Playbill News

Legendary Ellen Greene - who starred as Audrey in ‘Little Shop of Horrors' on Broadway, in the West End and in the subsequent Hollywood film alongside Rick Moranis and Steve Martin - is joining the cast of Betwixt!, a new British comedy musical written and directed by Ian McFarlane, which is getting a West End season at Trafalgar Studios 2 from Tuesday 26th July to Saturday 20th August.

The Legendary Broadway star, actress/singer Betty Buckley will offer a special four day Song Interpretation, Scene and Monologue Workshop beginning July 25. The Tony winner will assist aspiring artists, educators and experienced performers in the craft of singing, acting and storytelling.

In '1001,' now in its Boston premiere at Company One, playwright Jason Grote reinvents the collected works of 'One Thousand and One Nights' and creates a mash-up of two worlds, time-traveling between ancient Persia and 21st-century America in the throes of the 9/11 attack.

Is there a trend with Tony-nominated stars of Broadway musicals taking the show on the road?

Don't tell the evangelical theater folks in Pigeon Forge, but Kathy Griffin's headed back to Tennessee and, this time, who knows whom she'll be telling to 'suck it'? Just a simple girl with a simple dream: the outspoken and outrageous comedy legend (surely, that will get me the exclusive and private interview I covet) brings her unique brand of comedy back to Nashville this summer for the first time since her last sold-out performance at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

With Griffin coming to Music City USA this week, you can be certain that Lisa Marie Wright will be asked to sign more autographs than normal, dodging the glare of television cameras and trying to elude the paparazzi. Luckily, she agreed to an interview with us from an undisclosed location where she whiles away her time eating bon-bons and reading movie magazines...either that, or she was at work, we forget...

Oprah Winfrey stopped by THE BOOK OF MORMON for the July 16th evening performance accompanied by best friend and radio host Gayle King. The media mogul was seen leaving the Eugene O'Neill Theater with a big smile on her face and an autographed Playbill in hand.

Mark Price, an alumnus of Broadway Theatre Project and a veteran of nine Broadway shows, returns to Broadway Theatre Project as a faculty member in the acting department.

Multi-Grammy and Tony Award-nominated composer/producer Frank Wildhorn's works span the worlds of popular, theatrical and classical music.

Broadway Theatre Project (BTP) welcomes Garry McQuinn, producer of the Broadway show Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, to the BTP faculty for the 2011 summer session.

TheatreWorks, the nationally acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, presents FLY BY NIGHT, developed at TheatreWorks and making its world premiere as the centerpiece of this year's New Works Festival.

A Noise Within (ANW), the acclaimed classical repertory theatre company led by Founders/Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, launches its milestone 2011-12 Season and 20th Anniversary in its permanent new home, a 33,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art venue in Pasadena, on Saturday, October 29, 2011.

Original Avenue Q cast member Jennifer Barnhart will play the title role in THE LEGEND OF JULIE TAYMOR, or The Musical That Killed Everybody! which will get its world premiere this August at FringeNYC, playing the Bleecker Theatre. The musical by Travis Ferguson (book & lyrics) and Dave Ogrin (music & lyrics) tells the story of the rise and fall of Director Julie Taymor and the behind-the-scenes scandals of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark which has since become a modern Broadway legend.

Broadway In Chicago is thrilled to announce that Emerald City Theatre's 2010 hit PINKALICIOUS is coming to the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place (175 E. Chestnut St) July 8- Sep. 4, 2011.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is excited to announce its fourth annual Summer Gala. On Saturday, July 23rd at 6 p.m., A Celebration of the Town of Waterford will be held in the Sunken Garden on the O'Neill grounds, overlooking Long Island Sound. The evenings festivities will include cocktails, silent auction, dinner and performance.

The funny thing about 70 million dollar musicals is that the paper used to write them costs no more than the paper used to write church basement showcases budgeted on the limit of someone's maxed-out credit card.  And twenty thousand years from now, when intergalactic societies consider our generation's artistic ambitions based on which words and music written on that paper we chose to support with extravagantly-financed productions viewed by over ten thousand purchasers of high-priced tickets every week, let's hope we don't have to sheepishly shield our faces in our afterlife abodes as they flabbergastedly wonder, 'What the hell were they thinking?'

TheatreWorks, the nationally acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, presents FLY BY NIGHT, developed at TheatreWorks and making its world premiere as the centerpiece of this year's New Works Festival.

The Legendary Broadway star, actress/singer Betty Buckley will offer a special four day Song Interpretation, Scene and Monologue Workshop beginning July 25. The Tony winner will assist aspiring artists, educators and experienced performers in the craft of singing, acting and storytelling.

THE LEGEND OF JULIE TAYMOR, or The Musical That Killed Everybody! will get its world premiere this August as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

Here's a chance to take another trip over the rainbow with everyone's favorite diva, Judy Garland!