Theatre Development Fund News

Berkeley Repertory Theatre continues the second half of its season with Tribes, a sophisticated and moving family drama by celebrated British playwright Nina Raine. Her profound and powerful new play became an award-winning hit in London and New York. Now renowned director Jonathan Moscone brings it to Berkeley Rep this April for its Bay Area premiere. Tribes follows Billy, a young man who was born deaf into a loquacious and highly opinionated academic family who raised him to lip-read and integrate into the hearing world. When he meets Sylvia - raised by Deaf parents and going deaf herself - Billy decides it's time to speak on his own terms and to be heard. Playing out in words, sign language, and sometimes mesmerizing silence, this penetrating drama examines familial love, notions of belonging, and the intersections of communication. Tribes start previews tonight, April 11, opens on April 16, and closes on Sunday, May 11, 2014.

It is Theatre Development Fund's belief that future audiences are built by engaging students, first-hand, in the vital and exciting activity of the creative process, as well as providing opportunities to see live performances of great theatre. To that end, 1,500 New York City public high school and middle school students from 20 schools (and one school from East Orange, NJ), who are participating in TDF's Stage Doors Program, attended a special matinee performance of Broadway's smash hit, MOTOWN THE MUSICAL today, April 3 at 1pm at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre (205 West 46th Street, NYC). BroadwayWorld brings you photos from the special event below!

As part of the second annual Live Ideas festival, James Baldwin, This Time!, New York Live Artspresents Baldwin Through Dance: Charles O. Anderson and Dianne McIntyre. The shared program features the world premiere of Time is Time created and performed by acclaimed dancer and choreographer Dianne McIntyre, and the New York City premiere of Charles O. Anderson's Restless Natives.

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: A RAISIN IN THE SUN, starring Denzel Washington, opens tonight on Broadway, and GUYS AND DOLLS plays in concert with an all-star cast at Carnegie Hall!

The Off-Broadway League today announced nominations in 18 categories and one special award for the 2014 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. The Lortel Awards will be handed out on Sunday, May 4, 2014 at NYU Skirball Center beginning at 7:00pm EST, and hosted by acclaimed husband and wife actors and comedians, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. This year's event will once again benefit The Actors Fund.

It is Theatre Development Fund's belief that future audiences are built by engaging students, first-hand, in the vital and exciting activity of the creative process, as well as providing opportunities to see live performances of great theatre. To that end, 1,500 New York City public high school and middle school students from 20 schools (and one school from East Orange, NJ), who are participating in TDF's Stage Doors Program, will be attending a special matinee performance of Broadway's smash hit, MOTOWN THE MUSICAL on Thursday, April 3 at 1pm at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre (205 West 46th Street, NYC).

Scenic designer, writer and professor, MARJORIE BRADLEY KELLOGG, and costume designer DEBORAH M. DRYDEN are among the 2014 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards recipients. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, May 2, at 6:30pm, at the Hudson Theatre (145 West 44th Street). Ms. Kellogg will receive the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design and Ms. Dryden was selected to receive the 2014 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award for costume design. Ms. Kellogg's award will be presented to her by director Kenny Leon and Ms. Dryden's award will be presented to her by designer David Woolard.

The Broadway League has awarded coveted New York Education Grants to the Broadway productions of Act One, Matilda the Musical, and Violet. Each production receives a $5,000 grant towards its 2014 educational and community engagement initiatives. The grants aid the growth and development of theatre education in the city as they encourage Broadway productions to create more opportunities for young people. This is the first year that the Broadway League has awarded three grants instead of two, due to the increased number of proposals of quality programs.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre continues the second half of its season with Tribes, a sophisticated and moving family drama by celebrated British playwright Nina Raine. Her profound and powerful new play became an award-winning hit in London and New York. Now renowned director Jonathan Moscone brings it to Berkeley Rep this April for its Bay Area premiere. Tribes follows Billy, a young man who was born deaf into a loquacious and highly opinionated academic family who raised him to lip-read and integrate into the hearing world. When he meets Sylvia - raised by Deaf parents and going deaf herself - Billy decides it's time to speak on his own terms and to be heard. Playing out in words, sign language, and sometimes mesmerizing silence, this penetrating drama examines familial love, notions of belonging, and the intersections of communication. Tribes start previews Friday, April 11, opens on April 16, and closes on Sunday, May 11, 2014.

Director Christopher Bayes and comic actor Steven Epp - the duo behind the uproarious A Doctor in Spite of Himself - return to Berkeley Repertory Theatre with Accidental Death of an Anarchist, the explosive political farce by Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo. A Berkeley Rep favorite, Epp delighted audiences in Figaro and The Miser - now the master comedian returns in a criminally funny production about corruption. Only one man can cut through massive bureaucratic duplicity and reveal what happened to the suspected anarchist who died from a fall out of a fourth-floor police station window. Did he jump? Or was he pushed? In this contemporary take on a beloved classic, Berkeley Rep hauls you down to the station for a hilarious interrogation of our culture. This madcap comedy starts previews in the Roda Theatre tonight, March 7, opens March 12, and runs through April 20.

Just last night, Tovah Feldshuh hosted the Theatre Development Fund's (TDF) 2014 Gala, which celebrated the 35th season of TDF's Accessibility Programs (TAP). TAP are TDF's services for people with physical disabilities, as well as individuals on the autism spectrum. BroadwayWorld was there for the special night and you can check out photos from the celebration below!

Starting and ending in NYC, a play will be written as it travels around the world making 15 stops with playwrights from across the globe. Each playwright will contribute the next one to four pages of text, moving the plot forward from where the previous playwright left off. The playwrights are Lisa Kron (USA, NYC), Aditi Kapil (USA, Minneapolis), Nicolas Billon (Canada), Luz Estrada (Colombia), Thomas Sainsbury (New Zealand), Nick Rongjun Yu (China), Anuvab Pal (India), Oded Liphshiz (Israel), Lily Bevan (UK), Nina Mitrovi? (Croatia), Lana Nasser (The Netherlands), Phillip M. Dikotla (South Africa), Amy Conroy (Ireland), Sol Rodriguez Seoane (Argentina), and Chisa Hutchinson (USA, NYC).

Experience the passion and seduction in this elegant masterpiece, Tony Award-winning musical EVITA, presented as part of the Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Atlanta 2013/2014 season at the Fox Theatre.

TDF's Autism Theater Initiative (ATI) announces that tickets are currently on sale for the first ever autism-friendly performance of Disney Junior Live On Tour! Pirate & Princess Adventure, on Saturday, April 19 at 11am at the Theater at Madison Square Garden (Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street, New York, NY). Tickets for this performance, which runs 90 minutes long with one 15 minute intermission, range from $32 to $69 each and are currently on sale exclusively at www.tdf.org/disneyjrliveontour.

Tony Award nominee and recording artist MELISSA ERRICO, who recently starred in the hit revival of Stephen Sondheim's Passion and will soon be seen in the upcoming Cinemax series, "The Knick," will join TOVAH FELDSHUH (who will host), the singing string quartet WELL-STRUNG (Edmund Bagnell, Christopher Marchant, Daniel Shevlin and Trevor Wadleigh), and acrobats from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, including Ringmaster JOHNATHAN LEE IVERSON, to perform at Theatre Development Fund's (TDF) 2014 Gala on Monday, March 3 which celebrates the 35th season of TDF's Accessibility Programs (TAP). TAP are TDF's services for people with physical disabilities, as well as individuals on the autism spectrum. Ms. Errico will be accompanied on piano by TEDD FIRTH. She replaces Victoria Clark who had previously been announced. The program will be directed by DONNA DRAKE.

Director Christopher Bayes and comic actor Steven Epp - the duo behind the uproarious A Doctor in Spite of Himself - return to Berkeley Repertory Theatre with Accidental Death of an Anarchist, the explosive political farce by Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo. A Berkeley Rep favorite, Epp delighted audiences in Figaro and The Miser - now the master comedian returns in a criminally funny production about corruption. Only one man can cut through massive bureaucratic duplicity and reveal what happened to the suspected anarchist who died from a fall out of a fourth-floor police station window. Did he jump? Or was he pushed? In this contemporary take on a beloved classic, Berkeley Rep hauls you down to the station for a hilarious interrogation of our culture. This madcap comedy starts previews in the Roda Theatre on March 7, opens March 12, and runs through April 20.

Feld Entertainment, Inc. Executive Vice Presidents, NICOLE FELD, ALANA FELD and JULIETTE FELD will be honored at Theatre Development Fund's (TDF) gala on Monday, March 3 which celebrates the 35th season of TDF's Accessibility Programs (TAP). TAP are TDF's services for people with physical disabilities as well as individuals on the autism spectrum. The gala will be held at The Edison Ballroom (240 West 47th Street, NYC). For tickets, table information and journal ad information go to: www.tdf.org/gala, email: events@tdf.org or call 212.912.9770 x340. The Gala Chair is TDF Trustee MEG HERMANN.

The producers of the First National Tour of THE BOOK OF MORMON, winner of nine Tony Awards including Best Musical, and Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Atlanta announced today that all remaining tickets will go on sale for the newly added Monday, February 3, 7:00 p.m. performance on Friday, January 31 at 5:00 p.m. Tickets will be available at the Fox Theatre box office (660 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30308), by visiting www.FoxAtlTix.com or by calling 1-855-285-8499.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre announces the world premiere of The House that will not Stand, a historical comedic drama commissioned from award-winning poet-playwright and Oakland native Marcus Gardley. Sensuous, witty, heartbreaking, and uplifting - The House that will not Stand unearths a story about free women of color in 1836 New Orleans, where black Creole women entered into common-law marriages with affluent white men. When her wealthy lover mysteriously dies, Beartrice Albans' foundation of security hangs precariously by a thread. She is left to fend for her three unwed daughters in a world where freedom must be carefully negotiated. Told in a rich and lyrical river of words, this new play was developed through The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep's Center for the Creation and Development of New Work. It's helmed by Patricia McGregor, whose many credits include the celebrated production of Spunk at California Shakespeare Theater. The House that will not Stand begins previews on Berkeley Rep's intimate Thrust Stage today, January 31, opens on Wednesday, February 5 and runs through Sunday, March 16, 2014.

The Off-Broadway League today announced details for the 2014 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. The 29th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards will be handed out on Sunday, May 4, 2014 at NYU Skirball Center, beginning at 7:00pm EST. The program will be hosted by acclaimed husband and wife actors and comedians, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, who will appear on-stage together in the upcoming Off-Broadway production of Annapurna for The New Group. Veteran theater producer Robyn Goodman will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.