The Public Theatre News

For the first time since 1983 with LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, an Off-Broadway musical, HAMILTON, has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical! Check out all the winners below!

The Road Theatre Company and Taylor Gilbert, Founder/Artistic Director together with Sam Anderson, Artistic Director, are thrilled to announce the first show of its 2015-2016 - 25th Anniversary Season, the World Premiere of HOMEFREE, written by Lisa Loomer and directed by Ovation Award-winner Michael Matthews. HOMEFREE will open on Friday, September 18 at 8pm and run through Sunday, November 8th at the Road Theatre Company's second home, the Road on Magnolia, located in The NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood.

WAM Theatre has announced that Jayne Atkinson will be directing the next play in their 2015 Fresh Takes Play Reading Series, Noms de Guerre by Jacqueline E. Lawton.  

We are yet another day closer to the biggest night on every theatre-lover's calendar- the 69th Annual Tony Awards, which will be co-hosted by Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming on Sunday, June 7 (8PM on CBS). Earlier this month, the 2015 Tony nominees gathered to meet the press and BroadwayWorld was on hand for the big day. Below, we bring you an exclusive interview with Beth Malone, Best Perfromance by a Leading Actress in a Musical nominee for Fun Home.

We are yet another day closer to the biggest night on every theatre-lover's calendar- the 69th Annual Tony Awards, which will be co-hosted by Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming on Sunday, June 7 (8PM on CBS). Earlier this month, the 2015 Tony nominees gathered to meet the press and BroadwayWorld was on hand for the big day. Below, we bring you an exclusive interview with Sydney Lucas, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical nominee for Fun Home.

THE OTHER THING, written by Emily Schwend and directed by Lucie Tiberghien, makes its world premiere at Second Stage tonight, May 21, following previews from May 12. The production runs through June 7, 2015.

Earlier this month, the 2015 Tony nominees gathered to meet the press and BroadwayWorld was on hand for the big day. Throughout the month, we will continue our Tonys coverage by bringing you exclusive photos by acclaimed photographer Walter McBride! Below, meet Beth Malone, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical nominee for Fun Home.

Manhattan Theatre Club's world premiere of HEISENBERG, the new play by two-time Olivier Award winner Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Punk Rock), directed by Drama Desk Award winner Mark Brokaw (The Lyons, How I Learned to Drive), starring Denis Arndt (The Night Alive at Geffen Playhouse, 'The Practice') and Tony & Emmy Award winner Mary-Louise Parker (Proof, 'Weeds'), will play a strictly limited 6-week engagement beginning tonight, May 19, and opening Wednesday, June 3 as part of MTC's 2014-2015 season of The Studio at Stage II -- Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Series at New York City Center.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, the political controversy surrounding the release of The Interview, and continued suppression of plays, books, and art in American schools, libraries and museums, the battle for freedom of speech and expression is more essential than ever. Planet Connections Theatre Festivity will present an evening of world premiere plays by Erik Ehn, Halley Feiffer, Israel Horovitz and Neil LaBute addressing censorship in the arts in Playwrights for a Cause, to be held at 7:30pm on June 14, 2015 at the Sheen Center, located at 18 Bleecker Street.

Off-Broadway's award-winning Irish Repertory Theatre (Charlotte Moore, Artistic Director and Ciaran O'Reilly, Producing Director) announces that the critically acclaimed New York premiere of Nate Rufus Edelman's THE BELLE OF BELFAST, directed by Claudia Weill, will extend one week, and will be now be performed through Sunday, June 14th, 2015.

Earlier this month, the 2015 Tony nominees gathered to meet the press and BroadwayWorld was on hand for the big day. Throughout the month, we will continue our Tonys coverage by bringing you exclusive photos by acclaimed photographer Walter McBride! Below, meet Sydney Lucas, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical nominee for Fun Home.

production of A Chorus Line, which garnered the Tony, Pulitzer Prize, Drama Desk, and Theatre World awards -among others.  Other credits include:  director/choreographer: 22%, Love Songs, Spelling Bee, Rose Bowl Queens, Bark! No Strings, Desperate Writers (Off-B'way/LA), Flunky, The Dining Room, Nuncrackers, Judy's Scary Little Christmas, Frog & Toad, A Chorus Line, choreographer: Hunger, Nightmare Alley, Atlanta, Great Expectations, Triumph of Love, Dancing at Lughnasa. Pasadena Playhouse: 110 in the Shade, Do I Hear A Waltz. Hollywood Bowl: Mame, Bernstein's Mass, My Fair Lady, Music Man, Camelot, Reprise!, Three Penny Opera, City of Angels, Company, 20th Century, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Most Happy Fella. Other Los Angeles: Atlanta, Paint Your Wagon (Geffen); Grave White Way (Hudson Theatre); Dogeaters, Gaytino (Kirk Douglas Theatre); Six Dance Lessons (Falcon, Geffen, B'way); Snoopy, Blockheads (London West End). Film/TV: Country Rules, Santa Clause 3, Six Dance Lessons…  Website: www.kaycole.net

The A.R.T. won seven Elliot Norton Awards given by the Boston Theatre Critics Association honoring Boston's best theatre productions. The annual awards are named for Boston's dean of American drama critics, Elliot Norton, who died in 2003 at the age of 100, and were held last night, May 11 at the Citi Shubert Theatre.

Musical Theatre Guild, the winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in the theatre, will conclude their 2014-2015 season with Stephen Sondheim's latest work, ROAD SHOW.  The one-night-only concert will take place at the Moss Theatre at New Roads School in Santa Monica on Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 7:00 pm. 

Shrunken Shakespeare Company (Yvonne Cone and Jennifer Martina, Co-Producing Artistic Directors) and Creative Producer Adam Shulman (Dukes of Hazard: The Beginning, Song One starring Anne Hathaway) to host SSC's Annual Benefit Gala and Staged Reading of Chukwudi Iwuji's masterpiece screenplay Ira - on June 8th, 2015 at The Loft at West 83rd Street (150 West 83rd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus).

Continuing its 21st anniversary year, Jermyn Street Theatre today announces two plays for the summer months and gives a sneak preview into the autumn season.

The Actors' Equity Foundation's 2015 Clarence Derwent Awards for most promising female and male performers on the New York metropolitan scene have gone to Phillipa Soo (Hamilton) and Josh Grisetti (It Shoulda Been You). 

Encore Theatre Company has announced the world premiere of HOOKMAN, a new play by Lauren Yee whose playwriting credits includes The Hatmaker's Wife and Ching Chong Chinaman. Commissioned by Encore Theatre, Hookman dramatizes the story of Lexi, a student in her first year at college. After losing her high school best friend to a hook-handed serial killer, Lexi must learn what it means to grow up, young and female, in a world that's sometimes dangerous and lonely. Directed by Becca Wolff, Hookman opens in previews tonight, May 6 at Z Below in San Francisco, and runs for three weeks through Saturday, May 30.

'Casterbridge,' based on Thomas Hardy's classic Victorian novel, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge,' is a new musical theater work with book and lyrics by David Willinger and music by Christopher Beste. The 20-character, two-act musical is fairly faithful to Hardy's parable of the spiritual ups and downs of man and features a score inspired by English country music of the period. Theater for the New City will present the piece's world premiere run June 4 to 19, directed by Willinger.

As one of the nation's leading regional theaters and producing partners for Broadway, Paper Mill Playhouse has a well-earned reputation for launching both performers and shows for the Great White Way.