (Chicago), Matthew Shepard (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Wonderful Town), Julie Waldman Stiel (The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber), and Susan Speidel (Saturday's Highlife).

Rising Phoenix Rep is pleased to announce that Slipping will have its West Coast premiere at New Conservatory Theatre Center opening on May 18, 2012.

Audiences and critics on both coasts embraced Eurydice and In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), two shows steeped in longing from playwright Sarah Ruhl and director Les Waters. Now this talented team turns its attention to a fresh translation of a masterpiece: Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. Ruhl enlivens this classic with the same elegant understanding of intimacy that infused those earlier collaborations, while Waters and a cast of 14 deliver another sumptuous production. This West Coast premiere begins previews on Berkeley Rep's intimate Thrust Stage on April 8, opens April 13, and runs through May 22. Three Sisters is a co-production between Berkeley Rep, where Waters serves as associate artistic director, and Yale Repertory Theatre.

Green Beetle Productions is thrilled to announce that their critically-acclaimed (LA Times CRITICS' CHOICE, Backstage CRITIC'S PICK!) production of PLAY DATES, written by Sam Wolfson (Jewtopia), directed by Jennifer Chambers and produced by Kristen Lee Kelly is EXTENDING AGAIN and will now "play" through SUNDAY, MAY 1 at THEATRE ASYLUM, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood.

New Repertory Theatre, in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, will conclude its 27th Season with the Tony Award-winning musical Passing Strange. Directed by Kate Warner, with music direction by Todd C. Gordon, and choreography by Kelli Edwards, Passing Strange begins performances on May 1 and runs through May 22, 2011.

Playwright Susan Soon He Stanton and stage director Reginald Douglas were each appointed to a one year residency at the Lark Play Development Center as inaugural fellows in the company's brand-new Van Lier Fellowship Program.

THE ACTIVE THEATER in association with BUD MARTIN will present Any Given Monday by Bruce Graham on Monday, April 4, 2011 at New World Stages, 2:00pm, in Stage 5. Bud Martin will direct the private reading of the play which was first seen in a co-production between ACT II PLAYHOUSE, Ambler, PA and THEATRE EXILE, Philadelphia, PA. Any Given Monday was the recipient of the 2010 Barrymore Award for Best New Play.

Upcoming Theatre Communication Group Member Shows - 4/03 for New Jersey

McCarter Theatre Education Department will present two family performances of Sunjata Kamalenya, written and directed by Christopher Parks, on Sunday, April 3 at 11am and 2pm.

Classic Stage Company (CSC), under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Jessica R. Jenen, continues its 44th season with DOUBLE FALSEHOOD, written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, adapted for the 18th Century stage by Lewis Theobald, and directed by Kulick. DOUBLE FALSEHOOD will close at CSC (136 East 13th Street) Sunday, April 3.

After a sold-out and critically acclaimed run at The New York International Fringe Festival, the award-winning The Umbrella Plays is back, for a limited engagement at The Tank, March 31st - April 10th.

Written by Stephanie Janssen and directed by Daniel Talbott (art. dir. Rising Phoenix Rep, Keep Your Baggage With You (at all times)), The Umbrella Plays connects six snap-shot-sized plays, each offering a glimpse into the lives of a disparate (and sometimes desperate) cast of characters, as they work their ways through inclement weather of the literal and figurative variety, searching for shelter in whatever form it can be found. The smallest and most common-place of objects, the simple umbrella, becomes the entry point into these stories, reminding us that there is more than meets the eye in the most innocuous-seeming pieces of a life, and the most fleeting of moments. Storms crash in and leave their marks, lovers are sought and lost and found again, ambitions jump the tracks and hopes get renewed, and in the swirl of these six stories, an umbrella is never, ever just an umbrella.

Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) is pleased to announce casting for Tony Kushner's THE ILLUSION. The production will be directed by Michael Mayer.

McCarter Theatre Education Department will present two family performances of Sunjata Kamalenya, written and directed by Christopher Parks, on Sunday, April 3 at 11am and 2pm.