Theater
Gloria Estefan Musical Coming to Broadway in 2015
Keke Palmer to Become Broadway’s First Black Cinderella
After making entertainment history as television’s youngest-ever talk-show host, 20-year-old Keke Palmer will set another record as Broadway’s first black Cinderella in Rodgers and...
Director Leigh Silverman on Mounting the Broadway Musical Violet and Working with Sutton Foster
Violet is one of those rare Broadway shows where less is more. The sparsely set stage is a perfect showcase for veteran Broadway actress Sutton Foster to soar in her Tony-nominated role. Foster...
New York’s Women’s Project Theater Hires New Producing Artistic Director
After a tumultuous shake-up last month, the Women’s Project Theater in Manhattan has found a new producing artistic director in Lisa McNulty. She will be leaving her position as the artistic line...
The First Wives Club Musical Planned for Broadway
Proving that boomer nostalgia needn’t always refer back to Mad Men days, a musical adaptation of the 1996 comedy The First Wives Club is in the works for Broadway. But first, it will reopen next...
Julie Taymor Wraps Up Shooting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Film and theater director Julie Taymor has just wrapped up shooting on her fifth film: a big-screen version of her visually lavish reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The...
New Annual List Launched to Spotlight Women’s Plays
The latest effort to combat gender inequality in theater comes courtesy of The Kilroys, a group of LA-based women playwrights and producers founded last year. The Kilroys have launched The List,...
Audra McDonald Sets Two Records at the 2014 Tony Awards
Theater legend Audra McDonald set two records at the Tonys last night by becoming the first performer to win all four acting categories and receiving the highest number of acting prizes in the...
Winnie Holzman to Receive Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement
Winnie Holzman, best known for creating My So-Called Life, Once and Again and co-creating Huge, will receive a lifetime achievement honor for writing the book and lyrics to the worldwide hit Wicked,...
Glenn Close Books a Movie and a Broadway Show
Big news day for Glenn Close, who will be returning to Broadway and the silver screen. Close’s most recent appearance on Broadway was in Sunset Boulevard back in 1994. Her portrayal of Norma...
Fun Home is Coming to Broadway: The Graphic Memoir Turned Musical Aims to Open in Spring 2015
After a successful run at The Public Theatre, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical reimagining of Fun Home is hopefully going to be ready for a Broadway debut next spring. Fun Home has already...
The Tony Award Nominations: Women Writers Are Missing
The Tony Award nominations were handed out this morning. The thing I noticed immediately is that not a single play written by a woman was nominated. Turns out the problem is that a woman couldn’t...
Janine Nabers Wins Yale Playwriting Prize
The Yale Drama Series competition, which recognizes full-length, unpublished plays in English, has announced Janine Nabers the winner of its 2014 prize. Nabers was chosen by judge Marsha Norman,...
UK’s Channel 4 Exec Tessa Ross Becomes Head of National Theatre
Tessa Ross, the Channel 4 film and drama controller who’s been called “the mother of British filmmaking,” will leave her current position to head the National Theatre. Ross will take over NT...
Gemma Arterton Headed to London Stage in Made in Dagenham Musical
Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Byzantium) is headed to London’s West End to star in a musical adaptation of Made in Dagenham, the 2010 British drama about 1960s seamstresses fighting for equal...
New Fellowship for Women Playwrights Announced
New York City’s Drama League and Broadway director Michael Mayer have announced the creation of the Beatrice Terry Fellowship. The fellowship will support the development of an original work from...
DC Theaters to Launch Festival Showcasing Women Playwrights
The New York Times reports that 44 theater companies in Washington, DC, have joined forces to launch the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The inaugural event will take place over eight weeks...
Frozen: Let It Go… to Broadway!
Disney animated features don’t have the strongest track record on Broadway. While The Lion King remains a monster hit and the Beauty and the Beast stage production, which folded in 2007, boasts...
Maria Friedman Talks Directing Merrily We Roll Along
Last summer when I was in London, I had the opportunity to see one of the most under-rated shows of Stephen Sondheim’s career, Merrily We Roll Along. It’s got some of his best songs, but as a...
(You Oughta Know) There Will Be an Alanis Morisette Musical on Broadway
Alanis Morisette is riding the current wave of nineties nostalgia to Broadway. Her 1995 alt-rock album Jagged Little Pill, which helped usher angry rock chicks into mainstream radio and led to a...
Happy 10th Anniversary of Wicked
Today celebrates the 10th anniversary of the now classic musical, Wicked. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel, the show written by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz changed theatre forever. It...
Women Playwrights Make Up Half of the Most Popular Plays for the 2013–14 Season
American Theater magazine recently announced that David Ives’ Venus in Fur has been chosen to be performed in the most theatres around the country during the upcoming 2013–14 season. They also...
Cross Post: How To Build Gender Parity Initiatives and Influence Theatre
The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a grassroots advocacy group of women and men whose mission is to promote female theater artists in LA and beyond. We’ve been around for two and a...
Guest Post: We Came! We Saw! We Threw Bananas! WE WERE THEATRE!
Since 2001 Guerrilla Girls On Tour! have staged an annual protest around the time of the Tony Awards to highlight sexism in theatre. We chose the Tony Awards because we wanted people to think about...
Two Women Written Shows Bound for Broadway This Fall
Katie Holmes’ first professional engagement in her post Tom Cruise life will be on the Broadway stage in Theresa Rebeck’s latest play Dead Accounts. The play premiered in January in Cincinnati...
Julie Taymor Talks About Why She Took on The Lion King
Here she is talking to former Disney chief Michael Eisner at the Aspen Ideas Festival https://medium.com/media/4d27489cc07caf17804240a953eb5868/href
Lynne Meadow Celebrates 40 Years as Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club
Lynne Meadow has been a force of New York theatre for the last 40 years. She has taken the Manhattan Theatre Club from the Upper East Side to Broadway. She was the first women accepted into the...
Why is Clybourne Park on Broadway and not Water by the Spoonful?
This article in the LA Times: Quiara Alegría Hudes, post-Pulitzer, eyes the next chapter got me going about prizes and the treatment of women. I am trying to understand the divergent paths of two...
Cross- Post: After Audra McDonald’s Historic Tony Award Win, Will Hollywood Finally Fully Embrace Her Talent?
Congratulations are in order for Audra McDonald who made history during last night’s Tony Awards celebration, becoming the first black woman to claim 5 Tony Award wins; last night’s pickup for...
Trailer Watch: Les Miserables
Not woman centric but the trailer features Anne Hathaway singing I Dreamed a Dream. This looks really great. Opens December 7. h/t The Playlist
Julie Taymor Speaks Out
Julie Taymor has not been able to speak out since she was removed as director of Spiderman over a year ago. The legal documents have been speaking for her. But it looks like she is finally trying to...
Hollywood Feminist Couple of the Day: Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs
The singing and acting couple (did you know they met while performing in the original company of Rent?) have started A Broader Way Foundation which created a camp for girls focusing on the creative...
Tony Nominations: Good for Female Directors, Horrible for Female Writers
Last June after a season where not a single female playwright was produced on Broadway it was announced that there would be at least five women with plays in the just ended 2011–2012 season. Four...
The Guthrie Theatre Announces Its 50th Anniversary Season With No Female Playwrights on the Program
The Guthrie Theatre is one of the most prestigious regional theatres in America. Next year it will be celebrating it’s 50th anniversary season. Joe Dowling, the 7th Artistic director of the...
Cate Blanchett is Busy Working Just Not on the Big Screen
If you’ve been wondering where Cate Blanchett has been over the last couple of years you are not alone. She’s been working — hard — running the very prestigious Sydney Theatre...
Julie Taymor Responds to Lawsuit Fighting for Her Reputation and Future Jobs
There is nothing like reading legal papers on a Monday morning to get your blood boiling. Late last week Julie Taymor’s lawyers responded to the part of the Spiderman lawsuit that has not been...
Jennifer Haley Wins 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
US based playwright Jennifer Haley has been awarded the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the most prestigious award for female playwrights for her play The Nether. She prevailed over 9 other...
Julie Taymor and Spiderman Reach Partial Settlement
It’s always interesting how the filing of the lawsuits get so much news and the settlements…not so much, but this one is important to note. Last week the producers of Spiderman and director...
Ten Finalists for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Now in it’s 34th year, this is the most prestigious prize for female playwrights. It’s like the female Pulitzer. It’s a way for female playwrights to get noticed, since they are stil not...
Interview with Dori Berinstein — Director of Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
Women and Hollywood: You’ve been a producer of Broadway shows for a number of years. How did you segue into becoming a documentary filmmaker? Dori Berinstein: I’ve actually been in the film...
Listen to Holland Taylor Talk About Playing Ann Richards in a New One Woman Show
Ann begins previews at the Kennedy Center in DC before hopefully coming to Broadway. Here is Taylor talking to David Gregory in a Meet the...
Marsha Norman to Write Play Dealing with Plight of Women and Girls
The United Nations Department of Public Information, through its Creative Community Outreach Initiative (CCOI) has joined forces with Theatre for Humans a producing entity out of LA to create a play...
Update: Five Female Playwrights Will be on Broadway This Fall
Here is an update to yesterday’s post about Theresa Rebeck’s play opening on Broadway. It seems that there will be several female written plays opening on the great white way this fall. Great...
A Female Playwright Will Be on Broadway Next Season
After a disappointing year where not a single female written new play was produced on Broadway, word comes in now that next season will at least have some female representation. Theresa Rebeck’s...
Guest Post: We Want More Female-Written Plays! by Katherine Bowman
The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative (LA FPI) recently conducted a study on the number of female-written plays produced in LA. The number is a disappointing yet unsurprising 20%. In...
Julie Taymor Talks Spiderman at LA Theatre Conference
I’m a bit obsessed about the Julie Taymor/Spiderman situation. Mostly I’m obsessed because of what this will mean for her career, but also what it will mean for other women’s careers. Since her...
A Class Act: Julie Taymor Appears Onstage at the Opening of Spiderman
After being thrown under the bus and fired several months ago and not being paid for her work (she is now in arbitration with the show to get back pay), Julie Taymor was welcomed onstage following...
In Their Own Voices: The Female Tony Winners
Frances McDormand — she won for best actress in a play for Good. I love the denim jacket. Sutton Foster — best actress in a musical — she won for Anything Goes Nikki M....
Tony Awards Winners: The Women
It was a sucky season for women creatives (meaning playwrights and musical creators) at the Tonys this year. Don’t only take my word for it. Here’s another piece by Princeton academic Jill Dolan...
The Lilly Awards: Saving Women From Disappearing in Theatre
The Tony Awards are on Sunday night. There are very few female nominees. Even the NY Times is starting to think this is a problem. (Note to NY Times theatre writers and reviewers — don’t...
The 2nd Annual Lilly Awards to Be Handed Out On June 6 in NYC
This Monday, June 6, the 2nd annual Lilly Awards named for playwright Lillian Hellman will be awarded in NYC. “The Lilly Awards were created to recognize the extraordinary contributions made by...