McDonald News

Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced two special events for the 2022 summer season, an extension of Man of God due to popular demand, dates and programming for the Fridays@3 reading series, as well as creative teams and casting for Man of God, Most Happy in Concert, and we are continuous. 

Lineup includes Jedd Hughes (Patty Loveless, Little Big Town, Sarah Jarosz, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell), David Ryan Harris (John Mayer, Dave Matthews, Santana), Mark Bryan (Hootie & the Blowfish), Patrick Davis (Guy Clark, Jimmy Buffett, Jewel, Pat Green, Lady A. Morgan Wallen), Americana favorite Lauren Jenkins and more to be announced.

Complete casting has been announced for the new Off Broadway musical Between the Lines.

Nasty will be nice and Lake Oswego will be ogre-the-moon when Lakewood Theatre Company musical theatre students present a production of Shrek, The Musical JR. May 14-15, 2022, directed by Julie Lane.

Today, ahead of the Friday, May 6th release of new album Peacock Pools via ATO Records, Pink Mountaintops pays homage to musical idol Nikki Sudden on the harmony-heavy and sweetly hedonistic new single “ Nikki Go Sudden ,” serenading the late Swell Maps and Jacobites  singer/guitarist with a gorgeous convergence of twisted nursery rhyme and elegantly debauched mythmaking (e.g., “Hush baby-baby, now don’t you cry/Mama’s gonna buy you some collision time”). “I wrote that song just after Nikki Sudden died, a tribute to a fallen-rogue unsung hero who existed in his own weird outsider world,” shares Pink Mountaintops' Stephen McBean .

Canadian Stage will lift the curtain today on an unabashedly ambitious 15-show season for 22.23, presenting exceptional performance from Canada and around the world, celebrating large-scale, theatrical spectacle alongside intimate and provocative social commentary. 

Tony Award-winning director and writer Alex Timbers has authored a children’s picture book, Broadway Bird, a charming, irreverent, heartfelt story set in an all-animal version of Broadway, featuring illustrations by Alisa Coburn, which will be released on May 24, 2022.

Historic six-time Tony Award Winner Audra McDonald, star of Broadway’s The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Carousel, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill and HBO’s The Gilded Age, opens the Town Hall series on May 29 with Seth Rudetsky as music director and host.

Today, The Museum of Broadway announced a group of featured artists who have designed various rooms and exhibits within the Museum, as well as their team of expert curators. Tickets will go on sale on June 14th. 

Academy Award-Winning comedian Steven Wright will bring his stand-up comedy act to The Orleans Showroom at The Orleans Hotel and Casino on Saturday, June 25. Audiences can also enjoy performances by “Anything for Salinas Band – Tribute to Selena” and Maná tribute band Corazón De Maná at The Club at Cannery Casino Hotel on Saturday, June 18. 

.Ensemble Theatre Company has announced its remount of its tour-de-force one-man show Vincent, which was presented at The Santa Barbara Museum of Art in March to sold-out audiences. 

In celebration of her soon to be released album Ann Kittredge:reIMAGINE(Jazzheads, Inc./King Kozmo Music), a specially curated collection of songs uniquely re-imagined, Ms. Kittredge, will appear at The Laurie Beechman Theatre (407 West 42nd Street – between 9th & 10th Avenues) on Thursday, May 26th at 7pm.

Meet the complete cast for A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical, as rehearsals began in New York ahead of the musical's world premiere, pre-Broadway engagement this summer at Boston's Emerson Colonial Theatre.

The College of Performing Arts at The New School is proud to present a Mannes Opera production of Grace McLean's In the Green from Tuesday, May 10 through Saturday, May 14 at the Bank Street Theater. Premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in 2019, and praised as “Ingenious & Wildly Inventive” by The New York Times, Mannes Opera has expanded on McClean’s original vision by weaving in additional choral pieces by Hildegard von Bingen, performed by a full chorus.

Dance Rising NYC continues promoting embodied advocacy for the dance field. In Brooklyn to Harlem for International Dance Day, bringing the dynamic energy of dance to small businesses and public spaces.

After 100 years of producing musicals, comedies and dramas, Theatre Memphis has (like any other theatre lucky enough to be around this long) produced its fair share of 'clunkers' and 'classics.' Some of them were 'classics' which turned out to be 'clunkers,' but many of them, as of late, have turned out to be 'classics' that have been made to feel fresh and relatable (which is no small feat). Most community theatres across America pull out well-known titles as they rely more on the title of the show to fill the seats rather than on the actual people pulling the show together.

On May 16, 2022, Virginia’s Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre will honor Carol Burnett with the company’s eleventh Stephen Sondheim Award. Paying tribute to Ms. Burnett with live performances are stars of stage and screen Bernadette Peters and Santino Fontana.

Linda Shelton, Executive Director of The Joyce Theater Foundation, announced today that Aaron Mattocks, the organization’s Director of Programming, will step down effective July 15, 2022.

Broadway and Vine will open its second season with Lea Michele (GLEE, Spring Awakening).  The Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee will make her Napa Valley performance debut at Carneros Resort’s Hilltop Vineyard on Tuesday, June 7th.

Director Roberta Emerson has devised an intriguing way to approach the story's outer framework without altering the libretto. The story opens not with an unseen narrator recounting the enchantress's spell on a prideful prince and his servants but instead with a young Black girl (played sweetly by Gabriella Milchman) who opens a storybook in a modern-day bedroom and reads those words aloud from it, soon seeing herself in the story - just in time for the glorious opening notes of 'Belle'...