Thornton Wilder News

On Sunday, December 2, Rubicon Theatre Company will present a benefit performance of Love, Loss, and What I Wore with a star-studded cast of women including Emmy and Tony-winner Tyne Daly, Amy Peitz and Amanda McBroom.

Transport Group, the Drama Desk and OBIE award-winning theatre company, will host New York Times best-selling and National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Franzen following the 7PM performance of House for Sale, by Franzen, adapted for the stage and directed by Daniel Fish,on Thursday, November 15, 2012 at The Duke on 42nd Street, a New 42nd Street project. Transport Group Artistic Director Jack Cummings III will moderate a discussion with Franzen and Fish, followed by an audience Q & A.

Today BroadwayWorld is particularly proud to present an exceptionally exciting exclusive byway of this career-spanning chat with two-time Tony Award-winning Broadway legend Bernadette Peters. In this all-encompassing conversation we discuss many aspects of her storied career, with a special focus on her upcoming feature film, COMING UP ROSES, which opens this Friday in NYC - a gritty and uncompromising independent feature offering Peters a searing central role as a struggling actress with a teenage daughter (Rachel Brosnahan) and their shared experiences cohabitating in 1980s era New York City. In what very well could be her finest dramatic performance of the new millennium, Peters does it all in COMING UP ROSES; she even gets to sing in it - the soundtrack features a familiar FIDDLER ON THE ROOF tune, a Kander & Ebb gem and even a stirring original song. Additionally, Miss Peters also sheds some light on her role in Season 2 of NBC's hit musical drama series SMASH. Over the course of the discussion we also look back at her exceptional career on stages and screens large and small, touching upon her theatre work with Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber and what roles of theirs she would consider in the future, as well as her experiences sharing the small screen with stars like Megan Hilty, Anjelica Huston and Carol Burnett and acting on the big screen for Woody Allen in ALICE. Plus, Bernadette gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what we can expect from her role in an upcoming animated feature film co-starring SMASH's Hilty and GLEE's Lea Michele, the highly anticipated DOROTHY OF OZ, and shares her satisfaction with her original, Bryan Adams-penned musical material for the forthcoming film. Yes, indeed, everything is definitely coming up roses today on BroadwayWorld and it's all thanks to the one and only Bernadette!

The Alley Theatre will present David Sedaris' The Santaland Diaries on the Neuhaus Stage. This is the last holiday season that the Alley Theatre will produce this show, directed by David Cromer, who won the MacArthur Genius Award and Obie Award for Best Director. Alley Artist Todd Waite reprises his role as 'Crumpet the Elf' in the outlandish--and true--chronicles of David Sedaris' experience as a worker in Macy's SantaLand display.

The Huntington Theatre Company brings Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town home to Boston on its 75th anniversary in a landmark staging by Obie Award winner David Cromer (Tribes, Adding Machine). The remount of the acclaimed New York production that features a homegrown cast will inaugurate the Huntington's use of the intimate, 250-seat Roberts Studio Theatre in the Huntington's Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA.

Transport Group, the Drama Desk and OBIE award-winning theatre company, and terraNOVA Collective, creator of the longest-running solo performance festival in NYC, the soloNOVA Arts Festival, will collaborate to produce Dark Nights: Highs & Family Ties during the dark nights of Transport Group's run of House For Sale tonight, November 5th & 12th at 7:00pm at The Duke on 42nd Street. Dark Nights: Highs & Family Ties will feature two of soloNOVA's highest acclaimed shows: Empanada for a Dream, written & performed by Juan Francisco Villa, directed by Alex Levy, and When Thoughts Attack, written & performed by Kelly Kinsella, directed by Padraic Lillis.

Beck Center Youth Theater presents Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town tonight, November 1 through 4, 2012 on the Mackey Main Stage. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. There is a 10 a.m. student matinee today, November 1. Tickets are now on sale.

Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company presents the second Aurora Script Club meeting of the season with Gertrude Stein's Stein Times. Gertrude Stein, a contemporary and friend of Thornton Wilder, wrote numerous plays in addition to the other prolific written and artistic contributions she made in her life. Several of her short works (The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress (1906-11); Do Let Us Go Away A Play (1916); A Family of Perhaps Three (1922); and A Circular Play (1930) ) will be read together to explore the parallels they have with the one-act plays of Wilder Times, revealing how she influenced, and conspired with, Thornton Wilder to give a brand new, and specifically American, dramatic form to their 20th century world. Aurora Theatre Company Education Director Michael Mansfield hosts this moderated discussion series. The Aurora Script Club was conceived and developed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross. All of the Script Club selections for the season are plays that are penned by female playwrights.

Transport Group, the Drama Desk and OBIE award-winning theatre company, and terraNOVA Collective, creator of the longest-running solo performance festival in NYC, the soloNOVA Arts Festival, will collaborate to produce Dark Nights: Highs & Family Ties during the dark nights of Transport Group's run of House For Sale on Monday, November 5th & 12th at 7:00pm at The Duke on 42nd Street. Dark Nights: Highs & Family Ties will feature two of soloNOVA's highest acclaimed shows: Empanada for a Dream, written & performed by Juan Francisco Villa, directed by Alex Levy, and When Thoughts Attack, written & performed by Kelly Kinsella, directed by Padraic Lillis.

The Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street) continues its sixth season of the Irish Rep Reading Series, with a free reading of JOHN STEINBECK'S THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN -- Octavio Solis's adaptation of the novelist's collection of short stories, first published in 1932 -- today, October 26 at 3 p.m. at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street).

Tickets are now on sale online, by phone, and in person for the Huntington Theatre Company's production of David Cromer's groundbreaking new staging of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic Our Town, playing December 7, 2012 - January 13, 2013 in the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Huntington's Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA.

The Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street) continues its sixth season of the Irish Rep Reading Series, with a free reading of JOHN STEINBECK'S THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN -- Octavio Solis's adaptation of the novelist's collection of short stories, first published in 1932 -- on Friday, October 26 at 3 p.m. at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street).

Rubicon Theatre Artistic Directors KARYL LYNN BURNS and JAMES O'NEIL announced the company's 15th Anniversary Season at a preview event for subscribers, donors and media last earlier this month at the theatre's home in Ventura's Downtown Cultural District. The event was hosted by Rubicon Board President DR. ROZ WARNER and Board of Advisors' Chair/Board Vice-President JEFF SMITH, with onstage appearances by several of the directors, writers and performers for the season.

Ford's Theatre Director Paul R. Tetreault and Signature Theatre Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer today announced that Tony-nominated actress Nancy Opel (Broadway's "Memphis," "Urinetown," "Teddy & Alice," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Anything Goes," others) and Edward Gero ("King Lear" with Stacey Keach for Goodman and Shakespeare Theatre Company; Ford's "A Christmas Carol"; Goodman and Arena Stage's "Red") will star in the spring production of "Hello, Dolly!" at Ford's Theatre (511 10th Street NW). The production will be directed by Schaeffer and co-produced by Ford's Theatre and Virginia's Tony-winning Signature Theatre. The production will play from March 15 through May 18, 2013. Additional casting will be announced in early 2013.

Taproot Theatre Company announces the lineup for its 37th season that promises audiences laughter, wit, romance, trickery, reflection and ultimately downright enjoyable entertainment. Featuring a regional premiere, a clever twist on a beloved classic and new approaches to gripping ideas, this season will not disappoint. Taproot Theatre Company's 2013 Season runs from January through October. Resubscriptions and new subscriptions are currently being accepted.

Two time Tony Award-winning Goodspeed Musicals, under the leadership of Executive Director Michael P. Price, is delighted to announce its Golden Anniversary season at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. The 50th season includes three very special musicals that are sure to please theatregoers: the charming collegiate comedy Good News will run from April 12 - June 22; Jerry Herman's beloved Hello, Dolly! will run from June 28 - September 8; and Frank Loesser's enchanting Broadway hit The Most Happy Fella will run from September 20 - December 1, 2013. "To the cheers of many, on June 18, 1963 the footlights were once again lit on the Goodspeed Opera House stage. And now, fifty years later, we are in awe that so much has happened in and because of this gem of a building. It truly was an impossible dream that, from this tiny stage, the world of American musical theatre would be changed forever. Our Golden Anniversary celebration will feature three extraordinary musicals which we believe uniquely highlight what Goodspeed does best," said Mr. Price.

Today we are talking to one of Broadway's biggest homegrown stars who has appeared in the original New York productions of many memorable modern-day classics, among them THE WHO'S TOMMY, AIDA, THE LAST FIVE YEARS and DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, in additions to highly-regarded turns in the first replacement cast of RENT, the Tommy Tune/Jeff Calhoun revival of GREASE, the Off-Broadway curiosity DEBBIE DOES DALLAS, the first (and only) LA mounting of Randy Newman's FAUST, as well as her starring role in the recent Lincoln Center Theater's production of WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, and, of course, her own rapturously-received, award-winning solo showpiece, EVERYDAY RAPTURE - the convivially mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind Sherie Rene Scott. Discussing the major transitions in her life, including her transformation from ingenue to leading lady to solo performer, Scott illustrates a unique and varied career as well as opens up about the themes, songs, stories, experiences and encounters that formed the basis for her new solo piece premiering at 54 Below this week, PIECE OF MEAT. Additionally, Scott touches upon her work as the co-owner of the revolutionary Sh-K-Boom Records with her husband, Kurt Deutsch, as well as her own album work over the years, in addition to stories related to the recording of many of their most celebrated titles and the composers whose work is prominently featured on their releases - Tom Kitt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael John LaChiusa and many more included. All of that, plus Mennonites, music and meat - and much, much more!

Beck Center Youth Theater presents Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town, November 1 through 4, 2012 on the Mackey Main Stage. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. There is a 10 a.m. student matinee on Thursday, November 1. Tickets are now on sale.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) has announced the U.S. release of The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary American Plays: Volume One, edited by Mark Subias, published by Oberon Books (London). This new volume brings together plays from four of the best young artists on the contemporary American playwriting scene. Volume One is introduced by André Bishop, Artistic Director of the Lincoln Center Theater, and each play is introduced by well-known and critically acclaimed writers.

In this week's School in the Spotlight: High School edition, BroadwayWorld is excited to profile the theater students and past productions of Calabasas High School in Calabasas, California!