Latest in Public Theater

A new musical featuring the music and lyrics by Alicia Keys, and apparently based on the R&B singer-songwriter’s young life, is in development at New York’s Off Broadway Public Theater. The production, titled Hell’s Kitchen after the Manhattan neighborhood where Keys was raised, has some…

EXCLUSIVE: Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright who won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for her Topdog/Underdog, will make her on-stage debut this fall in the world premiere Public Theater Off Broadway staging of her Plays For the Plague Year. Parks’ performance in the production – the complete cast was announced today – will be…

UPDATE, July 23 New York’s Public Theater has canceled tonight’s Free Shakespeare in the Park performance of Merry Wives, the third consecutive cancellation of the show after a member of the production tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this week. In a series of Tweets today, the Public wrote, “On Wednesday, we…

So maybe Joan of Arc plays second fiddle to few saints in history, but on stage even she’s no match for Glenn Close. As the title character in Mother of the Maid, Jane Anderson’s eccentric and startlingly play opening tonight Off Broadway at the Public Theater, Close takes on history and wins. Mother of the Maid…

Mother of the Maid, the new Off Broadway play teaming Glenn Close with her The Wife screenwriter Jane Anderson, begins previews next week and has already gotten a three-week extension. The Public Theater announced today that the play – which stars Close as the mother of Joan of Arc – will now run through Sunday, Dec…

In 1971 and ’72, I worked in a theater company that had spun off from a graduate directing workshop at Yale taught by Nikos Psacharopoulos, a legendary teacher who founded the Williamstown Theatre Festival. We called ourselves N.A.T.E. –  the New America Theater Ensemble – until we were informed via a cease and desist…

Michael Friedman, the phenomenally talented composer and lyricist of theatrical works, including Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, died today due to complications related to HIV/AIDS. He was 41, and word of his passing shocked and devastated the theater community. Friedman’s death was confirmed by the Public Theater…

EXCLUSIVE: Yesterday’s press release promoting New York Classical Theatre’s production of The Rivals, a comedy dating from 1775, promised “It is not controversy, but comedy. It is not Shakespeare, but Sheridan. It is not Julius Caesar, but The Rivals. There is no Donald Trump, but there are wonderful Equity actors…

Monday night was the official opening of the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare In The Park production of Julius Caesar. But reaction to the show, which depicts Caesar and his wife as First Couple lookalikes, began earlier, when Delta Air Lines and Bank of America withdrew their support, followed by a distancing…

UPDATE Monday afternoon: The National Endowment for the Arts, which is facing a Trump administration effort to eliminate the agency, issued a statement distancing itself from the Public Theater’s Julius Caesar production “to correct a misunderstanding” about funding. Read more here. EARLIER: On Sunday afternoon, a few…

UPDATE, Monday, 1 PM: The National Endowment for the Arts has issued the following statement regarding the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater presentation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park: “The National Endowment for the Arts makes grants to nonprofit organizations for…

UPDATED with Hamlet info, below. Downton Abbey and Ragtime star Elizabeth McGovern will return to Broadway this fall, 27 years after playing Ophelia to Stephen Lang’s Hamlet. She’ll star in Time and the Conways, the first Broadway revival of the J.B. Priestly (An Inspector Calls) drama since its 1938 premiere…