Richard Wesley News

The Central Park Five by Anthony Davis, a world premiere commissioned and presented by Long Beach Opera on June 15th, 22nd and 23rd, explores the interrogation and coerced confessions of five teenagers wrongly convicted of a crime in New York City in the 1980's. The opera details their stories, including the profound effect their unjust prison sentences had on their young lives.

The Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop will present Douglas Lyons's new family comedy Chicken & Biscuits Monday May 13th at 7pm; at The Billie Holiday Theatre. Chicken & Biscuits, written in residence at The Directors Company, has previously been selected and performed in the Front Porch Reading Series and Queen Theatre's 2019 New American Voices Reading Series.

The Ensemble Theatre Artistic Director, Eileen J. Morris, announces the theatre's 2019-2020 season including a commissioned world premiere and five regional premieres packed with drama, comedy and musical performances; and a series of alternative programing, youth initiatives, and fundraising events.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus, who will present their Spring Concert, L'Amore e la Vita (Love and Life) for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 6 and 7. Led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. This program, which Ketchum humorously calls the Rom-Com of opera, will feature selections from two Verdi operas I vespri siciliani and Ernani, three Donizetti operas - Don Pasquale, La fille du r giment and L'elisir d'amore, as well as operatic sequences from Bizet's Les p cheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), Delibes' Lakm , and Puccini's La rondine.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus, who will present their Spring Concert, L'Amore e la Vita (Love and Life) for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 6 and 7. Led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. This program, which Ketchum humorously calls the Rom-Com of opera, will feature selections from two Verdi operas I vespri siciliani and Ernani, three Donizetti operas - Don Pasquale, La fille du r giment and L'elisir d'amore, as well as operatic sequences from Bizet's Les p cheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), Delibes' Lakm , and Puccini's La rondine.

Critically-acclaimed playwright Richard Wesley will be the special guest during the 16th Annual Black and Latino Playwrights Conference at Texas State University on September 3-9.

A staged reading of Rafael Moreno's family drama Fotos, which played to packed houses and critical acclaim last summer at The Producers Club, will close the 2017 -2018 season of the prestigious Frank Silvera Writers Workshop at the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn on Monday June 18.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,  Kevin Hart is in talks to star in a remake of Uptown Saturday Night. The film is being produced by Will Smith will produce the Warner Bros. feature via his Overbrook banner.

Long Beach Opera celebrates two milestones in the 2018-2019 season - its fortieth anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Andreas Mitisek leading the company as artistic director. 

The AUDELCO and Obie Award-winning Billie Holiday Theatre brings back the groundbreaking 50in50: Women's Voices Initiative with the Obie Award-winning Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop with a reading March 17, 2018 at 7pm in The Billie Holiday Theatre, 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY. 

Mile Square Theatre, Hudson County's leading professional theatre, kicks off its 2018 season with Alfred Uhry's powerful masterpiece Driving Miss Daisy. Set in the South between the late 40's and early 70's, the play explores an unlikely friendship between an elderly white Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffer, Hoke Colburn.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce that it has awarded grants to 11 opera companies through the Repertoire Development Grants program, supported by The Opera Fund. These grants provide vital financial support to opera companies developing new American opera and music-theater works.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce that it has awarded grants to 11 opera companies through the Repertoire Development Grants program, supported by The Opera Fund. These grants provide vital financial support to opera companies developing new American opera and music-theater works.

The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, in partnership with The Billie Holiday Theatre at RestorationART, today announced the first-ever Black Arts Theater Winter Immersion course, which will be taught by a world-class faculty in Brooklyn, New York, home to the largest Black community in the nation.

The 45th Annual AUDELCO Awards were held Monday, November 20th, at Symphony Space on 95th Street and Broadway. Scroll down for the winners of Black Theatre's most prestigious awards!

The energy of the evening was high with an array of black theater elite for the Audelco Awards at Symphony Space Theatre in New York City.

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present The New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), tonight, October 20, through November 4.

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present the New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), October 20-November 4.

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present the New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), October 20-November 4.