This Friday, Apple TV is set to debut its highly-anticipated new drama series, Little Voice, from J.J. Abrams and the award-winning team behind the global hit musical Waitress, Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson.
Stars in the House, the daily live streamed concert series created by Playbill correspondent and SiriusXM Broadway host Seth Rudetsky and producer James Wesley, welcomes three-time Tony recipient Bernadette Peters and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Executive Director Tom Viola July 8 at 8 PM. Watch the stream above.
Bernadette Peters: A Special Concert, which was filmed in 2009 at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre, will stream July 10 at 8 PM ET to benefit Broadway Cares. The concert featuring the Broadway favorite will be available for viewing on Playbill as well as at BroadwayCares.org.
READ: Join Bernadette Peters and Michael Urie for Bernadette Peters: A Special Concert Watch Party
Stars in the House launched March 16 to promote support for The Actors Fund and its services in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It has also raised funds for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
New shows—streaming Monday–Saturday at 8 PM ET with afternoon shows Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2 PM—feature performances by stars of stage and screen, in conversation and song with Rudetsky and Wesley. Peter Flynn serves as streaming director. Click here to watch previous episodes.
To make a tax-deductible donation to The Actors Fund visit ActorsFund.org/Donate. To donate to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, visit NAACPLDF.org.
Nickelodeon has struck a multiplatform deal with James Corden and Ben Winston, and their production company Fulwell 73, to produce an animated movie and TV series, based on the recently released children’s book title, Real Pigeons Fight Crime. The movie and TV series are being developed to air on all Nickelodeon platforms.
HBO Max’s limited series Perry Mason, based on the Earle Stanley Gardner stories, premiered June 21. This new adaptation finds the title character not as a crusading defense attorney but as a worn out private investigator suffering from PTSD during the tail end of Prohibition in 1932 Los Angeles.
Emmy Award winner Matthew Rhys stars as Perry Mason alongside Emmy Award winner Tatiana Maslany, Tony and Emmy Award Winner John Lithgow, and more.
Check out photos of the series and be sure to tune into Playbill’s interview with Maslany on Stream Stealers at 4:30pm EST.
On this day, we’re wishing a happy birthday to the Tony Award-winning director of Come From Away, Christopher Ashley
American Experience The Vote, a new four-hour, two-part documentary series that tells the story of the campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, premieres July 6–7 at 9 PM ET on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS Video App.
Watch the trailer for the series—written, directed, and produced by Emmy winner Michelle Ferrari and executive-produced by Mark Samels and Susan Bellows—above.
Timed to the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote delves deeply into the animating controversies that divided the nation—gender, race, state’s rights, and political power. The film charts American women’s march to the ballot box and illuminates the myriad social, political, and cultural obstacles that stood in their path. Narrated by Kate Burton, the documentary features the voices of Mae Whitman as Alice Paul, Audra McDonald as Ida B. Wells, Laura Linney as Carrie Chapman Catt, and Patricia Clarkson as Harriot Stanton Blatch, some of the unsung warriors of the movement.
“The hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote was a truly transformative cultural and political movement, resulting in the largest expansion of voting rights in American history,” said executive producer Bellows in an earlier statement. “It’s also a story that has usually been reduced to a single page in the history books. The Vote restores this complex story to its rightful place in our history, providing a rich and clear-eyed look at a movement that resonates as much now as ever.”
“The lengths to which women had to go in their pursuit of the ballot will likely come as a surprise to most viewers,” added writer, director, and producer Michelle Ferrari. “How many people are aware that suffragists were the first Americans to picket the White House? That those women were jailed, went on hunger strikes and were force-fed by authorities? And that the techniques of non-violent civil disobedience, which we usually associate with the Civil Rights Movement, were employed first by women fighting for the right to vote?”
(Updated July 6, 2020)
Today we rewind to 2016, when Encores Off Center presented Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776, starring Santino Fontana, John Larroquette, John Behlmann, Christianne Noll, Nikki Rene Daniels, and Bryce Pinkham.
The original Broadway production of 1776 opened at the 46th Street Theatre March 16, 1969. Directed by Peter Hunt, the musical played five previews and 1,217 performances before closing February 13, 1972. The music would garner five Tony nominations, winning three, including Best Musical.
With a score by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone, 1776 tells the story of America’s founding fathers and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The production featured musical staging by Onna White, scenic and lighting design by Jo Mielziner, and costume design by Patricia Zipprodt.
1776 starred William Daniels as John Adams, Clifford David as Edward Rutledge, Paul Hecht as John Dickinson, Roy Poole as Stephen Hopkins, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin, Emory Bass as James Wilson, Duane Bodin as George Read, Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson, William Duell as Andrew McNair, David Ford as John Hancock, Robert Gaus as Caesar Rodney, Ralston Hill as Charles Thomson, Ronald Holgate, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, Scott Jarvis as the Courier, Ronald Kross as Lewis Morris, Henry Le Clair as Robert Livingston, Edmund Lyndeck as Rev. John Witherspoon, Bruce MacKay as Col. Thomas McKean, Jonathan Moore as Dr. Lyman Hall, Philip Polito as Samuel Chase, Dal Richards as Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Charles Rule as Joseph Hewes, B.J. Slater as Leather Apron, Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams, and David Vosburg as Roger Sherman.
The musical was revived in 1997 by Tony nominee Scott Ellis with musical staging by Kathleen Marshall. City Center Encores! presented the musical in 2016 featuring John Behlmann as Thomas Jefferson, Nikki Renée Daniels as Martha Jefferson, André De Shields as Stephen Hopkins, Santino Fontana as John Adams, Alexander Gemignani as Edward Rutledge, John Larroquette as Benjamin Franklin, Christiane Noll as Abigail Adams, Bryce Pinkham as John Dickinson, and Jubilant Sykes as Richard Henry Lee. Check out video of that production below.
As previously reported, Roundabout Theatre Company will partner with American Repertory Theater on a revival of 1776, slated to arrive on Broadway in spring 2021 at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre, directed by Tony Award winner Diane Paulus.
