Signature Theatre News

Today's top stories: The Prom on Netflix has found its Emma, and more!

Voting is NOW OPEN and the first votes are in for the 2019 BroadwayWorld Wichita Awards, brought to you by TodayTix! The nominees are set, and now you can vote to make sure your favorite local theatres and performers are recognized!

Voting is NOW OPEN and the first votes are in for the 2019 BroadwayWorld Washington, DC Awards, brought to you by TodayTix! The nominees are set, and now you can vote to make sure your favorite local theatres and performers are recognized!

Tony Award-winner Elizabeth Ashley and Tony Award-nominee Penny Fuller will star in a reading of Wharton/Williams, a work based on the short stories of novelist Edith Wharton and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams. Adapted by award-winning playwright/librettist Charles Leipart, Wharton/Williams will be directed by Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award-winner Michael Wilson.

A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS plays Signature Theatre from December 3 a?" 21, 2019. Get a first listen to Mark G. Meadows singing Stevie Wonder's 'Someday at Christmas'!

BroadwayWorld has an exclusive clip of Phylicia Rashad singing on an episode of Disney Junior's The Rocketeer on Disney Channel. 

Variety reports that Paul Downs Colaizzo will direct 'The Perfect Nanny,' a film adaptation of international French-language best seller 'Chanson Douce.'

Signature Theatre (Paige Evans, Artistic Director; Harold Wolpert, Executive Director) has announced that its sold-out production of Fires in the Mirror, written by MacArthur fellow Anna Deavere Smith, directed by Saheem Ali, and featuring Michael Benjamin Washington, has been extended again and will now play through December 22, 2019.

With college theatre program auditions just around the corner, we're highlighting some of the country's most prestigious theatre programs and chatting with the schools' faculty about everything from from the audition process to life after graduation and more. Today we're looking at how twenty-five different major universities help give their theatre students real world experiences. Check out answers from AMDA, University of Michigan, and many more!

The hills were alive this weekend as Tally Sessions took over BroadwayWorld's Instagram Story at Asolo Repertory Theatre's The Sound of Music, exactly 60 years after the iconic musical's original Broadway production opened! So in case you missed it (or just want to relive all of the fun and excitement), we compiled clips for you to enjoy. Check it all out!

Legendary, multi-award winning actress/singer Betty Buckley returns to Café Carlyle, March 10 a?" 21. Her career spans theater, film, television and concert halls around the world. She's received a sea of accolades including a Tony Award for her performance as Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS. She's a 2012 Theatre Hall of Fame inductee, and the 2017 recipient of the Julie Harris Award from The Actor's Fund for Artistic Achievement. Betty Buckley just completed a national tour of the new Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! produced by Scott Rudin.

Nonesuch Records releases the original cast recording for three-time Tony Award® nominee Dave Malloy's musical Octet-recorded live during Signature Theatre's world premiere production at The Pershing Square Signature Center-on November 15, 2019 digitally and on January 17, 2020 on CD.

The Center for Fiction, a 200-year-old literary nonprofit that's created an immersive home for readers and writers in downtown Brooklyn, and Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, will co-present Craft Talk: Annie Baker & Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who are close friends and accomplished playwrights. will dive into a conversation about realism and the fourth wall.

Signature Theatre will present a closed reading of Camille Claudel on Friday, November 15 featuring Jackie Burns (Broadway's Wicked) and Hugh Panaro (Broadway's The Phantom of the Opera). The show features book and lyrics by Nan Knighton, music by Frank Wildhorn and is directed by Eric Schaeffer. The musical will receive a full production at Virginia's Signature Theatre from March 24 a?' April 19, 2020.

Abingdon Theatre Company (Chad Austin, Artistic Director) beginning its 27th season presented a one-night only special event: a staged reading of Robin & Me: My Little Spark of Madness, a new solo work written and performed by Dave Droxler, directed by Devin Dunne Cannon at The Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street), on Monday, November 11th at 7pm.

Take Me Out has found its full Broadway cast! Second Stage Theater has announced full casting for the Broadway production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play, Take Me Out. Julian Cihi, Hiram Delgado, Brandon J. Dirden, Will Harrison, Carl Lundstedt, Ken Marks, Michael Oberholtzer, and Joél Pérez will join previously announced stars Patrick J. Adams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jesse Williams. Directed by Scott Ellis, Take Me Out will begin previews April 2, 2020 and officially open on April 23, 2020 at Second Stage's Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street).

On April 6, 2020, Virginia's Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre will honor Carol Burnett with the company's eleventh Stephen Sondheim Award. The Stephen Sondheim Award will be presented at a black-tie Gala Benefit at the Embassy of Italy and will benefit Signature Theatre's artistic, education, and community programs.

Pittsburgh Public Theater continues its 45th anniversary season with the Pittsburgh premiere of School Girls; Or The African Mean Girls Play. A smash hit Off-Broadway last year, the play was written by Jocelyn Bioh, a first generation American whose parents emigrated from Ghana in West Africa. Directed by Kenyan native Shariffa Ali, School Girls runs November 7 - December 8, 2019 at the O'Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theater's home in the heart of Downtown's Cultural District. For tickets call 412.316.1600, go to ppt.org, or visit the Box Office.

I am often asked what my all time favorite Broadway musical is. I always reply A Chorus Line. I consider it to be a perfect musical in every way. The show's original director/choreographer Michael Bennett captured the heart and soul of the dancer so beautifully in what I consider to be his masterwork. Marvin Hamlisch's music and Edward Kleban's lyrics were and still are one of the most inventive theatre scores ever written. James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante's book (based off of taped interviews of Broadway dancers conducted by Bennett) frame the songs to sheer perfection. Paul's monologue in the show is actually based on Dante's true story.

Signature Theatre presents Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith featuring Michael Benjamin Washington and directed by Saheem Ali. The production opened just last night, November 11th in The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues).