A Strange Loop - Articles Page 20

Celebrated Tony Award winners, emerging stars and beloved Broadway favorites are among the first to join the lineup for this year's Broadway Backwards on March 16, 2020.

Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET) will present a limited engagement of UGLY (Black Queer Zoo), a dynamic solo piece from internationally recognized choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. UGLY (Black Queer Zoo) is the second installment in The GUSH Series, WET's latest program that presents theatrical works from outside Seattle that are curated by the Ensemble and performed on its mainstage.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, just celebrated its 2020 TCG Gala: Our Stories, last night, February 3, 2020, at The Edison Ballroom. The Gala honored North Carolina Black Repertory Company's National Black Theatre Festival, based in Winston-Salem; playwright David Henry Hwang; and TCG's arts advocacy at the federal level. The evening included performances from A Strange Loop and Soft Power, and feature Billy Bustamante, James Jackson, Jr., and Alyse Alan Louis.

Today's top stories: Broadway gathers to remember Jerry Herman tonight, and more!

This Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama will be presented at Virginia Rep's November Theatre (114 West Broad Street) beginning February 7th, 2020 with two preview performances on Wednesday, February 5th and Thursday, February 6th. August Wilson's powerful masterwork will be onstage through March 1st. Fences is presented as part of the Acts of Faith Festival. 

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, has shared the entertainment and performers for the 2020 TCG Gala: Our Stories, which will be held on Monday, February 3, 2020, at The Edison Ballroom (240 W 47th St, New York, NY 10036).

In what has become an annual ritual, a total of 40 established and emerging composers, lyricists, and librettists will converge on the Goodspeed campus from mid-January through mid-February 2020 to participate in the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals. The writing teams, representing 15 new musicals, will populate the campus, creating a truly exciting environment for discovery and inspiration.

PAGE 73 PRODUCTIONS (Page 73) (Michael Walkup, Artistic Director; Amanda Feldman, Managing Director; Rebecca Yaggy, Director of Development; Liz Jones and Asher Richelli, Founding Directors) has named Emma Goidel the 2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. Selected from over 400 applicants, Goidel will receive a $10,000 award and an additional $10,000 budgeted for developing several new plays over the course of the year.

All 9 of our regular contributors have gathered: Aurin, Ben, David, Jack, Jose, Liz, Nicole, Patty, and PennyMaria! We're back together for our year-end spectacular, our annual episode in which we discuss the best and worst theater of the year.

Vineyard Theatre Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern have announced that Tina Satter, Michael R. Jackson, and Brandon Victor Dixon will be among the artists to appear onstage at Vineyard Theatre's annual Open House event on Monday, January 13. The Vineyard's Open House is an opportunity for Vineyard supporters to learn more about the theatre through artist panels, rehearsal space tours, and a design exhibition. Panels include a conversation with director Tina Satter (Is This A Room), a discussion and preview of new work by Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Vineyard Theatre Board Member Brandon Victor Dixon ('Rent' on Fox) in dialogue with members of Vineyard Theatre Student Ensemble.

To this very frequent theatre-goer, the most exciting and gratifying development on New York stages since 2010 has been the growing number of productions that, before hitting it big on Broadway, graced the stages of the city's non-profit Off-Broadway companies.

A Soldier's Play is officially in previews on Broadway! A Soldier's Play opens officially on January 21, 2020. This is a limited engagement at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway (227 West 42nd Street). It stars David Alan Grier, Blair Underwood, Nnamdi Asomugha, Jerry O'Connell, McKinley Belcher III, Rob Demery, Jared Grimes, Billy Eugene Jones, Nate Mann, Warner Miller, J. Alphonse Nicholson and Lee Aaron Rosen.

Tantrum Theater, Ohio University's professional theater company, announces an innovative new collaborative partnership with Musical Theatre Factory (MTF), a leading non-profit organization focused on developing bold and inclusive new musicals by early career artists. The first new work from this partnership will be a developmental reading of the new musical Eighty-Sixed by Sam Salmond and Jeremy J. King, with a public performance on January 18, 2020.

Following the conclusion of its strictly limited 16-week holiday engagement on Broadway, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical will return to the road for a national touring production in the 2020-2021 season.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company will host two bold visiting companies as part of LookOut, a year-round series that presents the work of artists and companies across genre and form. Steppenwolf's 1700 Theatre will be the home to two productions from impressive Chicago storefront theatres next year: First Floor Theater and Definition Theatre.

Casting is set for Studio Theatre's production of Pipeline, playwright Dominique Morisseau's searing drama about the school-to-prison pipeline and a mother desperately trying to keep her son from becoming ensnared in it. The production runs January 15-February 16, 2020 and is directed by Awoye Timpo. Starring are DC theatre favorite Justin Weaks (Studio's Curve of Departure) as high school student Omari and Andrea Harris Smith making her Studio debut as his mother, public school teacher Nya. In its recent People Issue, Washington City Paper's called Weaks a 'standout,' going on to say: 'D.C. theater audiences love Justin Weaks. ...Weaks came to D.C. for a job about four years ago, not expecting to stay. But he kept getting cast in shows, and lucky for local theatergoers, he's still here.'

The 5th Avenue Theatre has announced complete casting for the world premiere of Bliss, an empowering original musical fantasy that flips the traditional princess narrative upside down.

Broadway Records announced today the surprise release of the Deluxe Edition of the Original Cast Recording of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical as well as a Karaoke Album, now available digitally. Physical copies of the Deluxe cast album are only available at www.BroadwayRecords.com and at the Longacre Theater on Broadway, where the show is playing a strictly limited engagement that must end January 5, 2020.

Wagnerian vaudeville, parody pastiche, and Bayreuth burlesque await guests at DAS RHINESTONE, an evening of serious singing, sequins, and plenty of WTF operatic moments to get you in or distract you from the holiday spirit. Zachary James, appearing courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera, brings Wagner's diva daddy Wotan to glittering, semi-nude life at this one night only event on December 23 at New York's The Slipper Room (167 Orchard Street).

New York City's Institute for American Musical Theatre has announced plans for a unique 2-year 'Creators' program. Built and run by award winning lyricist-librettist Sam Carner (Island Song, Unlock'd), the new intensive and highly collaborative training will be guided by a faculty including composer-lyricist Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days, Scotland PA, String), composer-lyricist Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop, Teeth, White Girl in Danger), composer Anna K. Jacobs (Pop, Teeth), director Lonny Price (A Class Act, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, Company, Sweeney Todd), composer Derek Gregor (Island Song, Unlock'd), music supervisor Brad Haak (Mary Poppins, Daddy Long Legs), director Marlo Hunter (American Reject, Saved By the Bell: the Musical), musical director Andy Collopy (Lightning Thief), and other Broadway professionals still being confirmed.

On Tuesday, November 19, LUMBERYARD Center for Film and Performing Arts partnered with Bill T. Jones/New York Live Arts to host an event at the Park Avenue Armory addressing a growing structural challenge facing the city's performing arts presenting field: the need for technical-rehearsal residencies for NYC-based artists to develop new work. The event included a panel conversation moderated by Joe Melillo, Executive Producer Emeritus of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and featuring five acclaimed New York City-based performing artists:

Shakina Nayfak is a woman blessed with an abundance of talents. She enjoys success as a director, writer, performer, producer, and social activist. Recently she created the critically-acclaimed role of Ava in the Transparent's Musical Finale now streaming on Amazon Prime. She is beloved by fans for her role as Lola on Hulu's Difficult People and has premiered three solo shows at Joe's Pub to sold-out houses. On Saturday, November 9th she brings her one woman show Manifest Pussy back to Joe's Pub. Described as a rock concert/standup special/ritual sacrifice' the show tells the story of Shakina's journey to Thailand for gender confirmation surgery in 2014.

Page 73 has announced twelve semifinalists for the 2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship.

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre will kick-off this year's Festival of New Musicals at The Green Room 42 (at the Yotel, 570 10th Ave) with The 46th Minute concert on Wednesday, October 23 at 7 PM.  This concert is open to the public and tickets starting at $22, can be purchased by visiting TheGreenRoom42.poptix.com. 

The NYYS Musical Theater Composition program offers songwriting training from all facets of the theater industry to young composers and lyricists ages 12 - 22.