VIDEO: On This Day, March 6- Happy Birthday, Stephen Schwartz!
Today we celebrate the birthday of gravity-defying composer, Stephen Schwartz
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theatre History: March 6
1933 Maxwell Anderson indicts Both Your Houses, a political story at the Royale Theatre. Morris Carnovsky is in the cast of the Theatre Guild production. The play wins the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
1940 Ernest Hemingway details the Spanish Civil War in The Fifth Column. The Theatre Guild production re-worked by Benjamin Glazer stars Franchot Tone and Katherine Locke.
1948 Composer Stephen Schwartz is born in New York. He writes music and lyrics for Broadway musicals including Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked. He also writes the songs for the animated film The Prince of Egypt, and lyrics to Alan Menken‘s music for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas.
1962 There was vaudeville, but This Was Burlesque. Ann Corio stars in the revue, which runs Off-Broadway for over 1,500 performances.
1969 The morality of the creation of the hydrogen bomb is explored in Heinar Kipphardt‘s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, opening at the Vivian Beaumont Theater for a run of 162 performances. The cast includes Joseph Wiseman, Philip Bosco, Herbert Berghof, and Paul Rudd.
1974 The two surviving members of the Andrews Sisters, Patty Andrews and Maxene Andrews, are featured in Over Here!, a musical set in the world of USO shows during World War II. The supporting cast includes future stars John Travolta, Janie Sell, Ann Reinking, Treat Williams, and Samuel E. Wright.
1978 Brian Clark ponders Whose Life Is It, Anyway? His drama stars Tom Conti as a paralyzed man eager to end his life. After a run at London’s Mermaid Theatre, it transfers to the Savoy for a run of 672 performances. The following year, Conti wins a Tony for the role on Broadway. A return engagement in 1980 changes the lead character’s gender for Mary Tyler Moore.
1978 Micheal MacLiammoir dies. Co-founder of Dublin’s Gate Theatre, he is remembered as an actor, director, designer, and playwright. He employed a young Orson Welles who had traveled to Ireland. He later appeared as Iago in Welles’ film version of Othello.
1983 The “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” ballet comes to life once more as the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical On Your Toes is revived on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre. The revival outruns its predecessor to play 505 performances.
1989 “Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he’s been turned into a giant cockroach.” It was a punchline in The Producers, but Franz Kafka‘s story Metamorphosis becomes an actual Broadway drama, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov as Gregor. It runs 96 performances at the Barrymore Theatre.
1993 Jeffrey, Paul Rudnick‘s “AIDS comedy,” as one reviewer calls it, opens Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre. It stars John Michael Higgins, and runs through January 16, 1994.
2002 One Mo’ Time, one of the longest-running Off-Broadway revues of the 1980s, opens on Broadway, but does not enjoy a repeat of its success. It closes after a month’s run.
2003 From Britain’s National Theatre comes Vincent in Brixton, a portrait of artist Vincent Van Gogh as a young man (Jochum ten Haaf), struggling to support himself as an art dealer, falling in love with an older woman (Clare Higgins), and absorbing images that he will someday turn into masterpieces.
2008 Debbie Allen‘s all-black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring Anika Noni Rose as Maggie and James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, opens at the Broadhurst Theatre. The production also features Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama and Terrence Howard as Brick.
2011 A Broadway revival of Jason Miller‘s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning 1972 drama That Championship Season opens on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Noth, Jason Patric (whose late father wrote the play), and Kiefer Sutherland star in the Scranton, Pennsylvania-set drama about a team of high school basketball players who reunite to hash out the past on the anniversary of their winning game.
2014 Robert Schenkkan‘s political drama All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, opens on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre. It wins Tony Awards for Best Play, and for Cranston’s performance.
2016 Lupita Nyong’o makes her Broadway debut in Danai Gurira‘s Eclipsed, about a group of women being held captive in the African nation of Liberia. The production was first seen Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2015.
Today’s Birthdays: Oscar Strauss (1870-1954). Ring Lardner (1885-1933). Lou Costello (1906-1959). Ella Logan (1910-1969). Shuler Hensley (b. 1967).
Look Back at the Musicals of Stephen Schwartz
THE PIANO LESSON to Hit Broadway and the Big Screen Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and David John Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and John David Washington are set to star in a Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson in 2022. The production will be directed by LaTanya Richard Jackson.
Ann Reinking Scholarship Established to Aid Early Career Dancers
Arts outreach organization Off The Lane has established The Ann Reinking Scholarship, taking a cue from the late Broadway performer and choreographer’s own life story and offering a $5,000 grant to a young dancer moving to New York City. The funds will help them in their artistic endeavors, much as Reinking herself traveled cross-country from Seattle to start her own career.
Reinking would go on to become a confidant and romantic partner of director-choreographer Bob Fosse, making star turns on stage in Chicago and Sweet Charity among others, choreographing the former’s long-running Broadway revival herself in Fosse’s style and winning a Tony Award. Reinking passed away in December 2020.
The scholarship will be open to dancers of all disciplines, including Broadway, modern, jazz, and ballet, with the first award scheduled to be given in November. Submissions will be accepted beginning in May.
“I believe Annie would have loved having her name on the Ann Reinking Scholarship Program,” says Reinking’s husband and scholarship advisory board member Peter Talbert. “Like so many young dancers coming to New York, she struggled to find a foothold in a strange city. Short of money and friends, Annie persevered and found her way forward, thanks to some helping hands. This program will offer others following in her footsteps that helping hand, to ensure that they can succeed in their desire to make their dream come true. That’s a legacy worthy of her name and reputation.”
Joining Talbert on the scholarship’s advisory board will be Hinton Battle, Gregory Butler, Gary Chryst, Mindy Cooper, Dylis Croman, Charlotte d’Amboise, Erzebet-Liz Foldi, Joel Grey, Marilu Henner, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera, Tommy Tune, William Whitener, and Chris Reinking Stuart.
For more information on The Ann Reinking Scholarship and Off The Lane’s other programs, visit OffTheLane.org.
A Celebration of Tony and Olivier Award Winner Ann Reinking on the Stage
VIDEO: Regina King Talks ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI on LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS
Regina King shares her experience hosting SNL, explains the timely relevance of her film One Night in Miami and gushes over watching old Golden Girls episodes during quarantine.
May Adrales Named The Lark’s New Artistic Director
Stage auteur May Adrales has been selected as The Lark’s new artistic director, with the announcement arriving less than a week after John Clinton Eisner shared his retirement from the Off-Broadway company. Adrales returns to The Lark after nearly a decade at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, which she joined as a board member in 2012 and became associate artistic director of in 2017.
Prior to Milwaukee Rep, Adrales served as The Lark’s director of artistic programs from 2008 to 2010 and then continued served on its artistic board until 2014. During her tenure, she created several programs that remain as a toolbox of play development, including Monthly Meeting of the Minds, Winter Writers’ Retreat, and Playground. From 2006 to 2009, she was an artistic associate at The Public Theater.
“May Adrales is like family coming home,” said The Lark Executive Director Stacy Waring. “As two women of color, we can not only bring awareness to the challenges our communities face, but as benefactors of The Lark’s mission we understand the value of its promise.”
In her career as a director, Adrales has helmed numerous world premieres and productions of works, including Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone. She’s also worked with Katori Hall, David Henry Hwang, Lauren Yee, and Rajiv Joseph on bringing their plays to the stage.
“My vision for The Lark is to wholly empower artists and encourage their fullest potential by providing artistic, financial and career building support,” Adrales said. “My hope is that the work created under the wing of The Lark reveals the widest range of human experience and works towards an equitable, compassionate, and imaginative world.”
In addition to her work on stage, Adrales has taught and directed at Yale School of Drama (where she received an MFA in directing), Brown University, Juilliard, NYU, Fordham, and more. She is the recipient of the TCG Alan Schneider Directing Award, League of Professional Women Josephine Abady Award, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s inaugural Denham Fellowship, and the recipient of a TCG New Generations grant. Adrales also serves on the board of Theater Communications Group.