BroadwayWorld is thrilled to announce that Broadway’s Next on Stage Dance Edition is back for Season 2 sponsored by LaDuca Shoes Inspired by your favorite network TV dancing contests, BroadwayWorld is inviting high school and college aged students to submit videos of themselves performing to asong from the musical theatre canon to enter the competition.
On this day, we’re celebrating the birthday of Ethel Gumm, better known to Broadway and film fans as the incomparable Judy Garland.
The KILL ONE Race, a seven-episode game-play by Raja Feather Kelly (We’re Gonna Die, Fairview, A Strange Loop) and the feath3r theory, continues through June 12 after premiering June 4.
Part-documentary, part-theatre, and part-reality TV game show, The KILL ONE Race follows seven contestants competing to be proven the most ethical—and earn the singular prize of death—over the course of seven days. The virtual production was conceived, production designed, and directed by Kelly as a commentary on reality TV’s grasp on reality.
Commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, the piece wasa filmed on the company’s mainstage, where the cast recreated a macabre game first envisioned in the fictional 1963 dystopian novel Kill One.
“On broadcast television, 15 of the top 20 highest-rated programs among the younger adult group are reality or unscripted shows. Are we aware of the negative psychological effect, the insidious impact on our behavior, or the real estate this form occupies in our moral landscape?” Kelly explained in a previous statement. “As we get more and more information from reality TV, we become more and more desirous of competition. People are willing to give up their families; they’re willing to give up their money; they’re willing to be embarrassed; what’s next? I believe that if we don’t start making fun of it and pointing a finger at it, the premise of these shows will soon be, ’who’s gonna be the first to die?’“
Kelly appears alongside Chris Bell, Alexandra Giroux, Amy Hoang, Claire Gieringer, Jamen Nanthakumar, Alexander Paris, Fana Fraser, Rio Sofia, and Lucien Zayan.
The creative team includes Laura Snow as media producer and lead editor, CJ Ferroni as director of photography, with lighting design by Tuce Yasak, set design by You-Shin Chen, music by Remy Kurs, and creative architecture by Sophie Maguire. Brandi Holt is company manager, Colm Summers serves as assistant to director, and Iliya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall in place as ethics consultants. The series is co-produced by Snow and Kelly.
The series can be streamed at TheKillOneRace.com. Episodes 1 and 2 became available June 4, followed by Episodes 3 and 4 on June 7. Episode 5 are due on June 9, Episode 6 on June 11, and Episode 7 on June 12.
Trevor is about 13-year-old Trevor, a force of nature with a vivid imagination. As he deals with becoming a teenager, Trevor struggles to navigate his own identity and determine how he fits in a challenging world.
‘When I’m stuck with a day, that’s grey and lonely, I just stick out my chin, and grin, and say…. The sun’ll come out tomorrow, so ya gotta hang on till tomorrow, come what may… Tomorrow, tomorrow I love ya, tomorrow, it’s only a day, away…..’
Tony nominee and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons; The Tank Artistic Director Meghan Finn; hair, wig, and makeup designer Cookie Jordan; lyricist and librettist Sheilah Rae; director Taylor Reynolds; performer Stephanie Berry; and director and dramaturg Mei Ann Teo are honored at the Theatre Women Awards June 7. The League of Professional Theatre Women’s virtual gala begins at 7 PM ET.
Click here for tickets.
Parsons is receiving the LPTW’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The multi-hyphenate was last seen on Broadway in The Velocity of Autumn in 2014, for which she received her fifth Tony nomination. Although she has spent most of her professional life in the theatre, she is most widely known for her Oscar-winning performance in Bonnie and Clyde and her recurring role on the sitcom Roseanne. Her most recent NYC appearance was at Playwrights Horizons in Michael Friedman’s musical Unknown Soldier. As a director, she created the New York Shakespeare Festival Players for Joseph Papp in the 1980’s.
Berry is the recipient of the Lee Reynolds Award, an award given to a female stage actor whose work has helped illuminate possibilities for social, cultural, or political change. Among her credits are Donja Love’s Sugar in Our Wounds and Emily Mann’s Gloria: A Life.
The Lucille Lortel Award is being bestowed on Taylor Reynolds, a New York-based director and one of the producing artistic leaders of The Movement Theatre Company. The award is reserved for a theatre woman with creative promise deserving recognition.
Finn has directed both nationally and internationally, and is being awarded the Lucille Lortel Visionary Award, for a woman artist showing great creative promise. Finn’s work includes premieres by playwrights Mac Wellman, Caitlyn Saylor Stephens, Julia May Jonas, and a film by Peggy Stafford.
The Ruth Morley Design Award, given to women theatre designers of all genres, is being presented to Jordan. Her work on Broadway includes Slave Play, The Cher Show, and Once on This Island, among others.
Rae is receiving a LPTW Special Award for her service to the industry as a lyricist and librettist, as well as her service to the League as former president. A Broadway alum, she has written a number of musicals with Michele Brourman and Debra Barsha, is a five-time Heideman Award finalist, and is currently working on a musical that she’s hoping to launch as a TV series.
Teo, a queer immigrant from Singapore, creates theatre across genres, including musical theatre, intermediate participatory work, reimagining classics, and documentary theatre, and is receiving the Josephine Abady Award as a woman theatre artist who has created work of cultural diversity.
The League of Professional Theatre Women has been leading the gender parity conversation in professional theatre for over 35 years with its mission to champion, promote, and celebrate the voices, presence, and visibility of women theatre professionals and to advocate for parity and recognition for women in theatre across all disciplines. To learn more, visit TheatreWomen.org.