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Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
A Sunday Afternoon with Broadway Performers Javier Ignacio and Josh Walker
Join us for an unforgettable afternoon of music and storytelling with Broadway’s Javier Ignacio and Josh Walker. Ignacio, renowned for his roles as "Harry Houdini" and "Dog Boy" in the 2014 revival of Krieger and Russell’s Side Show, also appeared in the 2021 Tony award-winning Broadway revival of Sondheim’s Company, starring Patti LuPone. He will be joined by the acclaimed Josh Walker on piano.
Walker, known for his performances in Side Show and nearly two decades with the legendary Radio City Rockettes, will serve as the music director for this special event.
This family-friendly show will feature beloved musical theatre standards, jazz classics, exciting new compositions, and laugh-out-loud stories from the heart of New York City
— brought to life as only Javier and Josh can!
Sunday, March 9 · 2:30 - 4pm EDT
Central Library
8911 Merrick Blvd. Jamaica, NY 11432
Register for up to 3 free tickets
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-sunday-afternoon-with-broadway-performers-javier-ignacio-and-josh-walker-tickets-1226781108319?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Onstage/Offstage is opening our call for submissions of 10-minute plays to produce and air on its podcast, now in its 13th year. This year's theme is “Diversity/Equity/Inclusion.” We seek plays that center on the characters' struggle rather than the topic itself. Please make sure your submissions are character-centered. Also please read and follow these guidelines, especially submission acceptance dates, if you wish your play to be considered.
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The Jim Henson Foundation awards grants each year for the creation of innovative new works of contemporary puppet theater. Our definition of a puppet is an object that is given the appearance of life through direct or indirect manipulation by the human hand. The Foundation’s Board of Directors judges applications based on the excellence of the puppetry including puppet design, manipulation and theatrical execution.
***
RubySky Productions is looking for plays of 10 minutes or fewer, for their next audio production. Us Rubys are keen to inspire the next generation of playwrights, so please share to any family or friends. Any subject and genre, just keep to under 10 minutes please and ideally suitable for audio. Open to anyone worldwide under 18, no other restrictions.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK ***
He said he co-wrote the movie as a critique of most of the press rolling over ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Clooney called out President George W. Bush for the misbegotten war, and he was called a traitor for being against it.
“It was a pretty tough time,” he recalled.
The movie, he said, was really about: “We need the press” because “government unchecked is a problem.”
Now, with President Trump throwing Washington into a tumult, Clooney said, we are living through a time when “You take a narrative, you make it up, don’t worry about facts, don’t worry about repercussions.” He said the play “feels more like it’s about truth, not just the press. Facts matter.”
Certainly, there are unavoidable echoes of McCarthy’s Washington in Trump’s Washington, a place rife with “alternative facts,” as Kellyanne Conway called them, as well as conspiracy theories, reckless attacks and punitive measures. The White House, for example, wants government employees to snitch on colleagues who are promoting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Associated Press journalists were barred from covering some White House events because the news outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
“No rules count anymore,” Clooney said. “It’s like letting an infant walk across the 405 freeway in the middle of the afternoon.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/theater/george-clooney-broadway-good-night-good-luck.html
***
A work of historical drama, Good Night, and Good Luck centers on a clash between famed journalist Edward R. Murrow and infamous U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, of anti-communist HUAC fame. The title comes from Murrow's broadcast sign-off. Clooney starred on screen as Murrow's co-producer, Fred W. Friendly, and as previously announced will lead the stage version as Edward R. Murrow, the role played by David Strathairn on screen. Clooney also directed the original film. Clooney and Grant Heslov have penned the stage adaptation from their 2005 screenplay, and David Cromer will direct.
Clooney revealed his supporting company in front of the Winter Garden February 6. Among those newly announced to be joining him are Ilana Glazer (Broad City) as Shirley Wershba, Clark Gregg (Agents of Shield) as Don Hollenbeck, Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, Christopher Denham as John Aaron, Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, Paul Gross as William F. Paley, Georgia Heers as Ella, Carter Hudson as Joe Wershba, Fran Kranz as Palmer Williams, Jennifer Morris as Millie Green, Michael Nathanson as Eddie Scott, Andrew Polk as Charlie Mack, and Aaron Roman Weiner as Don Surine.
More...
https://playbill.com/article/ilana-glazer-clark-gregg-more-join-george-clooney-in-good-night-and-good-luck-on-broadway
***
George Clooney interview on Fresh Air, 2005
Actor, producer, writer, director George Clooney directed and co-wrote the new film Good Night, and Good Luck, about the showdown between legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy that took place in 1954. Clooney also has a role in the film, portraying Murrow's producer Fred Friendly. The film is receiving much critical acclaim.
The film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, about game-show host Chuck Barris, marked Clooney's directorial debut. His acting and producing credits include Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve; The Jacket; Full Frontal; and Welcome to Collinwood.
Clooney also starred in the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? He became a household face and name with his role on NBC's ER. Clooney is also the nephew of the late singer Rosemary Clooney.
https://www.npr.org/2005/12/27/4963561/george-clooney-the-journey-to-good-night
***
Good Night, and Good Luck was criticised by some on its release for making Murrow into too simplistic a hero. While most historical films simplify things, this one doesn’t completely sanctify its protagonist. After Murrow debates with McCarthy, his boss Bill Paley (Frank Langella) accuses him of not correcting the senator on one point of fact: that the lawyer and State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, not treason. Paley suggests Murrow didn’t want to be seen defending a known communist. Joseph McCarthy – who effectively plays himself in the film, appearing in documentary footage – emerges as a straightforward villain, but he made that bed for himself and most historians have let him lie in it.
“We don’t make the news,” says Paley. “We report the news.” As Murrow is drawn into a war with McCarthy, the station frets about its revenue. Good Night, and Good Luck does a fantastically clever job of intercutting real footage of McCarthy and other figures into its drama, mostly to serious effect – though there is a moment of levity when Murrow must interview Liberace. “Have you given much thought to getting married and eventually settling down?” Murrow asks the exceptionally camp but closeted performer. “I want to some day find a perfect mate,” the real Liberace replies in the documentary footage. “In fact I was reading about lovely young Princess Margaret, and she’s looking for her dream man too, and I hope she finds him some day.” Not even subtle. Remarkably, in 1959, Liberace won a lawsuit against the Daily Mirror after it implied he was what was then called a “homosexualist”.
More...
https://archive.ph/OL2DX
***
(The New Yorker, 1953)
To the top men of the Columbia Broadcasting System, it is a matter of concern that their news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose baritone voice over the C.B.S. radio and austere presence on C.B.S.-TV have made him both a semi-public figure and a valued private property, has appeared, over the years, to be less attracted to eminence than to trouble. To be sure, Murrow, a lean, dark, handsome, and deceptively easy-mannered man of forty-five, who bears his own eminence without visible effort, is on cordial-to-intimate terms with most of the important people in the United States and Great Britain and gives no evidence of being indifferent to their esteem.
But it has been noticed that his satisfaction in his work as an informer of public opinion increases with his proximity to gunfire, to some real or fancied calamity, or to the brink of complete physical exhaustion. During the Second World War, his habit of excusing himself from his post in London to go off on bombing missions brought frequent ineffectual protests from William S. Paley, chairman of the board of the Columbia Broadcasting System and the only man there who has ever tried to boss Murrow; declining to be bossed, Murrow made a couple of dozen combat flights, of which Paley said later, “They didn’t do us much good from my point of view, but there was no way to make him stop, short of firing him.”
Since that war, Murrow has had fewer opportunities to expose himself to hostile marksmen. He did manage to get in two trips to Korea while the shooting was going on there, but for the most part he has had to content himself with the pursuit of floods, droughts, and tornadoes and with such personal discomforts as going too long without sleep and flying too much in airplanes, the first of which causes him to sweat profusely and the second to have trouble with his ears.
More...
https://archive.ph/OHgmQ#selection-797.0-797.1847
***
George Clooney likes the story of a television figure who uses his celebrity to make a positive impact on American culture. It isn’t hard to see why. Son of the longtime news anchor Nick Clooney, the former ER heartthrob grew up believing in the power of TV to make a difference. Now, at age 44, he has directed his second big-screen work on the subject.
Where Clooney’s underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind picked the febrile brain of The Gong Show host Chuck Barris, his new Good Night, and Good Luck salutes TV-news pioneer Edward R. Murrow, whose on-air battles with Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy helped make the country safe for free speech—at least temporarily. (Also see a review of The Edward R. Murrow Collection.) Albeit set in the ’50s, Good Night is hardly yesterday’s news: The movie completed production not long before the New York Times broke the story that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had hired a researcher to investigate the “political leanings” (read: liberal bias) of commentators such as PBS’s own Bill Moyers.
More...
https://archive.ph/HrD50
***
Journalists, including some at CBS News, are expressing alarm at reports that CBS parent company Paramount Global is trying to settle a legally dubious lawsuit lodged by President Donald Trump last fall.
Trump sued CBS after an October “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris – Trump’s opponent in the presidential campaign – included an edit that Trump said was unfairly favorable to Harris. Despite legal experts’ widespread assertion that CBS’ editorial judgment was protected by the First Amendment, The New York Times Thursday night reported that a settlement was in the works.
That sparked outage in CBS’ newsroom.
“Trump’s lawsuit was a joke, but if we settle, we become the laughingstock,” a CBS correspondent said on condition of anonymity.
CBS in October called the suit meritless and said at the time “we will vigorously defend against it.” A Paramount spokesperson on Friday declined to comment. A lawyer for Trump, Edward Paltzik, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he told The Times that “real accountability for CBS and Paramount will ensure that the president is compensated for the harm done to him.”
The Times noted that “a settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.”
More...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/media/cbs-trump-settlement-60-minutes/index.html
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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Go Try Play Write February 2025
Winners will receive $100 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press.
The prompt for February 2025 is:
A hell of a prompt. Write a 10-page maximum scene or an 8-page maximum monologue where you send someone to hell. This is as open as can be—all that matters is that someone did something or a number of things that receives eternal punishment. Writers, consider this prompt primal scream therapy.
***
Strongbox Theater Short Plays Festival 2025
This short play festival is in keeping with STRONGBOX's mission to:
Foster a partnership between the arts and our community at large to raise the visibility of the arts in East Rockaway, NY and its surrounding Long Island area;
- Assist new playwrights in getting their talents seen by and shared with our local audiences, and to
- Cultivate an appreciation of theater by new patrons.
$100 royalty will be paid to each playwright
***
Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Performing Artist in Residence program allows artists and visitors to experience the Garden through a different lens.
The theme for the 2025 residency is Natural Connection.
Explore the relationship between humans and nature and their dynamic and sometimes fraught interdependence. Highlight how human actions reshape the environment, while nature’s responses and constant shifts influence human lives, ideas, emotions, and futures. Challenge the audience to think about their role and responsibility within this cycle, examining the human-nature relationship here in Brooklyn or beyond.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THE KENNEDY CENTER ***
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed bipartisan legislation creating a National Cultural Center in the nation’s capital. In November of 1962, President and Mrs. Kennedy launched a $30 million fundraising campaign for the Center’s construction. Former President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie participated in the event which demonstrated the bipartisan support for a world-class center for the performing arts in D. C. In 1963, President Kennedy signed legislation to extend the fundraising deadline for the Center.
Two months after President Kennedy’s assassination, by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 23, 1964, the nation’s National Cultural Center was designated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. By this Act, President Kennedy’s devotion to the advancement of the performing arts in the United States was recognized.
The Center’s mission is established in its authorizing statute: present classical and contemporary music, opera, drama, dance, and other performing arts from the United States and other countries; promote and maintain the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the National Center for the Performing Arts; strive to ensure that the education and outreach programs and policies of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States; provide facilities for other civic activities at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and provide within the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a suitable memorial in honor of the late President. To fulfill the mission as the nation’s cultural center, the Kennedy Center presents world-class art by the artists that define our culture today, delivers powerful arts education opportunities nationwide, and embodies the ideals of President Kennedy in all the Center’s activities provided throughout the living memorial.
More...
https://theatrewashington.org/venues/kennedy-center
***
In September of 1971, the nation was cracking in half.
The front pages of The Washington Post were aflame with violence and conflict: the ongoing catastrophe of the Vietnam War, political upheaval in Latin America and, here at home, racial unrest as busing foes boycotted schools. The bad news was unrelenting.
That is until the edition of Thursday, Sept. 9, when The Post’s lead story took a markedly different tone: “Bernstein’s Mass,” read the headline, “A Reaffirmation of Faith.”
This good news topping A1 was the previous evening’s official premiere of “Mass,” composer Leonard Bernstein’s genre-hopping magnum opus. “Mass” was Bernstein’s response to a request from Jacqueline Onassis for a piece to honor her first husband and inaugurate the soon-to-open John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a $66.5 million colossus overlooking the Potomac River and declaring the arts as central to American life — if not to D.C. pedestrians.
More...
https://archive.ph/iGRJM#selection-553.0-553.461
***
Donald Trump got himself declared chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after purging the board of everyone appointed by President Joe Biden. In their stead, he appointed his own political allies, donors, and their wives, including second lady Usha Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. He also appointed loyalist Ric Grenell as interim executive director. Other celebrities affiliated with the Center, including Shonda Rhimes (appointed by former President Barack Obama), have announced their resignation in the wake of Trump’s announcement.
Although generally not a hotbed for controversy, the Kennedy Center, as the US’s national cultural center, is an important tool for the country’s cultural soft power. During the height of the Cold War, the Kennedy Center hosted American and Russian ballet dancers performing together, a symbolic act that paid enormous diplomatic dividends. It’s run in public-private partnership, which means all presidents have the right to appoint members to the board of trustees.
More...
https://www.vox.com/culture/399885/trump-kennedy-center-shonda-rhimes
***
The Kennedy Center has quietly removed a highly anticipated National Symphony Orchestra concert celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride from its website, intensifying fears that federally affiliated cultural institutions could be the next battleground in President Donald Trump’s war on the LGBTQ+ community.
The event, “A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride,” was scheduled for May 21–22 as part of the center’s acknowledgment of WorldPride 2025 inWashington, D.C. A centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s Conflux initiative—its flagship social impact partnership program—the concert was designed to celebrate LGBTQ+ identity and visibility through music.
More...
https://www.advocate.com/politics/kennedy-center-trump-worldpride-concert
***
Yes, Donald Trump could destroy the Kennedy Center. Or worse.
Until a week ago, it was unthinkable that the president of the United States would take direct control of the nonpartisan Kennedy Center for the Arts, fire board members not deemed personally loyal to him, replace them with members of his inner circle and install a widely disliked political operative with little experience in the arts as interim director. But now the thought has been thought, so two more previously unthinkable things must also be considered: Can Donald Trump destroy the Kennedy Center? Or will he use it in the usual way that authoritarians have used the arts in the past, as a vehicle for Trumpian propaganda?
***
To understand what is going on, it is necessary to consider Trump’s favourite European authoritarian, Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s prime minister has chipped away at his country’s constitution and judiciary. But a no less powerful tool has been his attention to parts of society often regarded as unimportant compared with a country’s constitution. Alongside crushing independent media, Orbán’s government has co-opted the arts, appointing right-leaning directors to theatres, and instigating nationalist art exhibitions. Orbán understands that culture creates the climate for emotion and memory, imprints national myths, and – often intangibly – acts on politics.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/trump-chair-kennedy-center-washington-president-authoritarian
***
It was just last week that Mr. Trump announced his plan to purge the Kennedy Center’s board of its Biden appointees and to install “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” He named one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks, Richard Grenell, interim president and proclaimed that there would be no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” shown. He complained about drag queens performing there and said it had all become too “wokey.” Some artists canceled shows. “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” Mr. Trump said on social media, posting an A.I.-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.
Most of the people who turned up at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night to see performances in its various theaters had purchased their tickets long before any of that was set in motion. Now they found themselves at an arts center on the cusp of becoming something different — something Trumpian.
Some speculated what that might look like.
“I feel like we might just have ‘Cats’ on rotation moving forward,” said Pamela Deutsch, a documentary film producer who once worked as an usher at the Kennedy Center. (Mr. Trump, who once had dreams of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch a set by the comic W. Kamau Bell. So was Louis Woolard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What sort of cultural programming did he envision under the artistic stewardship of the 47th president? “I don’t know,” said Mr. Woolard. “I guess country music.”
...“You know, Trump took over, he’s the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,” (W. Kamau Bell) said at the top of his set. The audience let out a low boo. “You shouldn’t call it the Kennedy Center anymore,” he said. “Let’s call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.” More booing. “If you’re going to have people running it with no expertise at all,” he continued, “you might as well have it named after the guy with no expertise at all.” (Earlier that day, Mr. Kennedy had been confirmed as health secretary.)
Mr. Bell tore into the president and talked about white supremacy, nationalized health care, oligarchy, fascism, socialism, transgender rights, slavery, kale chips, Nazidom and other such topics that would presumably qualify as “wokey” under new management. The comic also guessed at what sort of changes were in store.
“How many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?” he wondered as the audience groaned.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/music/kennedy-center-donald-trump.html
--
To understand what is going on, it is necessary to consider Trump’s favourite European authoritarian, Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s prime minister has chipped away at his country’s constitution and judiciary. But a no less powerful tool has been his attention to parts of society often regarded as unimportant compared with a country’s constitution. Alongside crushing independent media, Orbán’s government has co-opted the arts, appointing right-leaning directors to theatres, and instigating nationalist art exhibitions. Orbán understands that culture creates the climate for emotion and memory, imprints national myths, and – often intangibly – acts on politics.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/trump-chair-kennedy-center-washington-president-authoritarian
***
It was just last week that Mr. Trump announced his plan to purge the Kennedy Center’s board of its Biden appointees and to install “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” He named one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks, Richard Grenell, interim president and proclaimed that there would be no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” shown. He complained about drag queens performing there and said it had all become too “wokey.” Some artists canceled shows. “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” Mr. Trump said on social media, posting an A.I.-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.
Most of the people who turned up at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night to see performances in its various theaters had purchased their tickets long before any of that was set in motion. Now they found themselves at an arts center on the cusp of becoming something different — something Trumpian.
Some speculated what that might look like.
“I feel like we might just have ‘Cats’ on rotation moving forward,” said Pamela Deutsch, a documentary film producer who once worked as an usher at the Kennedy Center. (Mr. Trump, who once had dreams of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch a set by the comic W. Kamau Bell. So was Louis Woolard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What sort of cultural programming did he envision under the artistic stewardship of the 47th president? “I don’t know,” said Mr. Woolard. “I guess country music.”
...“You know, Trump took over, he’s the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,” (W. Kamau Bell) said at the top of his set. The audience let out a low boo. “You shouldn’t call it the Kennedy Center anymore,” he said. “Let’s call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.” More booing. “If you’re going to have people running it with no expertise at all,” he continued, “you might as well have it named after the guy with no expertise at all.” (Earlier that day, Mr. Kennedy had been confirmed as health secretary.)
Mr. Bell tore into the president and talked about white supremacy, nationalized health care, oligarchy, fascism, socialism, transgender rights, slavery, kale chips, Nazidom and other such topics that would presumably qualify as “wokey” under new management. The comic also guessed at what sort of changes were in store.
“How many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?” he wondered as the audience groaned.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/arts/music/kennedy-center-donald-trump.html
FREE THEATER IN NYC
** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
HOW DID I GET HERE?
Collaboratively written and directed by Tiffany Cruz—a Drama Club alum who began her journey with us at Rikers Island, became an apprentice upon release and has since become a cherished Drama Club teaching artist—this powerful production delves into the lives and stories of our apprentices, all of whom are formerly incarcerated or court-involved.
Sunday, March 30 · 4 - 5:30pm EDT. Doors at 3:30pm
St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church
157 Montague Street Brooklyn, NY 11201
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-did-i-get-here-tickets-1234941416019?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** MRS LOMAN ~ 20% DISCOUNT ***
THROUGH FEBRUARY 15: Don't miss the acclaimed Off-Broadway premiere of MRS. LOMAN, a bold new play by Barbara Cassidy that imagines what Linda Loman from "Death of a Salesman" does after her husband commits suicide. Directed by Meghan Finn, this dark, biting critique of misogyny and racism in Miller’s iconic family drama runs through February 15 at Theatre Row (410 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036).
Discount tickets available with code EBLAST ~ tickets and info at www.mrsloman.com.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Strides Collective is currently accepting applications from queer playwrights in the Mid-Atlantic Region for our inaugural Strides Collective Commission (SCC). One selected playwright will receive a stipend of $500 and work closely with the Collective over the course of a year to develop their original idea for a full length, modern queer play, culminating in a produced staged reading of the new play in 2026.
***
The Edward F. Albee Foundation maintains the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (better known as "The Barn") in Montauk, Long Island, New York, as a residence for writers and visual artists of all media.
***
FRESH WORDS-AN INTERNATIONAL LITERARY MAGAZINE is open for submissions for its Special One Minute Horror Plays Anthology titled 'SHHH! BREATHE SLOW!'
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** LAURA BENANTI ***
In her dressing room at the Minetta Lane Theater, the actor Laura Benanti is still making changes to her rollicking one-woman show NOBODY CARES, even though it’s already six performances in to her 18-show run. The reason, I discover, is that her hard-nosed daughter Ella has some edits. Benanti had intended to run every joke by her seven-year-old, she explains, but one slipped through the cracks. “I didn’t think it would bother her because it’s actually not really about her,” she tells me. “And she was like, ‘You didn’t ask me if you could say that.'” But motherhood, and Benanti’s wrenching experience with postpartum depression, makes up only part of this show, which has the defiant, propulsive energy of a manifesto and a referendum.
More...
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/theater/in-her-one-woman-show-laura-benanti-bids-farewell-to-her-inner-ingenue
***
There’s no love lost between SHE LOVES ME lovebirds, Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi.
Though they shared the Broadway stage in a successful and Tony Award-winning 2016 musical revival, Benanti made it clear in a new podcast interview that she was never a fan of Levi, who at the time was a successful TV star from NBC’s Chuck and on his way to movie stardom as the title character in DC’s Shazam! “I never liked him,” Benanti told Eric Williams on his That’s a Gay Ass Podcast. “Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the fucking energy in this room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them.'”
More...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/laura-benanti-slams-zachary-levi-anti-vax-gavin-creel-1236080043/
***
It takes Henry Higgins six months to transform Eliza Doolittle from a “draggle-tailed guttersnipe” in “My Fair Lady” to a lady who can pass as a duchess at the Embassy Ball. Now, ten months after the opening of Lincoln Center’s fourth Broadway revival, the musical itself has been transformed, with the replacement of four of the principal roles – especially Laura Benanti as Eliza.
The show of course offers the same sumptuous design, lively choreography, and lush orchestrations, with the 15 songs (every single one of them memorable) lavishly backed by a 28-piece orchestra.
The performances of the original cast members who remain with the show have also deepened with detail, from Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins and Allan Corduner as his more kindly linguist-in-cahoots Colonel Pickering to Linda Mugleston as Higgins’ subtly exasperated secretary Mrs. Pierce. The production is if anything more deserving of the ten Tony nominations it received, and particularly costume designer Catherine Zuber’s Tony win (her ninth.)
More...
https://newyorktheater.me/2019/02/24/my-fair-lady-review-how-laura-benanti-as-eliza-changes-the-musical/
***
After detouring into a pair of plays with supersize titles (Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play), Laura Benanti has returned to her musical roots in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. As the adorably ditzy model Candela, the Tony-winning star totters around the stage in barely-there costumes, showing off her comedic and vocal chops in the show-stopping number “Model Behavior.” Less than a week before opening night, Benanti took time for a brief chat with Broadway.com.
Women on the Verge has had plenty of scrutiny leading up to opening night, but we haven’t heard about any real-life nervous breakdowns backstage.
More...
https://www.broadway.com/buzz/154186/whats-up-laura-benanti-dishing-about-women-on-the-verge-and-why-shes-in-her-best-shape-ever/
***
Laura Benanti dreamed of one thing and one thing only- performing on Broadway so winning a Tony Award for her role in Gypsy was the most amazing dream come true and one of the happiest moments of her life. What people may not know is that early on in the rehearsal process she walked out feeling unsupported by the process and it wasn't until she had a deeply honest conversation with it's director, Arthur Laurents, that she returned and from that moment on it was the most joyous professional experience of her life. Find out how the two worked it out and why co- starring with Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines was such an extraordinary experience on this episode of And The Award Goes To...
More...
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Podcast-Laura-Benanti-Talks-GYPSY-More-on-AND-THE-AWARD-GOES-TO-20200922
***
Stephen Colbert celebrated the holidays on Monday’s episode of The Late Show by gifting viewers with what could have been Tony-winning actress Laura Benanti’s final appearance as Melania Trump while the First Lady is in the White House.
“Stephen, it’s like I keep telling my husband: Donald, it’s over,” Benanti-as-Melania said, addressing speculation that the first lady is ready to move out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and, perhaps, her marriage) despite President Donald Trump’s numerous and fruitless attempts to overturn the election. “We both know it ended a while ago. Now we just need to accept that and keep going until the prenup runs out.”
More...
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/12/laura-benanti-melania-christmas-colbert
--*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Strides Collective is currently accepting applications from queer playwrights in the Mid-Atlantic Region for our inaugural Strides Collective Commission (SCC). One selected playwright will receive a stipend of $500 and work closely with the Collective over the course of a year to develop their original idea for a full length, modern queer play, culminating in a produced staged reading of the new play in 2026.
***
The Edward F. Albee Foundation maintains the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (better known as "The Barn") in Montauk, Long Island, New York, as a residence for writers and visual artists of all media.
***
FRESH WORDS-AN INTERNATIONAL LITERARY MAGAZINE is open for submissions for its Special One Minute Horror Plays Anthology titled 'SHHH! BREATHE SLOW!'
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** LAURA BENANTI ***
In her dressing room at the Minetta Lane Theater, the actor Laura Benanti is still making changes to her rollicking one-woman show NOBODY CARES, even though it’s already six performances in to her 18-show run. The reason, I discover, is that her hard-nosed daughter Ella has some edits. Benanti had intended to run every joke by her seven-year-old, she explains, but one slipped through the cracks. “I didn’t think it would bother her because it’s actually not really about her,” she tells me. “And she was like, ‘You didn’t ask me if you could say that.'” But motherhood, and Benanti’s wrenching experience with postpartum depression, makes up only part of this show, which has the defiant, propulsive energy of a manifesto and a referendum.
More...
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/theater/in-her-one-woman-show-laura-benanti-bids-farewell-to-her-inner-ingenue
***
There’s no love lost between SHE LOVES ME lovebirds, Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi.
Though they shared the Broadway stage in a successful and Tony Award-winning 2016 musical revival, Benanti made it clear in a new podcast interview that she was never a fan of Levi, who at the time was a successful TV star from NBC’s Chuck and on his way to movie stardom as the title character in DC’s Shazam! “I never liked him,” Benanti told Eric Williams on his That’s a Gay Ass Podcast. “Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the fucking energy in this room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them.'”
More...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/laura-benanti-slams-zachary-levi-anti-vax-gavin-creel-1236080043/
***
It takes Henry Higgins six months to transform Eliza Doolittle from a “draggle-tailed guttersnipe” in “My Fair Lady” to a lady who can pass as a duchess at the Embassy Ball. Now, ten months after the opening of Lincoln Center’s fourth Broadway revival, the musical itself has been transformed, with the replacement of four of the principal roles – especially Laura Benanti as Eliza.
The show of course offers the same sumptuous design, lively choreography, and lush orchestrations, with the 15 songs (every single one of them memorable) lavishly backed by a 28-piece orchestra.
The performances of the original cast members who remain with the show have also deepened with detail, from Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins and Allan Corduner as his more kindly linguist-in-cahoots Colonel Pickering to Linda Mugleston as Higgins’ subtly exasperated secretary Mrs. Pierce. The production is if anything more deserving of the ten Tony nominations it received, and particularly costume designer Catherine Zuber’s Tony win (her ninth.)
More...
https://newyorktheater.me/2019/02/24/my-fair-lady-review-how-laura-benanti-as-eliza-changes-the-musical/
***
After detouring into a pair of plays with supersize titles (Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play), Laura Benanti has returned to her musical roots in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. As the adorably ditzy model Candela, the Tony-winning star totters around the stage in barely-there costumes, showing off her comedic and vocal chops in the show-stopping number “Model Behavior.” Less than a week before opening night, Benanti took time for a brief chat with Broadway.com.
Women on the Verge has had plenty of scrutiny leading up to opening night, but we haven’t heard about any real-life nervous breakdowns backstage.
More...
https://www.broadway.com/buzz/154186/whats-up-laura-benanti-dishing-about-women-on-the-verge-and-why-shes-in-her-best-shape-ever/
***
Laura Benanti dreamed of one thing and one thing only- performing on Broadway so winning a Tony Award for her role in Gypsy was the most amazing dream come true and one of the happiest moments of her life. What people may not know is that early on in the rehearsal process she walked out feeling unsupported by the process and it wasn't until she had a deeply honest conversation with it's director, Arthur Laurents, that she returned and from that moment on it was the most joyous professional experience of her life. Find out how the two worked it out and why co- starring with Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines was such an extraordinary experience on this episode of And The Award Goes To...
More...
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Podcast-Laura-Benanti-Talks-GYPSY-More-on-AND-THE-AWARD-GOES-TO-20200922
***
Stephen Colbert celebrated the holidays on Monday’s episode of The Late Show by gifting viewers with what could have been Tony-winning actress Laura Benanti’s final appearance as Melania Trump while the First Lady is in the White House.
“Stephen, it’s like I keep telling my husband: Donald, it’s over,” Benanti-as-Melania said, addressing speculation that the first lady is ready to move out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and, perhaps, her marriage) despite President Donald Trump’s numerous and fruitless attempts to overturn the election. “We both know it ended a while ago. Now we just need to accept that and keep going until the prenup runs out.”
More...
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/12/laura-benanti-melania-christmas-colbert
***
Tony winner Laura Benanti (Gypsy) was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night to play former (and perhaps future) First Lady Melania Trump. In the five-minute sketch, Melania is a party crasher at the Democratic National Convention, which just completed its second night at Chicago’s United Center with speeches by Bernie Sanders, Doug Emhoff, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama. Benanti has played Melania before, although not much in the last four years. Her solo performance, Nobody Cares, is now available on Audible.
https://www.theatermania.com/news/laura-benanti-plays-melania-trump-at-the-dnc_1748037/
Tony winner Laura Benanti (Gypsy) was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night to play former (and perhaps future) First Lady Melania Trump. In the five-minute sketch, Melania is a party crasher at the Democratic National Convention, which just completed its second night at Chicago’s United Center with speeches by Bernie Sanders, Doug Emhoff, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama. Benanti has played Melania before, although not much in the last four years. Her solo performance, Nobody Cares, is now available on Audible.
https://www.theatermania.com/news/laura-benanti-plays-melania-trump-at-the-dnc_1748037/
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