Stars in the House—the live-streamed concert series created by Playbill correspondent and SiriusXM Broadway host Seth Rudetsky and producer James Wesley—spotlights the recent (and Broadway-bound) City Center Encores! production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods May 26.

Guests include Sara Bareilles, Gavin Creel, Jordan Donica, Ta’Nika Gibson, and Brooke Ishibashi. Watch the stream, which will feature live performances, above beginning at 8 PM ET.

 READ: Encores! Into the Woods Sets Broadway Transfer With Patina Miller, Brian D’Arcy James, Phillipa Soo, Joshua Henry, Sara Bareilles, More

Stars in the House launched March 16, 2020, and has raised more than $1 million to support 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 as well as Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

New shows 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 StarsintheHouse.com/Donate.

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Check Out Photos Of Heather Headley, Sara Bareilles, Denée Benton, More in Encores! Into The Woods

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Sophia O’Brien, of Fordham Preparatory School, and Liam Ginsburg, of Pelham Memorial High School, were named Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively, at the 12th Annual Roger Rees Awards May 23. 

Named in memory of the Tony-winning actor and director, the Roger Rees Awards honor the best in NYC-area high school theatre, with its Best Actor and Actress winners moving on to compete at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, known as The Jimmy Awards, set for June 27 at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre.

O’Brien was recognized for her performance as Éponine in Fordham’s Les Misérables, and Ginsburg was recognized for his Billy Cane in Pelham’s Bright Star.

Also receiving awards were Roslyn High School’s Saydie Grossman and Davey Fried, who were recognized as Up-and-Coming Actress and Actor for their performances as Sandra Bloom and Davey Fried, respectively, in Big Fish. Both will receive free tuition to Marymount Manhattan College’s Musical Theatre Pre-College Summer Intensive. Roslyn’s Royal Crown Players were also honored with the 2nd annual Harmony Helper Award for Excellence in Choral Group Performance.

The 4th annual PLAYBILLder Award for Marketing, presented by Playbill, went to co-editors Rebecca Ploski and Serena Richmond for their work on New Rochelle High School’s Theory of Relativity. The award, first given in 2018, recognizes schools that create engaging marketing plans emphasizing community engagement and the use of a custom, Broadway-quality Playbill program created with PLAYBILLder.

Winners were chosen by a panel of industry professionals comprising Disney in Schools Senior Teaching Artist Kiara Brown-Clark, actor-producer-recording artist Darilyn Castillo, actor and founder of Staged Workshops Jarvis B. Manning Jr., Black Theatre Coalition founder T. Oliver Reid, and Broadway casting director Merri Sugarman.

The Roger Rees Awards are presented by Broadway Education Alliance and Disney Theatrical Group with support from Rick Elice, Nancy Nagel Gibbs, BroadwayPlus.com, Broadway.com, Harmony Helper, Stacey Mindich Productions, Music Theatre International, Nederlander of New York, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, WABC77/Red Apple Media, and other industry leaders.

For more information, visit RogerReesAwards.com.

The North American Tour of Hadestown will bid farewell to Nicholas Barasch who will play his final performance as Orpheus June 12 at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. Current Workers Chorus performer Chibueze Ihuoma is set to take over the role June 14. 

The tour stars Morgan Siobhan Green as Eurydice, Chibueze Ihuoma as Orpheus, Tony winner Levi Kreis as Hermes, Kimberly Marable as Persephone, and Kevyn Morrow as Hades. The Fates are played by Belén Moyano, Bex Odorisio, and Shea Renne; The Workers Chorus features Lindsey Hailes, Sydney Parra, Eddie Noel Rodríguez, and Jamari Johnson Williams; and swings for the tour include Tyla Collier, Ian Coulter-Buford, Alex Lugo, J. Antonio Rodriguez, and Marquis Wood.

The creative team features Tony winner Rachel Hauck in set design; four-time Tony nominee Michael Krass in costume design; two-time Tony winner Bradley King in lighting design; Tony winners Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz in sound design; David Neumann in choreography; Liam Robinson in music supervision and vocal arrangements; Tony winners Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose in arrangements and orchestrations; Ken Cerniglia in dramaturgy; and Stewart/Whitley in casting.

Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s folk- and jazz-infused musical, inspired by two intertwining myths of gods and mortals, began as a theatrical concert performed by Mitchell. The show debuted at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016 before playing Canada, London, and, eventually, Broadway. The Broadway production resumed performances September 2 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

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Take a First Look at Photos of the National Tour of Hadestown

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Did you miss MCC Theater’s Miscast 2022? This year, theatre fans do not have to fret. The annual gala, which took place in person April 4 at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom,  will be available for streaming beginning May 22 at 7 PM ET for three days only. This year’s concert features Broadway favorites Lea Michele, Anika Noni Rose, Audra McDonald, Joshua Henry, Aaron Tveit, and more performing songs from roles in which they would not traditionally be cast.

At what other event can one watch Hamilton’s Christopher Jackson belt “Listen” from Dream Girls(below) and Hadestown’s Eva Nobelzada sing “Go The Distance” From Hercules? Or Company’s Katrina Lenk perform “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof while accompanying herself on the viola?  

This year’s gala honored Emmy and Tony Award winner Christine Baranski, MCC Board Chair Susan Raanan, and MCC Youth Company Alum Alexander Lambie. Under the musical direction of Will Van Dyke, the concert also includes 2022 Tony nominees Shoshana Bean, Jennifer Simard, Uzo Aduba, and Myles Frost; Tony winners Andrea Martin and Kelli O’Hara; J. Harrison Ghee, Steven Pasquale, Tony Award nominee Raúl Esparza, Tamika Lawrence, and Skye Dakota Turner.

Playbill asked a few of this gala singers what role they would most like to miscast themselves in. Read their answers below.

Myles Frost
If I could miscast myself into any musical, it would be The Tina Turner Musical. Tina and Mike [Michael Jackson] had very similar work ethics and I’m curious as to how that would translate before a Broadway audience.

Lea Michele
That is such a tough question because there are so many roles that would be fun to play! I would have to say Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Leslie Odom is so incredible and his voice is out of this world. I would love to sing “Wait For It.” And I sing “Dear Theodosia” to my son all the time; it is one of my all-time favorite musical theater songs. His character has some of the best moments in the show and it would be so much fun to play!

Kelli O’Hara
For years, I have had a group of songs in my concert set that I call “my man songs.” These are songs that were written for men to sing in shows written about a man’s perspective on life. One of the greatest of these songs, and, more importantly, one that holds the most identifiable perspective for me, is “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George. I have always posited that a man is not the only one who struggles with the balance of creating their art and living their life. In some ways, I would argue that a woman struggles even more because of what I feel is an innate sense of maternal responsibility and instinct pulling me, joyfully, to one side. When I performed Dot in this show, it was the role of George, obsessively stuck inside his art, seeing life “from a window”’ that intrigued me the most. It would be a miscast to the status quo, but it would be a perspective worth representing.

Andrea Martin
Lola in Damn Yankees because “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets!”

J. Harrison Ghee
If I could miscast myself, it would be to play the title character in The Drowsy Chaperone. That was the first show I saw on Broadway when I moved to New York to study musical theater, and Beth Leavel is an inspiration in every way. I would have so much fun playing that role.

Steven Pasquale
Mama Rose, of course, is the correct answer.

Tamika Lawrence
If I could play any character, I would play Sweeney Todd. I love watching crime documentaries and am fascinated with crimes of passion that turn into serial crimes and why. It would be interesting to play someone who does something heinous without judging them. There is a challenge in that.

For information on the stream, visit MCCTheatre.org.

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See Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Myles Frost, Lea Michele, More Perform At Miscast 2022

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