Mainstage Season
THE 2019 MAINSTAGE SEASON
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May 28 - June 16
The World Premiere of
STARRING
Tovah Feldshuh
(The Walking Dead, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Golda's Balcony)
and
Wade Dooley
(Jersey Boys)
A New Comedy by Wade Dooley
Directed by Scott Schwartz (Bay Street's Intimate Apparel, Golda's Balcony starring Tovah Feldshuh)
By popular demand, the hit of Bay Street's 2018 New Works Festival takes its premiere bow! THE PROMPTER follows veteran actress Irene Young, who, after a forty-year absence, is returning to the Broadway stage. But now, she can’t do it alone; so the production hires a young actor to be her prompter. But, this isn’t her story, it’s his. Based on real events, THE PROMPTER is a funny, heartfelt, untold, behind-the-scenes look at Broadway through the eyes of a young dreamer.
BIOS:
Tovah Feldshuh (Irene Young) is a 6-time Tony & Emmy nominee and the winner of 4 Drama Desks, 4 Outer Critic Circle, 2 Dramalogues, The Theatre World, Obie, Lucille Lortel and Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress. Among her many Broadway credits, Tovah starred in William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony which was directed by Scott Schwartz and became the longest running one woman show in Broadway history. She also starred in Scott Schwartz’s acclaimed production of Arsenic & Old Lace at the Dallas Theater Center opposite Betty Buckley. Her latest role on Broadway was for Stephen Schwartz, in the Tony-winning Broadway revival of Pippin as Grandma Berthe singing The show-stopping “No Time at All” while simultaneously doing a full out trapeze act. Her latest television series includes The Walking Dead and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. She was awarded three honorary doctorates and has received the Israel Peace Medal and Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award. Ms. Feldshuh is the proud wife of attorney Andrew Harris Levy and mother of Brandon married to Jami, Amanda married to Joel and Gramee to Rafael Levi Ryzowy. www.tovahfeldshuh.com and @tovahfeld
Wade Dooley (Playwright) is a writer/actor living in Jackson Heights, Queens. Some favorite writing credits include Broadway Bares: Rock Hard, On Demand, and Strip U with co-writer Hunter Bell, Stars in the Alley with host Tituss Burgess, The Diary of a Dancer (Best Solo Show 2010 DC Fringe Fest). Wade is an alumnus of Running Deer Theatre Lab, Goodspeed’s Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Finger Lake’s Musical Theatre Festival’s The PiTCH. As an actor, some favorite credits include Film: The Last Five Years. Theatre: NEWSical The Musical, The Awesome 80s Prom, La Cage Aux Folles, The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd. Tour: Jersey Boys, The Trip to Bountiful, The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Wade is represented by Ben Izzo at Abrams Artists Agency. He is a graduate of Bradley University.
Scott Schwartz (Director) is the Artistic Director of Bay Street Theater. Most recently, he directed the world premiere of the new musical The Prince of Egypt at both TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in California and at Fredericia Teater in Denmark. As a director, he has worked on and off-Broadway, in major regional theaters across the country, and in the UK and Japan. On Broadway, he directed Golda’s Balcony and Jane Eyre (co-directed with John Caird). Off-Broadway, he directed Murder for Two, Bat Boy: The Musical (Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards, Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical; Drama Desk Award nomination, Outstanding Director of a Musical), tick, tick…BOOM! (OCC, Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical; Drama Desk nomination, Outstanding Director of a Musical), Gigantic (Vineyard), The Foreigner (Roundabout), Rooms: A Rock Romance, Kafka’s The Castle (OCC nomination, Outstanding Director of a Play), and No Way to Treat a Lady. At New York City Opera he directed Séance on a Wet Afternoon. The regional theaters he has worked at include ACT, Alley, Alliance Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Dallas Theatre Center, Denver Center, The Geffen, Goodspeed Opera House, La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe, Pasadena Playhouse, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Signature, Theatre Under the Stars, and Westport Country Playhouse among others. He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and a graduate of Harvard University.
June 25 - July 21
The World Premiere of
A new play by Alan Fox
Directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien (Hairspray, The Coast of Utopia, All My Sons)
STARRING
Tony & Academy Award Winner
Mercedes Ruehl
Torch Song, Hustlers, Viva La Vida!
Rodney Richardson
The Day Shall Come, CBS's FBI, Somebody's Daughter
Sasha Diamond
Blindspot, The Romanoffs, Murphy Brown
Passion and politics collide in this searing new drama. Safe Space is set at an elite university and explores political correctness and the reaction to triggers on campus in America today. When a star African-American professor faces accusations of racism from a student, the head of the college must intervene, setting off an explosive chain of events where each of them must navigate an ever-changing minefield of identity politics, ethics, and core beliefs.
Playwright Alan Fox burst onto the scene with his play SAFE SPACE, which is set to premiere this summer at Bay Street Theater. SAFE SPACE caught the attention of Amy Pascal, who is now producing Alan’s feature adaptation of the play, as well as his untitled movie about Charlie Chaplin. On the TV side, Alan is adapting his novel A Mannequin Life as a TV series with ABC Signature and Kerry Washington’s Simpson Street producing.
Director Jack O’Brien is a three-time Tony & Drama Desk Award-winning director, member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, and author of Jack Be Nimble, a memoir published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2013. Jack won the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for his 2003 Broadway production of Hairspray. He received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for Henry IV and The Coast of Utopia I, II, & III. Additional Broadway credits include Porgy & Bess (Tony & Drama Desk Nom.), Damn Yankees, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, The Full Monty (Tony Nom. & Drama Desk Winner), Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love (Drama Desk Winner), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Tony Nom.), Catch Me If You Can, Dead Accounts, Macbeth, It’s Only a Play, The Front Page, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His production of The Good Doctor and Broadway revival of Most Happy Fella were produced for PBS, and Jack’s Street Scene was televised on “Live from Lincoln Center.” Most recently, Jack directed the Spring 2018 Broadway revival of Rogers & Hammerstein’s Carousel and the Fall 2018 production of Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem at Lincoln Center.
July 30 - August 25
Book by Herbert & Dorothy Fields
Music & Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Directed by Sarna Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George, Bay Street's Frost/Nixon)
Irving Berlin’s ANNIE GET YOUR GUN is one of the most beloved musicals of Broadway’s Golden Age. It tells the story of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and her tempestuous romance with fellow sharpshooter Frank Butler. Acclaimed director Sarna Lapine will bring a fresh, modern approach to the story, incorporating elements from Dorothy Fields’ original book to create the strongest and most revolutionary Annie Oakley you’ve ever seen. This musical includes such beloved songs as There’s No Business Like Show Business, Anything You Can Do, and I Got Sun in the Morning which will be performed by a country western, bluegrass band.
Irving Berlin, the composer of the music and lyrist for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, was born in Tyumen, Russia, on May 11, 1888, and immigrated to New York as a child. He would become one of the most popular songwriters in the United States, with hits like Alexander's Ragtime Band, What'll I Do, God Bless America, and White Christmas. His music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook.
Herbert & Dorothy Fields are the brother and sister team who wrote the book for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. Dorothy started writing songs for Tin Pan Alley and Broadway in the 1920s. From the 1930s on, Dorothy also worked for Hollywood with her partner, composer Jimmy McHugh. She won an Oscar for the song The Way You Look Tonight from Swing Time (1936), which she had written with Jerome Kern. Herbert was a writer and actor, known for Hit the Deck (1955), 50 Million Frenchmen (1931) and Joy of Living (1938). Dorothy and Herbert won two Tony Awards in 1959 for Redhead including Best Musical and shared the award for Best Book/Libretto with Sidney Sheldon and David Shaw.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN director Sarna Lapine is a New York-based director and developer of new work. Upcoming: The Rape of Lucretia (Boston Lyric Opera), Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Little Women (Primary Stages) and Radioactive, a new musical by Eric Price and Will Reynolds (Manhattan School of Music). Recent: Into the Woods (Juilliard), Noises Off (Two River Theater) Frost/Nixon (Bay Street Theater), You Are Here, a new musical (Goodspeed Musicals); Photograph 51, Japan premiere (Umeda Arts Theater); Sondheim on Sondheim with the Boston Pops and the L.A. Phil; and the critically-acclaimed Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park with George, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. Sarna directed the second national tour of Lincoln Center Theater’s South Pacific and was Associate Director of The National Theatre’s War Horse (North American Tour and Japan production). She started out at Lincoln Center Theater as Bartlett Sher’s assistant director on The Light in the Piazza and worked with him on the Tony-award winning revival of South Pacific, as well as the new musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing!. She holds an MFA from Columbia University.
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