The 2015 winners of the Lilly Awards, celebrating and honoring women of distinction in American theater, were announced today by The Lilly Awards Foundation. The winners will be celebrated at the 6th Annual Lilly Awards Ceremony on Monday, June 1, 2015 beginning at 5:00 p.m. at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street) and hosted by double 2015 Tony Award nominee Lisa Kron (Fun Home). The ceremony will be live-streamed on the Lilly Awards website (www.thelillyawards.org) and HowlRound TV (www.Howlround.com/tv). #lillyawards #howlround
Centenary Stage Company's Young Performers work tirelessly to perfect their dance moves, learn all of their lines, and get their vocal harmonies just right for the culmination of their training session and this spring is no exception! These talented young thespians between the ages of 8 and 18 will fill the Little Theater with a variety of shows and musicals to entertain audiences of all ages May 29th - June 7th with their annual Spring Festival of Shows. The Young Performers Workshop (YPW) has been hailed as a "state treasure" by Peter Filichia of the Star Ledger and brings in youth from Morris, Warren, Hunterdon and Sussex counties. This spring, the festival will feature How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Gypsy, and American Sampler: 100 Years of Broadway Dance. Performances will be held on select dates in the Little Theatre on the campus of Centenary College at 400 Jefferson Street in Hackettstown.
In the famous 1960s hit 'Is That All There Is?' by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Peggy Lee croons the melancholy lyric, 'If that's all there is, my friend, then, let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all there is.' While this song ironically doesn't make it into the eclectic catalog of tunes that fuel THE LAST TWO PEOPLE ON EARTH: AN APOCALYPTIC VAUDEVILLE, currently in its world premiere at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, it could easily have become the show's theme song. When a flood of epic proportions wipes out all but two scraggly survivors, played as a pair of Estragon and Vladimir-style hobos by Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac, there is very little left for them to do but sing and dance.
New Dramatists, Tony Honor recipient and the nation's premier playwright development laboratory, just honored Tony Award winning actor and Chairman of the Board of The Actors Fund, Brian Stokes Mitchell with their 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award at its 66th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute. The event featured musical performances from some of Mitchell's most memorable shows by Tony Award winner Leslie Uggams (King Hedley II, Hallelujah Baby), Nicolette Robinson (Brooklynite, TV's 'The Affair,' 'Hart of Dixie') and Leslie Odom, Jr. (Hamilton, NBC's 'Smash'), and Tony nominated Stephanie D'Abruzzo (Avenue Q, Carnival at City Center Encores!). BroadwayWorld brings you photos from inside the event below!
NEW DRAMATISTS, Tony Honor recipient and the nation's premier playwright development laboratory, will honor Tony Award winning actor and Chairman of the Board of The Actors Fund, Brian Stokes Mitchell with their 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award at its 66th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute.
At Manhattan School of Music's 2015 gala tonight, which honored Bebe Neuwirth and welcomed special guests Angela Lansbury, Barbara Cook, Marlo Thomas, Phil Donahue, and Tommy Tune in the Broadway Melody at the Rainbow Room, MSM President James Gandre announced that, beginning in fall 2016, MSM will become the first-ever independent music conservatory in New York (and only the second in the country) to offer a degree program in musical theater.
As yet another sign of the Chicago area's dominance in the world of the American musical theater, I need only point to the fact that it is undoubtedly the only market that has hosted three different productions of the Andrew Lippa musical "Big Fish," at three different tiers of the industry and three different geographical locations.
Broadway director and choreographer Susan Stroman, whose many credits include the Tony Award-winning musicals Crazy for You, Contact, and The Producers, makes her Met debut with a lavish new staging of Lehár's effervescent operetta The Merry Widow. Star soprano Renée Flemingadds a beguiling new character to her wide-ranging Met repertory as Hanna, the widowed Pontevedrian millionairess.
Broadway director and choreographer Susan Stroman, whose many credits include the Tony Award-winning musicals Crazy for You, Contact, and The Producers, makes her Met debut with a lavish new staging of Lehr's effervescent operetta The Merry Widow.
The world premiere of award-winning playwright Ken Urban's Sense of an Ending, directed by Jonathan O'Boyle, will be showing at Theatre503 from May. This compelling political thriller shines a light on journalistic truth amid the atrocity of the Rwandan genocide. The production will run at Theatre503, The Latchmere, 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW from today 12th May through Saturday 6th June 2015. Press Night: Friday 15th May 2015.
Art & culture are vital to our existence and Seattle Theatre Group's 2015-2016 season features ample offerings of live performance experiences from arts provocateurs, global masters, cultural icons, and contemporary legends.
The Daily Mail writes that Mel Brooks is reimagining the musical adaptation of his film YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN for the London stage. The musical will be making its West End debut (no word yet on when) with help from original Broadway helmer and THE PRODUCERS colleague Susan Stroman.
The Muny announced today several principal cast members for the seven shows in its spectacular 97th season, which opens on June 15 with My Fair Lady. Full casts and companies will be announced throughout May.
Today we are revisiting one of Kander & Ebb's most awarded musicals in honor of its opening more than 20 years ago this week, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN.
Trinity Rep closes out Season 51: The Necessity of Human Connection with the world premiere of Tony-nominated playwright Sarah Ruhl and composer Todd Almond's Melancholy Play: a chamber musical, directed by Obie Award-winner Liesl Tommy. Melancholy Play: a chamber musical runs May 28 through June 28, 2015 in Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater.