Off Broadway Alliance Seminars Continue

Rob Driemeyer and I love curating these panels for the Off Broadway Alliance, and there’s another one coming up!

The Off Broadway Alliance, the organization of Off Broadway producers, theaters, general managers, press agents, and marketing firms, will hold the next event in its Seminars series focused on the Off Broadway producing process on Sunday, March 1, 2020 at The Theater Center (210 West 50th Street) at 11am.

The seminar is titled “What Things Cost: Budgeting Your Off Broadway Show." Industry experts will discuss the ins and outs of budgeting for Off Broadway plays and musicals of all sizes; in theatres with 99 to 499 seats, from one to eight performances a week. They will also share their insight on where to spend and where to save, and how to stretch the dollars and get the biggest bang for your buck.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/The-Off-Broadway-Alliance-to-Present-Panel-Discussion-WHAT-THINGS-COST-BUDGETING-YOUR-OFF-BROADWAY-SHOW

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOUG at Soho Playhouse

My producing partner (Rob Driemeyer of Driemeyer-Sills Productions) and I decided just this week to join the producing team of Happy Birthday Doug at Soho Playhouse. It’s Drew Droege’s new solo show—he was so terrific in Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, and he’s wonderful in this all-new, multi-character show.

Read more here

Directing DEATHTRAP at Millbrook - my fifth year there!

Back at Millbrook Playhouse for my 5th season (and the playhouse's 57th) directing Ira Levin's DEATHTRAP in June. I treasure my annual sojourn to rural PA to just hit the reset button on everything and renew my creativity at the basic level. As a longtime ardent Ira Levin fan I'm particularly excited for this one…it seems I’m working my way through all the thrillers young Morgan hoped he'd get to do--directing DIAL 'M' FOR MURDER, WAIT UNTIL DARK, and now DEATHTRAP at Millbrook; producing AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION at Judson Theatre Company; and acting in productions of AND THEN...(back when it was called TEN LITTLE INDIANS) and BAD SEED long, long ago. Only a few more of the big ones left!

PS - Using classic Fraver original Broadway art for the visual here until the Millbrook season art comes out...

Amanda Bearse & Teresa Ganzel are THE ODD COUPLE at Judson Theatre Company

Amanda Bearse will play Olive Madsion and Teresa Ganzel will play Florence Unger in Judson Theatre Company’s March production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple (Female Version). Performances begin Thursday, March 26 and run through Sunday, March 29, 2020 at Owens Auditorium at the newly renovated Bradshaw Performing Arts Center (3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, NC 28374).

The Odd Couple (Female Version) is Neil Simon’s 1985 reworking of his theatre, film, and television perennial, The Odd Couple. Oscar Madison and Felix Unger are now Olive Madison and Florence Unger, the poker game is now Trivial Pursuit, and the Pidgeon Sisters are the Costazuela Brothers.  The Odd Couple (Female Version) is a riotously funny comedy classic centered around two wildly mismatched roommates living together in New York City. What happens to a friendship when a neat-freak and a slob try to co-exist?

AMANDA BEARSE (Olive Madison) played Marcy D’Arcy on over 250 episodes of Fox’s Married…With Children during its 11-season run, and co-starred in the cult horror film Fright Night opposite Chris Sarandon. After graduating the Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner, Bearse began her professional acting career in New York on All My Children. Directing episodes of Married…With Children launched her episodic tv directing career, and she went on to direct episodes of many other series including MADtv. Reba, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, George Lopez, The Jamie Foxx Show, Dharma & Greg, and Jessie (among others). After over three decades in entertainment, Amanda made her off-Broadway directing, as well as acting, debut in 2018 at New York City Center with Party Face starring Hayley Mills, coming full circle with her work in theater.

TERESA GANZEL (Florence Unger) is beloved by Judson Theatre Company audiences for her memorable portrayal of Truvy in 2014’s Steel Magnolias.  She is perhaps best known to audiences everywhere from her 32 appearances on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, for playing Jackie Gleason’s wife in The Toy starring Richard Pryor, and for starring opposite Jeff Goldblum in Transylvania 6-5000. She also appeared opposite Bill Paxton in the comedy mini-series Fresno starring Carol Burnett. Teresa was a series regular on The Duck Factory with Jim Carrey, Roxie with Andrea Martin, and Teachers Only with Lynn Redgrave and Jean Smart. She has made dozens of memorable guest appearances on beloved shows including Three’s Company (as Greedy Gretchen), Coach, Mama’s Family, Alf, Newhart, Love Boat, Hotel, and Married…with Children. Game show fans may remember Teresa as a celebrity player on The $25,000 Pyramid and $100,000 Pyramid tournaments as well as Super Password and Hollywood Squares. Teresa’s distinctive voice can be heard in blockbuster films like Despicable Me 3, Toy Story 3, Monsters University, Monsters Inc., Up, Wall-E, Horton Hears a Who!, and Cars. Her recent theatre credits include Harvey starring French Stewart at Laguna Beach Playhouse; Heartbreak Help with Melissa Peterman and Marisa Jaret Winokur; the national tour and Off-Broadway production of Viagara Falls; and Meet & Greet with Vicki Lewis. 

Following a successful national tour, Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple (Female Version) debuted on Broadway in 1985 starring Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno.  Simon’s original play, The Odd Couple, bowed on Broadway in 1965 starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney,  and was revived in 2006 with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It was adapted for the screen in 1968 with Matthau and Jack Lemmon, with a sequel following in 1998. It has been the basis of four television series.

The performance schedule for The Odd Couple (Female Version)  is as follows:

Thursday, March 26, 2020 at 7:00 pm (early curtain, opening night)

Friday, March 27 at 8:00 pm

Saturday, March 28 at 2:00 pm (matinee)

Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 pm

Sunday, March 29 at 3:00 pm (matinee, closing performance)

To purchase tickets online now to The Odd Couple (Female Version) or request additional information, please visit http://judsontheatre.com/. Tickets will be available to purchase in person at local outlets beginning March 1.  Discounted Group Rates (10+) are available online, or email: JudsonTheatre@gmail.com; Discount Student and Military Rush tickets available at the door (ID required, limit 2 per ID).

 “You’re guaranteed to laugh,” states Morgan Sills (Executive Producer). “I’ve worked with both of these stars before and it’s a major coup to have them appearing in a show together. This production is going to be fun all the way. And our early ticket sales have been strong, both with groups and individuals.”

“We wanted to do another Neil Simon show after the success of Eve Plumb and Rex Smith in Plaza Suite and Robert Wuhl and Don Most in The Sunshine Boys, and The Odd Couple (Female Version) is the perfect choice to open our ninth season.”  says JTC’s Artistic Director, Daniel Haley.

ABOUT JUDSON THEATRE COMPANY:

As Moore County’s only professional theatre, Judson Theatre Company has been bringing the stars to the Sandhills since 2012. JTC is the recipient of the 2016 North Carolina Theatre Conference (NCTC) George A. Parides Professional Theatre Award for Excellence In Professional Theatre and multiple BroadwayWorld Raleigh Awards. Designated the Professional Theatre Company in Residence at Sandhills Community College, previous JTC productions include Love, Loss, and What I Wore starring Sally Struthers, Kim Coles, and Joyce Reehling; And Then There Were None starring Alison Arngrim;  Love Letters starring Hollywood icon Tab Hunter and TV favorite Joyce DeWitt; Driving Miss Daisy starring four-time Emmy winner Michael Learned; and Tuesdays With Morrie starring Jamie Farr. For more information, visit http://www.judsontheatre.com.               

FOREVER PLAID #16! at ArtisTree Music Theatre Festival

Had a blast directing FOREVER PLAID (my 16th production) at ArtisTree Music Theatre Festival. We opened Friday, October 11 and run through the 26th. It’s a beautiful space in a beautiful place, and Artistic Director Josh D. Smith has brought together a hardworking family of talented professionals to make the work really excellent and worthwhile. If you’re in/near VT the next few weeks, check it out!

L-R: Ben Lurye (Sparky), Patrick Scholl (Frankie), Nick Endsley (Jinx), and Joseph B. Strickland (Smudge)

As for revisiting FOREVER PLAID again—it means so much, it’s hard to put into words. I’ll just reprint my Director’s Notes from the program here:

EACH ONE SEEKING HAPPINESS by Morgan Sills

“I DIDN’T INTEND FOR THE SHOW TO BE A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE,” writes Forever Plaid author Stuart Ross, IN ALL CAPS, in his notes that preface the script. “It is supposed to be like the reverse of Back to the Future. We are showing what would happen if people with a 1950s sensibility came to [the present day.]”

Sixteen productions in, and having worked on the show on both sides of the footlights, my perspective on the show continues to evolve. Underneath the catchy tunes and witty script Forever Plaid is many things: a story of second chances, a backstager, a jukebox revue. Lately, it resonates most deeply with me as a ghost story. How would you respond if you were offered the opportunity to return from the beyond to resolve the unresolved, to complete the unfinished? As you sit in your seat reading this, think…what parts of your life would you fix, what relationships would you repair?

Thematically similar to Carousel or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, in its scant 90-minute running time Forever Plaid doesn’t wait around. It was written during the AIDS-era late 1980s and ran in New York from 1990-94, when scores of people in the arts were dying, often with very little warning. What other revue manages to be so entertaining, and yet pose so many big questions: if we know that no one is guaranteed a tomorrow, what are you doing with your today? how do you find your family when your blood family lets you down? how do you own your life for what it is?

The songs of Forever Plaid traffic in real, sincere, straightforward emotion in a manner completely contrary to today’s ironic world. This musical celebrates the value of having good manners and decorum. Every performance is different because the audience is a character in the play. It’s just the songs, the Plaids, the instrumentalists, and you. And a professional cast like you’re seeing in this production ensures that you’re seeing Forever Plaid at its best.

Sharing music together can be a means of healing the parts of us that are broken. When the Plaids were alive, the lyrics of these songs offered them a kind of salvation, a forecast for their futures, a reason to hope. They’re waiting for the words to come true. And in a way, aren’t we all?