Today’s Highlights:
Williamstown Theatre Festival‘s 2021WTF Gala, featuring Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Renée Fleming, Michael R. Jackson, Jill Kargman, John Lithgow, S. Epatha Merkerson, Steven Pasquale, Amanda Seyfried, Phillipa Soo, and Maris Tomei, along with Kerstin Anderson, John Ellison Conlee, Nehal Joshi, Tamika Lawrence, John McGinty, Grace McLean, Kathryn O’Rourke, Lance Roberts, Sean Stack, and Sally Wilfert, streams for FREE at 7 PM ET.
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GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “They search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.” ~ Peter Ustinov on critics
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Video: Stars in the House, offering “You Don’t Know My Life” game night, hosted by Dennis Hensley, with special guests Kevin Chamberlin, Danny Casillas, Karole Foreman, Teresa Huang, Felix Pire, and Erin Quinn. (1:43:01 )
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Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside will stream on demand Apr. 11-30 at TheaterWorks Hartford, directed by Rob Ruggiero & Pedro Bermúdez.
Maggie Bofill and Ephraim Birney.
This quiet, unpredictable play explores the limits of what one person can ask of another. In an intensely intimate and haunting story, a creative writing professor encounters a brilliant and mysterious student. As their relationship intensifies and their lives become entwined, one will ask the other for the unforgivable.
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Off-Broadway’s Red Bull Theater presents a reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Part 1 streaming on Mon. Apr. 12 at 7:30 PM ET and Part 2 on Mon. Apr. 26 at 7:30 PM ET, adapted & directed by Michael Barakiva.
Stephen Bel Davies, Sheldon Best, Gisela Chipe, Robert Cuccioli, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Carol Halstead, Jason Butler Harner, Gregory Linington, Daniel Jose Molina, Sam Morales, Howard Overshow, and Cherie Corinne Rice.
With its exquisite language and Shakespearean scale, Milton’s epic poem explores the fundamental questions of the human experience: What is evil? If God is all-powerful, why did he allow evil to exist? Do humans have free will? Is our life predestined?
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A Beautiful Noise, the new Broadway-bound musical by Anthony McCarten, will run June 21, 2022 – July 17, 2022 at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, directed by Michael Mayer, with choreography by Steven Hoggett. Casting and additional information TBA.
The incredible story of Neil Diamond
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“Ticket to Paradise.” written by Ol Parker & Daniel Pipski, directed by Parker, will be filming later this year, with a premiere scheduled for Sept. 30, 2022.
Julia Roberts and George Clooney.
Two exes find themselves on a shared mission to stop their lovestruck daughter from repeating their past mistakes.
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RIP: Playwright Arthur Kopit passed away Apr. 3 at the age of 83. The Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated playwright is best remembered for his plays Indians and Wings, along with the book to the 1982 musical Nine.
In college at Harvard, Kopit began trying his hand at playwrighting, ultimately making his professional debut with Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. The piece later enjoyed a hit 1962 Off-Broadway run in a production helmed by Jerome Robbins that would also play a six-week Broadway engagement the following year.
Mr. Kopit’s Indians premiered in London in 1969 before becoming his sophomore Broadway outing the same year. Despite a relatively brief run of 96 performances, the work earned Mr. Kopit his first Tony nomination, and was a finalist for the Pultizer Prize for Drama.
Mr. Kopit moved to Vermont in the early 1970s, continuing to write plays while teaching at Wesleyan University. His New York return would come with Wings, inspired by his stepfather’s recovery from a stroke that left him mute. The work had its world premiere in 1978 at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater before moving to Broadway in 1979, where it enjoyed a three month run and earned Mr. Kopit additional Tony and Pulitzer nominations.
Mr. Kopit’s next project was the musical Nine. The brainchild of composer-lyricist Maury Yeston, the musical had been in development since the early 1970s with playwright Mario Fratti writing the book. When Tommy Tune became attached as the piece’s director, Mr. Kopit was brought in to write a new book, which was the script that ultimately opened on Broadway in 1982. Mr. Kopit would receive a Tony nomination for his work; the production won Best Musical.
Yeston and Mr. Kopit re-teamed in 1983 on Phantom of the Opera, an adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel that was, unbeknownst to its creators, developed concurrently with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on the same source material. When Lloyd Webber’s musical became an international mega hit in 1987, Mr. Kopit and Yeston’s Phantom lost investors, and its Broadway hopes were dashed. Despite this setback, the work has gone on to be regularly produced at regional theatres nationwide, and also became a non-musical TV mini-series in 1990 starring Burt Lancaster.
Mr. Kopit’s other Broadway works include a 1982 adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts, the short-lived 1984 End of the World, and the book to the 1998 musical High Society.
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Off-Broadway’s Public theater will release the world premiere audio play, Erika Dickerson-Despenza’ Shadow/Land, on Tues. Apr. 13, directed by Candis C. Jones.
Te’Era Coleman, Lizan Mitchell, Lance E. Nichols, Lori Elizabeth Parquet, Sunni Patterson, and Michelle Wilson.
A harrowing new drama set amid the ongoing devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Ruth coaxes her mother, Magalee, to sell Shadowland, the family business and New Orleans’ first air-conditioned dancehall and hotel for Black people. But as Hurricane Katrina begins her ruin, Ruth is forced to wrestle with all that she’s ready to let go.
Listen to the audio trailer.
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The Kennedy Center has announced preliminary plans for its 2021-22 Season (dates TBA):
A new work by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang (Mar. 2022)
New plays commissioned from Ike Holter, Hansol Jung, with composer/lyricist Brian Quijada, Martyna Majok, Molly Smith Metzler, and Marco Ramez
A new play for young audiences by Kirsten Greenidge
50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center concert
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, directed & re-staged by Francesca Zambello
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In-person performances of Anthony Wilkinson’s Housewives of Secaucus: What a Drag will open Sat. May 1 at 8 PM at the Actors Temple Theatre, directed by Hank Kiraly & Anthony Wilkinson. 
Patrons will be required to wear masks, submit to temperature checks, and adhere to social distancing in the theatre, which is currently operating at 33% capacity.
Philip McLeod, Ryan Stutz, Cameron Baits, Jacob P.S. Lemmenes, and Sam Brackley.
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DC’s Signature Theatre will present Mark Sonnenblick’s Midnight at The Never Get, which will stream Apr. 30 – June 21, directed by Matthew Gardiner, with music direction by Angie Benson. The show will be available to stream for 72 hours after patron’s initial viewing has begun.
Sam Bolen, Christian Douglas, and Bobby Smith.
If life is a rehearsal for your memory, what moment would you replay? It’s 1965 in New York City and cabaret crooner is in love — with Arthur, his songwriter. With their romance outlawed, the two create an act in the back room of an illegal Greenwich Village gay bar. However, pressures from a world on the cusp of change expose an ache for what they could never have in a wistful and whimsical serenade with tunes reminiscent of the Great American Songbook.
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L.A. Theatre Works‘ audio recording of A Weekend with Pablo Picasso is now available for purchase, written & performed by Herbert Sigüenza, and directed by Rosalind Ayres.
The presentation coincides with the Apr. 26 anniversary of the 1937 bombing of Guernica. The audio play invites the listening audience into Picasso’s private studio for an intimate and revealing weekend as he prepares to deliver six new works to a buyer on Monday morning.
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MA’s Barrington Stage Company has announced its indoor/outdoor 2021 season:
INDOOR SEASON:
Chester Bailey (June 18-23), by Joseph Dougherty, directed by Ron Lagomarsino, featuring Reed Birney and Ephraim Birney. A WWII drama.
Eleanor (July 16 – Aug. 1), a new play by Mark St. Germain, directed by Henry Stram, starring Harriet Harris as Eleanor Roosevelt.
Sister Sorry (Aug. 12-29), world premiere by Alec Wilkinson, directed by Richard Hamburger. The play is loosely based on a true crime confession.
A Crosseing (Sept. 23 – Oct. 17), world premiere dance musical by Joshua Bergasse, Mark St. Germain & Zoe Sarnak, directed & choreographed by Bergasse.
OUTDOOR SEASON (under a tent):
Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Suck and Give Me Back (June 4-6), streamed reading, by Daniella De Jesús. Casting and director TBA.
Who Can Ask for Anything More? The Songs of George Gershwin (June 10-13), directed by Julianne Boyd, with music direction by Jeffrey L. Page. Casting TBA.
Elizabeth Stanley in Concert (June 28)
TBA (July 9-24)
Boca (July 30 – Aug. 2), world premiere by Jessica Provenz, directed by Julianne Boyd offering an evening of short comedies about seniors living it up and going off the rails in the Sunshine State. Casting TBA.
Celebration of local Black artists (Aug. 3-8). Details TBA.
Andy Warhol in Iran reading (date TBA), by Brent Askari.
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Article: Actors Equity has issued new protocols for fully vaccinated productions. Additional information here.