Jujamcyn TheatersandLucky Seathave announced thatSpringsteen on Broadwayhas launched a digital lottery set to begin TODAY at 900 AM for performances beginning onTuesday, June 29,at the St. James Theatre through the final performance,Saturday, September 4.
1887 Birthday of legendary director George Abbott, whose long life (107 years) and colossal catalog (more than 110 Broadway shows, sometimes also as producer, writer, or even actor) remains unparalleled. Among his projects were the original productions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, On the Town, Wonderful Town, Once Upon a Mattress, Fiorello!, Damn Yankees, On Your Toes, The Pajama Game, Where’s Charley, Pal Joey, and literally dozens more.
1952 Harold Rome‘s musical Wish You Were Here, set in the world of mountain summer resorts, opens a 598-performance run at the Imperial Theatre. Jack Cassidy, Larry Blyden, and Sheila Bond star, and Bond later wins a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical. The show is memorable for featuring a swimming pool on stage.
1973 The Theater Development Fund’s TKTS booth opens for business at Broadway and 47th street. The booth proves a landmark of the New York theatre world by providing same-day tickets to audiences to many performances, both on Broadway and Off, at discounted prices.
1979 After delaying the start of previews twice—and the opening night once—Got Tu Go Disco finally opens on Broadway at the Minskoff Theatre. The musical about a disco-hating saleswoman who becomes the queen of her local dance club closes a week later, after eight performances. At the time, it was the most expensive musical ever mounted on Broadway.
1980 Gus Weil’s play To Bury a Cousin, originally saw the stage in 1967. It now receives an Off-Broadway revival at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where it is directed by Phillip Oesterman and features Harry Goz and Diane Tarleton.
1990 Robert Louis Stevenson is rocking and rolling Off-Broadway as his Jekyll and Hyde is turned into a rock musical, courtesy of composer Michael Skloff, with a book and lyrics by David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Seven years later, Frank Wildhorn tries his hand at the dual-personality drama on Broadway.
1991 Two couples find themselves celebrating the Fourth of July on Fire Island together when Terrence McNally‘s play Lips Together, Teeth Apart, opens at the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. The play stars Nathan Lane and Swoosie Kurtz, and Christine Baranski and Anthony Heald, as the two married pairs. Following a successful engagement, the production transfers to Off-Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre for a commercial run in January 1992.
1998 Warren Leight‘s play Side Man opens at the Roundabout Theatre Company‘s Stage Right Auditorium as a last-minute replacement production. Under the direction of Michael Mayer is a cast including Frank Wood, Wendy Makkena, and Robert Sella. Upon its closing at the Roundabout, the jazz-themed comedy drama takes up shop for an open-ended commercial run at Broadway’s John Golden Theater, with movie star Christian Slater replacing Sella as the narrator, Clifford. Come June, the play, by now having been cited as a Pulitzer Prize finalist, wins Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Featured Actor for Wood, as the side man himself.
2004 Musical Theatre Works, the not-for-profit Off-Broadway company that created and developed new musicals for 21 years, announces that it will shutter effective immediately.
2009 A music-filled Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, starring Raúl Esparza, Anne Hathaway, Audra McDonald, and Stark Sands, opens at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Directed by Daniel Sullivan, it features an original score by Brooklyn-based folk-rock band Hem.
2013 A new musical version of Roald Dahl‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, featuring a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, opens in London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The production is directed by Sam Mendes, and stars Douglas Hodge as Willy Wonka. A revised version of the musical, directed by Jack O’Brien and starring Christian Borle, opens on Broadway four years later.
2018 David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue, starring Stephen Rea, opens Off-Broadway at the Public Theater. In it, Rea plays a “non-negotiably British” Belfast Unionist who sees an uncanny likeness between his new-born granddaughter and the Irish republican leader, Gerry Adams.
2018 The world premiere of Log Cabin, by Jordan Harrison, opens at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon. In it, a group of gays and lesbian friends consider the new mainstream through the eyes of their transgender friend. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Phillip James Brannon, Cindy Cheung, Ian Harvie, Talene Monahon, and Dolly Wells star.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Charlotte Greenwood (1890–1977). Peter Lind Hayes (1915–1998). Sidney Lumet (1924–2011). Mary Beth Peil (b. 1940). Lee Wilkof (b. 1951). John Benjamin Hickey (b. 1963). Hunter Foster (b. 1969). Brandi Burkhardt (b. 1979). Killian Donnelly (b. 1984). Annaleigh Ashford (b. 1985).
The 16th annual Shubert Foundation/Music Theatre International Broadway Junior Student Finale premieres virtually on Playbill June 23. The annual event is the culmination of a program that helps NYC public schools affect school culture change through building sustainable theatre education programs. Watch the special performance above beginning at 7 PM ET.
Participating students, all from schools in the second and third years of the program, will share performances from their 2020–2021 productions, all of which were produced online. Shows represented include Annie KIDS, Disney’s The Little Mermaid JR, Once on This Island JR, Schoolhouse Rock Live! JR, and Shrek the Musical JR.
Flip through the event’s exclusive digital Playbill program:
“I am enormously gratified, along with Team MTI, to witness how this program has matured and expanded over 16 years,” says MTI Co-Chairman Freddie Gershon. “The unanticipated long-term impact on the students, schools, and local communities has gone beyond what any of us could have envisaged as the participating students are learning life skills, indispensable to their futures. These include the ability to collaborate, follow direction and instruction, practice self-discipline and work ethics, and use their imaginations while honing their verbal communication skills and developing social skills which will serve them well in navigating life. These are the great gifts to give a new generation, critical for success, and generally atypical of traditional curricula.”
“Each student and teacher has demonstrated their perseverance but also their desire to remain creative and share stories—a wonderful reminder of the power of theatre education and inclusivity whether virtually or on stage, in the classroom and beyond,” adds the program’s producer and NYC Department of Education Director of Theater Peter Avery.
The three-year program pairs teachers and students with master teachers and industry experts from ArtsConnection, Broadway Bound Kids, and iTheatrics to put on their school’s first-ever musical. In the second year, the partnership continues, but students and teachers are encouraged to take ownership over the production, setting the stage for fully independent productions beginning in the third year of the program.
As part of the collaborative partnership between Roundabout Theatre Company and Columbia University, the reading series awards three playwrights from the current MFA program and recent alumni with a cash prize as well as a reading produced by Roundabout.
Williamstown Theatre Festivalhas announced additional casting and members of the creative teams for all three of their 2021 Live Season productions, which begins July 6 and will take place outdoors, socially distanced, and with safety prioritized.
Tony winner Nikki M. James, Tony nominee Andy Grotelueschen, Broadway alums Jeannette Bayardelle and Michaela Diamond, and more are headed to Massachusetts this summer for Williamstown Theatre Festival. As previously announced, the three-production outdoor season begins July 6 with Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays. In addition to the casting announcement, WTF has extended its season by one week through August 15, adding performances for the musical Row and immersive theatrical experience Alien/Nation.
The world premiere of Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination will feature Brian D. Coats, Rosalyn Coleman, Cindy De La Cruz, Antwayn Hopper, Naomi Lorrain, Sharina Martin, Ronald Peet, Portia, and Ashley C. Turner. Joining the creative team are costume designer April Hickman (for Week 1) and associate lighting designer Shannon Clarke, with casting by William Cantler, Karyn Casl, and Destiny Lilly of The Telsey Office.
Co-starring in Row alongside Grace McLean will be Bayardelle (Girl From the North Country), Diamond (The Cher Show), Grotelueschen (Tootsie), Lisa Brescia (Dear Evan Hansen), Nehal Joshi, John McGinty, Zachary Noah Piser, Horace V. Rogers, and Jennifer Sánchez. The creative team has added music supervisor Julie McBride, music director Geoffrey Ko, copyist Cam Moncur, music contractor Sarah Briggs, and music assistant Noah Teplin, with casting by Patrick Goodwin and Destiny Lilly of The Telsey Office.
READ: Girl From the North Country Will Return to Broadway With a Majority of Its Original Cast
Finally, the cast of Alien/Nation will include James (The Book of Mormon), Yeman Brown, Andrei Chagas, Maxwell Dunham, Leigh-Ann Esty, Sara Esty, Chantelle Good, Christopher Hampton Grant, Eriko Jimbo, Matthew Alexander Johnson, Jesse Kovarsky, Renni Magee, Jodi McFadden, Emilio Ramos, Shea Renne, and Lauren Yalango-Grant. Rounding out the company are Julian Abelskamp, Oluwatobiloba Adeyemo, Tim Creavin, Cody Hayman, Austin Phillips, Kallie Pong, Jaime Lee Rodney, Marissa Ruben, Jessica Natalie Smith, Tyqaun Malik White, Ontaria Kim Wilson, and Bekah Zornosa. The creative team will also feature choreographer Eamon Foley, video editor Edward Michael Rose, and AV coordinator Daniel Hartman.
For more information, visit WTFFestival.org.
After more than a year of being homebound and Zoomed out, the cast of Broadway Bares will turn on their cameras and turn up the heat when Broadway Bares Twerk from Home premieres tonight, June 20 at 9pm ET.
The Broadway League hosted a free outdoor event centered around Black joy and unity that featured Black Broadway performers in a 90-minute concert with live music provided by The Music Performance Trust Fund.