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Arena Stage's new musical adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time has opened! Staging this intergalactic voyage is Nicholas Barrón as Calvin, Tony nominee Amber Gray as Mrs. Whatsit, Taylor Iman Jones as Meg Murry, Vicki Lewis as Mrs. Which, Mateo Lizcano as Charles Wallace, and Stacey Sargeant as Mrs. Who. Get a first look at photos here! Directed by two-time Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans, A Wrinkle in Time will run through July 20, 2025, in Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater. A Wrinkle in Time is an interstellar world-premiere musical adaptation based on the classic novel by Madeleine L'Engle that has captured the hearts and imaginations of generations. The musical features a book by Doris Duke Artist Award recipient Lauren Yee and music and lyrics by two-time Obie Award winner Heather Christian. While experimenting with time travel and The Fifth...

[This story contains spoilers from the FX limited series Clipped.]

Adapting true narratives is often a tricky proposition. And it gets even trickier when it’s as unbelievable and unprecedented as the fallout from 80-year-old Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s viral racist comments against Black people back in 2014 — just as Instagram and Twitter were in their infancy, and TMZ and Kardashian culture was extending their cultural imprint.

All of that fuels the FX series Clipped, which ended its limited series run on Tuesday.

Having as its guide the ESPN 30 for 30 podcast The Sterling Affairs from Ramona Shelburne (the ESPN writer also served as an executive producer on the series) was both helpful and challenging for Gina Welch, the creator and showrunner for the TV adaptation, whose impressive credits as both writer and producer include Feud and Ray Donovan.

Clipped, starring acclaimed The Matrix and Black-ish actor Laurence Fishburne as Clippers coach Doc Rivers, whom...

Hello, and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline. I missed a few weeks due to being at the Sundance Film Festival, but we are back in business.

In today’s conversation I chat with Justin Chien who currently stars in the lead series regular in the Netflix action-drama series, The Brothers Sun, which also stars Sam Li, and international action star and Oscar Winner Michelle Yeoh. I missed a few episodes due to covering the Sundance Film Festival, but we’re back!

The Brothers Sun follows Bruce (Li) and Charles Sun (Chien). Bruce learns about his family’s profession as Taipei’s most renowned gangsters, with his brother Charles being a hardened criminal raised by his crime boss father. After an attempted assassination on his father, Charles has to move to LA to keep his family safe. Additionally,...

The Center Theatre Group is pausing its season programming at its Mark Taper Forum theater and laying off 10 percent of staff across the theater company after experiencing sustained drops in ticket revenue and donations, alongside rising production costs following the pandemic.

“We are still facing a crisis unlike any other in our fifty-six-year history,” the theater organization said in a post.

The theater organization will stop season programming at the 739-seat Taper starting in July and through the 2023-2024 season. This will impact the world premiere of Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa FastHorse and directed by Michael John Garcés, which Center Theatre Group plans to move to a future season. The tour stop of Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee and directed by Chay Yew, has been canceled.

A Transparent Musical, based on the Amazon Prime TV series, is currently running at the Taper through June 25.

The...

The 2023-24 theater season at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum will be halted in July due to what its operators are calling the aftereffects of the Covid pandemic, an economic “crisis unlike any other in our fifty-six-year history.”

In a statement, Center Theatre Group, which operates the Taper as well as the Ahmanson and Kirk Douglas venues, said that the pause in programming at the Taper will include the postponement of the world premiere of Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa FastHorse and the cancelation of the previously announced tour stop of Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee.

“Pausing season programming at the Taper is a difficult but necessary decision that will impact artists and audiences,” the Ctg statement says, adding that the move “is particularly painful for the talented and committed Ctg staff who have dedicated so much to bringing great theatre to L.A.”

According to Ctg,...

Exclusive: Actor Laurence Fishburne will present a workshop of his new solo stage show Like They Do In The Movies this July as part of the New York Stage and Film Summer Season at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Directed by Leonard Foglia, Like They Do In The Movies, written and performed by Fishburne, will makes its world premiere with a Nysaf staging on July 28 and 29. The Matrix Trilogy star Fishburne describes the solo show as “the stories and lies people have told me. And that I have told myself.”

Fishburne won a Tony Award in 1992 for his portrayal of Sterling Johnson in the Broadway production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running.

The 38-year-old Nysaf is considered to be among the preeminent theater incubators in the country. Among the theater works with developmental roots there are Hamilton, Hadestown, Side Man, The Humans, American Idiot, Doubt...

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved and acclaimed children’s book classic, is being developed as a stage musical, producers announced today.

The adaptation will feature music and lyrics by Obie Award-winning composer Heather Christian (Oratorio for Living Things), book by Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band) and direction by two-time Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation).

Dates for productions, as well as additional creative team members, will be announced in 2023.

Although seven current play adaptions of Wrinkle are available for license, in addition to television and film adaptations, the new project will mark the first musical version of the novel and the first Broadway production of any kind.

The project has been shepherded by Charlotte Jones Voiklis, L’Engle’s granddaughter and director of her literary estate. She’ll produce along with Diana Dimenna and Plate Spinner Productions, and Aaron Glick.

“Knowing my grandmother’s love of and devotion to theater,...

Exclusive: Former ICM Partners TV literary and packaging agent Katie Cates is becoming a manager at Artists First. Cates spent the last eight years at ICM where she worked with writers, directors, actors, comedians and musicians. She is among the slew of ICM agents who departed on the eve of the agency’s acquisition by CAA last month.

At ICM, Cates worked with such established writer/showrunners as John Shiban (Ozark), Meredith Lavender and Marcie Ulin (The Flight Attendant), Matthew Carnahan (House of Lies) and Christy Stratton (Modern Family), Michelle Nader (Dollface), Karin Gist (Our Kind of People) Betsy Thomas (My Boys), Angeli Millan (Boomerang) and Matthew Newman (The Great Game), in addition to up-and-coming voices such as Marcos Luevanos (Love Victor), Emilia Serrano (Promised Land), Michelle Badillo (A League of Their Own), writer/director Becca Gleason (While You Were Breeding), creators Tim Schauer & Kuba Soltysiak (Boo Bitch) and playwrights...

Exclusive: In competition, Garrett Basch’s new company Dive has won the television rights to Afterparties, the collection of stories by Anthony Veasna So that became an instant bestseller when it was published last year by HarperCollins. The intention is to turn it into a half hour series, “a naturalistic comedy with heart,” based on the characters and anecdotes written by So about the lives of Cambodian-Americans. Lauren Yee will produce. The author, the son of former Cambodian-American refugees, died before the book was published.

Dive’s Rachel Foley brought in the project and will oversee on behalf of the company. Dive will be executive producer along with Yee. The book is described by its publisher as seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, an expansive portrait of a new generation of Cambodian-Americans as they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer...

Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre will take its acclaimed production of Lauren Yee’s play with music Cambodian Rock Band on the road, marking the theater company’s first production to tour. The production, with songs by L.A. band Dengue Fever and directed by Chay Yew, was praised by critics upon its Signature opening earlier this year, and has been mentioned by The New York Times as a potential contender for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nomination.

The North American tour will be presented by Broadway & Beyond Theatricals during the 2021-2022 season, and will play Berkeley Repertory Theatre and other stops to be announced along with on-sale dates and casting.

Playwright Lauren Yee said in a statement, “When I first wrote Cambodian Rock Band, I never could have anticipated the deep investment and love audiences have shown for this moving, universal father/daughter story. Thanks to that incredible...

The 65th Annual Drama Desk Awards honoring the best in New York theater were announced Saturday night, with The Inheritance being named Outstanding Play and A Strange Loop taking the trophy for Outstanding Musical.

The remote ceremony was hosted by Frank Dilella. Normally, the awards are announced at a gathering of theater artists and critics in New York City. But this year, the gathering was replaced by a pre-recorded ceremony because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The awards show had initially been scheduled to air May 31, but was postponed due to the Black Lives Matter protests in New York City.

Tonight’s ceremony aired on NY1 and streamed on NY1.com and DramaDeskAwards.com. The Drama Desk Awards recipients were decided by theater critics, journalists, editors and publishers covering theater. Read the complete list of winners below.

65th Annual Drama Desk Award Winners:

Outstanding Play

Cambodian Rock Band, by Lauren Yee,...

The Inheritance, Sea Wall/A Life, Slave Play and Girl From The North Country are among the Broadway nominees of this year’s Drama League Awards, along with a significant shows of Off Broadway productions.

Honoring productions that opened during the Covid-shortened 2019-2020 season, the nominations were announced by Beetlejuice’s Alex Brightman and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer via livestream last night. Voting is currently open for Drama League members through May 22, with winners to be announced via livestream in June.

More from DeadlineWatch: Terrence McNally Video Tribute Set For Drama League Awards Online EventBroadway's 'Moulin Rouge!' Star Aaron Tveit Tests Positive For Covid-19, Symptoms "Very Mild"Broadway's 'Moulin Rouge! The Musical' Cancels Today's Performances "Out Of Abundance Of Caution"; No Positive Tests For Coronavirus - Update

Among the individual performers nominated for the League’s Distinguished Performance Award were Raúl Esparza, David Alan Grier, Jonathan Groff, Jake Gyllenhaal,...

What happens when the music stops? What happens when it vanishes, is banned, or even becomes punishable by death? That’s one of the hooks that draws audiences into Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, by turns a boisterous, solemn, and periodically campy new Off-Broadway production that gets its ya-ya’s out — and lets audiences do the same. It reveals the story of one survivor’s journey through the horror of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, which began after the U.S. withdrew troops from Cambodia in the...

ICM Partners has named six more agents Partners across several departments. The new Partners are Courtny Catzel in Non-Scripted, Di Glazer in Theater, Shade Grant in Non-Scripted, Andrea Johnson in Concerts, Craig Shapiro in Talent and Howie Tanenbaum in TV. The promotions are effective immediately.

Catzel was elevated to Co-Head of New York Non-Scripted Programming, alongside Grant, after joining the agency in 2012. Catzel represents non-fiction and documentary creators, as well as unscripted, news and sports talent. Her roster includes Bungalow Media + Entertainment (Lifetime’s Surviving Jeffrey Epstein), Large Eyes (Quibi’s Skrrt with Offset), Invent TV (Bravo’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City), Nigel Lythgoe Productions (Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance), Spring Films (Oscar & Emmy nominated The Look of Silence), Story Syndicate (HBO’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark), and filmmaker Rudy Valdez (HBO’s Emmy winning The Sentence). She also works with Karamo Brown...

Roughly two months ago American Theatre announced that for the second time in the past three seasons, Lauren Gunderson has topped their list of the most-produced playwrights in the country, her 33 professional productions among the 385 Theatre Communications Group's member theatres easily surpassing second place finisher Lauren Yee's 18, Tennessee Williams' 17 and more than doubling the totals of August Wilson and Neil Simon. She came in at 2 on last year's list after her first 1 finish the year before. For the record, Shakespeare, who would surely rank 1 every season, is excluded.

La Jolla Playhouse announces four of six productions for its 20202021 season, including the world premieres of Bhangin' It, book by Mike Lew Tiger Style and Rehana Lew Mirza DNA New Work Series' Child of Colonialism, music and lyrics by Sam Willmott, directed by Amy Anders Corcoran, co-produced with McCarter Theatre Center and Mother Russia, by Uc San Diego Mfa alumna Lauren Yee Cambodian Rock Band, directed by Tyne Rafaeli The Coast Starlight along with What the Constitution Means to Me, the acclaimed work by Pulitzer Prize finalist Heidi Schreck, directed by Oliver Butler and the previously-announced, Broadway-bound musical Lempicka, book and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer, music by Matt Gould, directed by 2019 Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin Broadway's Hadestown.

Pasadena Playhouse, the State Theater of California, in association with East West Players, presents the Los Angeles premiere of Lauren Yee's The Great Leap. Urgent, sharp-witted and fast-paced, The Great Leap is an unforgettable night of theater. As two men from different cultures reunite and find themselves at a crossroads - one man struggling to keep his career alive and an old friend flourishing in a career he never wanted - a young Chinese-American gets lost in the Tiananmen Square Protest and finds himself at the accidental center of international attention. All three men must face their past and struggle to find their own personal victories in this compelling drama directed by Tony Award winner Bd Wong.

Anna Deavere Smith has been named a playwright in residence of Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre’s 2019-20 season, with two of her groundbreaking plays set for revival.

Though Smith will not perform in either of the shows, her Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 are set to debut next October and April, respectively. Signature announced that a new play by the author will be produced in an upcoming season.

Signature’s Artistic Director Paige Evans said, “I’m delighted to be bringing Anna Deavere Smith to Signature next season. Anna revolutionized the theatrical form with her groundbreaking documentary work, and it will be fascinating to see how these two seminal plays resonate today.”

Also announced for Signature’s 2019-20 season is the first New York revival of Horton Foote’s The Young Man from Atlanta, which debuted at the Signature in 1995 before a 1997 Broadway staging. Performances begin Nov.

The 2019-2020 Signature Theatre Season will feature six works by five resident playwrights, including two productions by Signature's new Residency 1 playwright Anna Deavere Smith, world premiere plays from Residency 5 playwrights Katori Halland Dominique Morisseau, a New York premiere from new Residency 5 playwright Lauren Yee, and a new production of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play from Legacy playwright Horton Foote, the company announced today.

On the eve of the Tony Awards, ICM Partners has added Kate Pines to its theater department. Her appointment was announced by co-heads Patrick Herold and Di Glazer, to whom she will report.

Pines, who most recently served as the Literary Director of The Playwrights Realm, comes to the agency following a 15-year career in directing and new play development. During her tenure at The Playwrights Realm, she ran the company’s artist development programs and shepherded world premieres of several ICM-represented plays, including Sarah Delappe’s The Wolves and The Great Leap by Lauren Yee, as well as works by Anna Ziegler, Mfoniso Udofia, Donja Love, Ione Lloyd and others.

Prior to her tenure at Playwrights Realm, Pines served on the artistic staffs of Women’s Project Theater and The Public Theater.

ICM Partners has 13 Tony Award nominations across categories, including actors Nathan Lane, Tony Shalhoub, Condola Rashad and Michael Cera,...

Atlantic Theater Company presents the New York premiere production of The Great Leap, written by Lauren Yee and directed by Taibi Magar.The Great Leap stars Ali Ahn 'The Path' on Hulu, Ned Eisenberg Six Degrees of Separation, Tony Aidan Vo Pan Asian Rep's NoNo Boy, and Tony Award winner and Emmy Award nominee Bd Wong 'Mr. Robot,' 'Law amp Order Svu,' M. Butterfly.

Lauren Yee is this year's recipient of the National Arts Club's 2017 Kesselring Prize. The award, bestowed upon emerging playwrights since 1980, carries with it 25,000 and a two-week residency at the NationalArtsClub in order to develop new work.

The world premiere production of 'King of the Yees' opened at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre this Sunday, July 16, and BroadwayWorld has photos from the festivities below Written by Lauren Yee, directed by Joshua Kahan Brody and produced in association with Goodman Theatre, 'King of the Yees' will continue through August 6, 2017.

East West Players on Wednesday will open a playwriting competition with a $5,000 grand prize. The contest, dubbed “2042: See Change,” is part of an initiative to promote diversity in American theater. While Ewp considers itself to be “the nation’s premier Asian American theatre organization,” playwrights don’t need to be Asian to submit. “All the scripts are read blind—there’s no title and no author. We don’t know if they’re Asian or not, or male or female,” Tim Dang, Ewp’s producing artistic director, told Backstage. He noted a previous Ewp playwriting competition picked Les Thomas' "Cave Quest" as the winner. Moreover, all three winners of Ewp’s 2011 playwriting competition, which was called Face of the Future, have gone on to world premiere productions with two produced in house at Ewp and Lauren Yee’s “Samsara” set to open February 2015 at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.

Critically acclaimed theatre company The Playwrights Realm presents the New York premiere of Lauren Yee's new play The Hatmaker's Wife, directed by recent Obie Award winner Rachel Chavkin Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. The Hatmaker's Wife marks the first Playwrights Realm production at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater 416 West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, following previous engagements in several downtown Off-Broadway venues. The show opened last night, September 5 and you can check out complete photo coverage below...