Billy Bustamante directs and choreographs the musical anthology featuring new works by 21 songwriters at 59E59 Theaters.

Notes From Now, which brings together songwriters from Broadway and beyond, begins previews March 2 at 59E59 Theaters ahead of an official opening March 10.

Directed and choreographed by Billy Bustamante, the limited engagement will continue Off-Broadway through March 20.

Contributing newly commissioned original songs are Jay Adana, Troy Anthony, Masi Asare, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Georgie Castilla and Jaime Lozano, Gretchen Cryer, Tia DeShazor and Derrick Byars, Alexandra Elle and Stephen Schwartz, Adam Gwon, Douglas Lyons and Ethan Pakchar, Peter Mills, Michelle Rodriguez, Ryan Scott Oliver, Angela Sclafani, Paulo K Tiról, and Amanda Yesnowitz and Deborah Abramson.

Interpreting these songs are Ashley Blanchet (Waitress), Thani Brant, Darron Hayes, Josh Lamon (The Prom), Aline Mayagoitia (Love Life), Outer Critics Circle Award winner Judy McLane (Romeo & Bernadette, Mamma Mia!), and John Yi (Soft Power), with understudy Genesis Adelia Collado.

Sean Peter Forte serves as music director for the production, which offers a musical reflection of our contemporary world. Macy Schmidt is the supervising orchestrator.

“In these continued challenging times for the theatre community, Prospect is excited and grateful to return to 59E59 Theaters with a new, collectively-written show,” said Notes From Now curator and creative producer Cara Reichel in an earlier statement. “Connecting so many powerful, artistic voices with audiences—and engaging around the times we are living through—feels especially meaningful.”

The producton also has scenic design by Riw Rakkulchon, costume design by Rodrigo Muñoz, lighting design by Shannon Clarke, sound design by Ben Scheff, and casting by Michael Cassara. The production stage manager is Elizabeth Emanuel.

Visit 59e59.org.

The event honoring Elaine May, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o will include performances from Jenn Colella, Bobby Conte, and Kyle Taylor Parker.

Seth Meyers hosts the 2022 PEN America Literary Awards at New York City’s Town Hall February 28. As previously announced, the event honors the year’s most resonant works of literature across several genres, including career achievement honors for Elaine May, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

Emmy-winning actress Candice Bergen will present will present May with the honorary PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award. Bergen made her Broadway debut in 1984 in the Mike Nichols-directed production of Hurlyburly. May began her career with Nichols, for whom the award is named, as the comedy duo Nichols and May.

Drury, this year’s winner of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, will be honored by directors Sarah Benson (Fairview) and Lileana Blain-Cruz (Marys Seacole). Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who appeared in the world premiere production of Marys Seacole, will perform an excerpt from the work.

Mukoma wa Ngugi—acclaimed writer of works including The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership and Mrs. Shaw, and son of Kenyan author, playwright, and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o—will recognize his father with the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. 

In addition to the awards presentations, the evening will include performances from The Ulysses Owens Jr. Band, joined by guest vocalists Jenn Colella, Bobby Conte, and Kyle Taylor Parker, who will pay tribute to Broadway’s return and the late Stephen Sondheim, recipient of the 2017 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award.

For more information or for tickets to the ceremony, visit PEN.org.

Taylor Reynolds directed the shape-shifting satire, which will subsequently play Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group.

Dave Harris’ Tambo & Bones plays its final performance in Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater February 27. The production officially opened February 7 following previews that began January 19. 

Read the reviews here.

The world premiere, directed by Taylor Reynolds and co-presented with Center Theatre Group, will subsequently play CTG’s Kirk Douglas Theatre May 1-29 with an official opening May 8.

W. Tré Davis (Seared, Zooman and the Sign) and Tyler Fauntleroy (Tempest, Succession) play the title characters and are joined by Brendan Dalton (Plano, Blue Man Group) and Dean Linnard (Time Temple, The Winter’s Tale).

Tambo and Bones are two characters trapped in a minstrel show, and their escape plan is to get out, get bank, and get even. A rags-to-riches hip-hop journey, the new comedy roasts America’s racist past, wrestles America’s racist present, and explodes America’s post-racial future, where what’s at stake, for those deemed less-than-human, is the fate of humanity itself.

The play was conceived as Harris considered his artistic origins doing poetry slams, and how he often found an expectation for Black artists to revisit and present trauma, often for largely white audiences.

The playwright said in an earlier statement, “I was working through this and thinking through minstrelsy as the beginning of Black fictive imaginations and Black performative capitalism. Minstrelsy is so demonized in society, but it was also a pathway to freedom for so many performers. So much of this play is about individual agency and upwards mobility within these given systems. And once you have the freedom to create your own world, what then are you reaching for? In my play, the characters’ relationship to the playwright is: ‘You had the possibility to dream up any world you could have and the extent of your imagination was to put us in a minstrel show? You’re doing this, why?’”

The creative team also includes scenic designer Stephanie Osin Cohen, costume designer Dominique Fawn Hill, co-lighting designers Amith Chandrashaker and Mextly Couzin, sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, composer Justin Ellington, stage manager John C. Moore, and assistant stage manager Bryan Bauer.

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Meet the Cast and Creative Team for Davis Harris’ Tambo & Bones

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