News

Martin Benson, the co-founder and longtime artistic director of the Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory regional theater in Costa Mesa, California, died November 30 of a probable heart attack at his home in Huntington Beach, California. He was 87.

His death was announced by the theater’s Artistic Director David Ivers and Managing Director Suzanne Appel. The likely cause was reported to The New York Times by his stepson Justin Krumb.

Founded in 1964 by Benson and his San Francisco State University classmate David Emmes, South Coast Rep would go on to become of the country’s leading regional theaters, launching careers and an august roster of Broadway- and Off Broadway-bound plays. Among the latter: Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss, Donald Margulies Sight Unseen, Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain and The Violet Hour, Sam Shepard’s True West and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel.

Film and theater Producer Marc Platt and wife Julie have made a $1 million gift to McC Theater, one of Off Broadway’s leading not-for-profit companies, for the development and production of new musicals, McC announced today.

Named for Marc Platt’s late, theater-loving uncle, The Gary Platt Musical Initiative will begin its intended mission immediately for the 2019-20 season. The initiative will support new musicals over the course of five programming seasons.

“Beyond being my beloved uncle, Gary introduced generations of nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews to the world of musical theatre,” said Marc Platt, speaking on behalf of himself, his wife and their family (the couple’s sons include actors Ben Platt and Jonah Platt). “He had a remarkable gift for encouraging people to embrace their unique talents and pursue their dreams. An initiative that encourages new playwrights and songwriters to reach their potential is a legacy he would...

The deal covers film and television projects through Mockingbird Pictures banner.

Skydance has entered into a multi-year overall deal for feature films and television with producers Bonnie Curtis and Julie Lynn of Mockingbird Pictures.

The company has several projects in development with Curtis (pictured) and Lynn, including the upcoming AMC television series Dietland.

Curtis and Lynn first partnered at Mockingbird Pictures after producing Albert Nobbs in 2012. The pair have produced seven films together, including Arie Posin’s The Face Of Love, Victor Levin’s 5 To 7, and Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days In The Desert.

This year the duo has released Life, The Sweet Life, and Wakefield. Next on their slate is Marti Noxon’s To The Bone, which will premiere on Netflix in July.

Curtis’ industry start was as Steven Spielberg’s assistant; the beginning of a 15-year professional relationship with the director. After working on Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, Curtis transitioned...

North Carolina Theatre, the region's premier nonprofit professional regional theatre, just announced full casting for their eagerly anticipated production of Margaret Edson's Wit. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play will be led by Broadway's Judy McLane Vivan Bearing, Ph.D and feature Tony Award-winner Daisy Eagan Susie Monahan, R.N., B.S.N.. The thought-provoking story will run in the Aj Fletcher Opera Theater at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh, April 29-May 8, 2016.

By the time Audra McDonald got to work with Mike Nichols she was 31 and had already won three Tony awards, but had done limited work in television or movies. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, Wit starred Emma Thompson as a poetry professor suffering the indignities of her remaining days on a cancer ward. McDonald received an Emmy nomination playing the nurse who administers to the dying woman in what Roger Ebert called one of the best films of 2002, even though it was never theatrically released. “I learned so much being with him and feel

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Few directors can be said to have changed the way films are made, but Mike Nichols, who died Wednesday at 83, was one of them. His first film, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), ended decades of Hollywood censorship of adult content and freed the movies for mature language and subject matter ever after. His second film, "The Graduate," was the first serious mainstream movie to feature a rock soundtrack (spawning Simon and Garfunkel's hit "Mrs. Robinson") and, through its casting of Dustin Hoffman, expanded Hollywood's notion of what a leading man ought to look and sound like.

Nichols wasn't born in America (he and his family escaped from Nazi Germany when he was a child), but he was one of the best chroniclers of contemporary America -- its politics, its aspirations, its dreams, its aristocracy, and its successes and failures -- in movies. His youth in Manhattan as the son...

Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy

Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.

Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union,...

McC Theater Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, Artistic Directors Blake West, Executive Director just announced that two-time Tony Award winner Judith Light The Assembled Parties, Other Desert Cities has been elected to the McC Board of Directorseffective immediately. Ms. Light began her relationship with McC in 1999 with a universally-acclaimed performance in Margaret Edson's Wit, and most recently in March 2013 was the honoree at McC's annual Miscast gala celebrating her illustrious screen and stage career her appearances in McC productions, which in addition to Wit includes 2005's Colder Than Here and her impassioned advocacy of several causes, most especially Arts in Education.

Cynthia Nixon used some of her personal experience to portray the terminally ill professor Vivian Bearing in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s revival of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Wit.”“I felt there was a lot in the play I can relate to,” Nixon told Back Stage. “I’m a great English literature buff; it was my major in college. So I didn’t have to reach for that.” Nixon claims Edson’s “near perfect play” also made it easier for her to become her character.“As demanding as the part is, if you listen to her play, follow the path she wrote for you, it’s easier than it looks,” she said. Watch the video below to learn more about how Nixon prepared for her role in “Wit,” which closed on Broadway on March 17.

The Sex and the City girls are known for doing things their own way. Cynthia Nixon, who is best known as the tough-as-nails Miranda Hobbes, recently shocked fans when she took it all off for a role on Broadway. But unlike in Sex and the City, Cynthia made waves for her bald head, not her bare body! The actress has shaved her head to play a terminally ill English professor in the Broadway revival of Margaret Edson's Wit, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama. Since chopping it all off, she has been spotted flaunting her bald head around town! But recently she was spotted covering it up. Take a gander at what a fabulous wig can do!

Related: Two Looks, One Star

On March 3, 2012, a bald Cynthia was outside the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre signing autographs and tending to fans while leaving a daily performance of "Wit," 47th Street...

The Broadway League has awarded coveted New York Education Grants to the Broadway productions of Wit by Margaret Edson, and Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. Each production receives a 5,000 grant towards its 2012 educational initiatives. The grants are important to the growth and development of theatre education in the city as they encourage theatres to create more opportunities for young people and to exchange ideas about education.

By Samuel Negin

There are a number of articles today to which I wanted to bring your attention, and I will be putting them all in this post. The first is an article from The New York Times about Margaret Edson, who wrote the play W;t, which is currently in revival on Broadway. The play is a drama about a professor’s battle with cancer and is based on Edson’s own experience in a hospital. The article talks about Edson’s life now and why W;t is her only play — her preference for “the theater of the classroom.”

Click to read more…...

If there is a truth now universally acknowledged on Broadway, it is that producers in need of a fortune should cast Darren Criss. The Glee star’s 24-show tenure in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which ended on Sunday, took in a total of just over $4 million dollars—besting all but one of his predecessor Daniel Radcliffe’s per week grosses and putting some extra pressure on his replacement Nick Jonas, whose stint runs until July 1.

In non-teenybopper theater news, this week saw the cast of Wet Hot American Summer reunite for a live “radio play” version...

By Samuel Negin

Margaret Edson’s 1999 play Wit has opened on Broadway and the reviews are in. Fitst and foremost, the reviewers have said that it’s about damn time that the play opened on Broadway. The 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play won every major award when it originally arrived in New York, but was not eligible for a Tony because it was not on Broadway — and this “inescapably moving” revival does not disappoint.

Click to read more…...

New York -- Another "Sex and the City" star has made her way to Broadway but she's brought along a different kind of cocktail.

Cynthia Nixon has a combination of the drugs Hexamethophosphacil and Vinplatin in her veins as she fights back ovarian cancer in a tight and powerful Manhattan Theatre Club production of "Wit," which opened Thursday at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

The play about the final days of a scholar of John Donne's metaphysical poetry is making its Broadway premiere 13 years after it earned playwright Margaret Edson the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

It is a deceptive play – seemingly so simple yet layered with nuance and self-consciousness. "I've got less than two hours. Then: curtain," quips the scholar at the top of the piece in a typically – yes, witty – line.

The part of Professor Vivian Bearing is catnip for any serious actress – Emma Thompson and Judith Light have...

Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon has won over critics with her "brave" and "shattering" performance in the Broadway production of Wit.

The actress shaved her head to take on the role of cancer patient Vivian in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, and the play gained a slew of positive reviews after it was unveiled to the press this week (beg23Jan12).

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter has called Nixon's portrayal of a dying woman "shattering", adding, "Nixon's brittle intensity and cool intelligence make her an ideal match for the uncompromising Vivian."

The New York Post's theatre critic Elisabeth Vincentelli writes, "Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Wit offers a lucky - and brave - actress a complex, finely detailed role that's as demanding as it is rewarding... (Nixon) is respectful, reliable and committed, having shaved everything for the role."

Joe Dziemianowicz, of the New York Daily News, goes on to compare Nixon's performance to her most famous role in hit TV show Sex and The City and her Tony Award-winning appearance in Rabbit Hole in 2006.

He writes, "Nixon brings the cool, detached demeanour familiar from her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City as well as the grieving mother in Rabbit Hole, for which she won a Tony Award in 2006. She gives a commanding performance, one in which hard, sharp edges subtly soften."...

New York – A deserving winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Margaret Edson’s Wit is a work of delicately calibrated opposites. It pits detached clinical observation on one side against raw human emotion on the other, while somehow making dry humor and wrenching pathos travel hand in hand. In Lynne Meadow’s unerringly focused staging for Manhattan Theatre Club, and above all in Cynthia Nixon’s shattering performance, that balancing act is rendered with piercing accuracy. Inspired by Edson’s experience working in a hospital oncology unit, Wit was an awards magnet in its original Off Broadway incarnation for Kathleen Chalfant

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Our favorite Satc woman ,Cynthia Nixon, is likely is on her way to another Tony Award.

Nixon stars as Vivian Bering in the Broadway premiere of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Wit, which opens Thursday at the Manhattan Theater Club. Mtc Artistic Director Lynne Meadow directs.

You may be familiar with Wit from the powerful film version starring Emma Thompson. It's the story of a brilliant poetry professor diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer who undergoes an excruciatingly brutal investigative treatment. As a scholar whose life has been devoted to academia, she now has to deal with the irony of being a research subject.

The New York Times Magazine talked with Nixon about her life and taking on Wit as someone with personal experience with cancer. Nixon was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer in 2006; her mom Anne has survived three rounds of the disease. According to Nixon, the...

Manhattan Theatre Club's upcoming Broadway premiere of Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, directed by Lynne Meadow, will start previews Thursday, January 5 and open Thursday, January 26 at Mtc's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Wit features Pun Bandhu Technician, Olivier Award winner Suzanne Bertish E.M. Ashford, Michael Countryman Harvey KelekianMr. Bearing, Jessica Dickey Technician, Chik Johnson Technician, Greg Keller Jason Posner, Tony and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Nixon Vivian Bearing, Carra Patterson Susie Monahan, and Zachary Spicer Technician.The company met the press on Tuesday, Decmber 13 and BroadwayBeat was on hand for interviews with Cynthia Nixona and Lynn Meadow. Click below to check it out...

Manhattan Theatre Clubs upcoming Broadway premiere of Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, directed by Lynne Meadow, will start previews Thursday, January 5 and open Thursday, January 26 at MTCs Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Wit features Pun Bandhu Technician, Olivier Award winner Suzanne Bertish E.M. Ashford, Michael Countryman Harvey KelekianMr. Bearing, Jessica Dickey Technician, Chik Johnson Technician, Greg Keller Jason Posner, Tony and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Nixon Vivian Bearing, Carra Patterson Susie Monahan, and Zachary Spicer Technician.Today, the company met the press and BroadwayWorld was on hand for the photo op...

Cynthia Nixon looks the picture of a busy New Yorker as she struts through the city wearing a simple blue cardigan and grasping her cell phone. The "Sex and the City" star most recently made news as an outspoken advocate for same sex marriage in her native New York, which had kept her from marrying her fiancee of two years, Christine Marinoni, until June 2011, when lawmakers legalized the same-sex marriage bill. Earlier, in February 2011, the actress and Marinoni welcomed son Max Ellington Nixon Marinoni, Nixon's third child (her first two, Samantha and Charles, were conceived from Nixon's previous relationship with professor Danny Mozes.)

Nixon is set to return to Broadway in January in Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Wit."

Photo:...

Manhattan Theatre Club has just announced full casting for the upcoming Broadway premiere of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit, by Margaret Edson, directed by Lynne Meadow. Joining Tony and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Nixon as Vivian Bearing will be Pun Bandhu Technician, Olivier Award winner Suzanne Bertish E.M. Ashford, Michael Countryman Harvey KelekianMr. Bearing, Jessica Dickey Technician, Chik Johnson Technician, Greg Keller Jason Posner, Carra Patterson Susie Monahan, and Zachary Spicer Technician.

Sex & The City star Cynthia Nixon is returning to Broadway as the star of Margaret Edson's award-winning play Wit.

Ironically, the actress, who is a breast cancer survivor, will portray a professor who undergoes experimental treatment for the disease.

Nixon will be the second Sex & the City star to hit the stage in New York this winter - Kim Cattrall will lead the cast of a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives in November.

Wit will begin previews in January at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Nixon won a Tony Award in 2006 for her role in David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole.

She is also playing a cancer victim in TV series The Big C.

Two-time Tony winner Cynthia Nixon will return to Broadway after five years away from the stage. Nixon will follow in the footsteps of Emma Thompson and Kathleen Chalfant in tackling Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit.

Nixon will take on the role of a poetry professor who undergoes an experimental cancer treatment. With this play, Nixon is also returning to the Manhattan Theatre Club, where she won her most recent Tony for 2006′s Rabbit Hole. She also won a Tony for 1995′s Indiscretions.

Mtc’s Artistic Director Lynne Meadow will direct this production of Wit, which is playing for a limited engagement.

Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein will be lecturing about Athol Fugard, described by the New York Times as "the greatest playwright writing in English since Shakespeare," Sunday, November 15 from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Island Road, Stony Creek.

Edelstein is directing the world premiere of Fugard's Have You Seen Us?, running from Nov. 24 through Dec. 20 at Long Wharf Theatre, the site of many of Fugard's world premieres in the 1970s.

Fugard, born in 1932 in Middelburg, in the Karoo desert region of South Africa, battled to bring the stories of all South Africans to the world, even under the darkest years of apartheid, that abusive system that had one set of laws for whites, and another for people of color. For his service, he was awarded South Africa's highest award, the Ikhamanga Medal in 2005. His best-known plays include Bloodknot (1961); Boesman and Lena (1969); Sizwe Bansi...

Warm up your holiday season with Long Wharf Theatre. Experience the essence of the holidays with a healthy dose of humor - find yourself and your family in our stories My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish and I'm Home for the Holidays, the all new play by Steve Solomon, and the hit Sister's Christmas Catechism, by Maripat Donovan.

In Sister's Christmas Catechism, written by the author of Late Nite Catechism, Sister takes on the mystery that has intrigued historians throughout the ages - whatever happened to the Magi's gold? Employing her own scientific tools and assisted by local choirs as well as a gaggle of audience members, Sister creates a living nativity unlike any ever seen. With gifts galore and bundles of laughs, Sister's Christmas Catechism is sure to become a new holiday tradition. The show runs from Dec. 1-20. Tickets are $28.

Travel back home for the holidays with Steve Solomon...

Provincetown Counter Productions in residence at the Provincetown Theatre and Artistic Director Susan Grilli are pleased to announce the final production in their critically acclaimed 2009 Winter Season. 'Wit', Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize Winning Play about a professor of 17th century metaphysical poetry who is forced to evaluate her humanity and her relationship to her work when she is diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer.

The B Street Theatre's latest hit in the "B3 Series" is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit by Margaret Edson. Wit is poignant comedy that's earning standing ovations and rave reviews from audiences and the press. Don't miss the Sacramento premiere of this moving and funny play. Call to get your tickets today by calling our box office at 916-443-5300. Extended Through March 7th!

The B Street Theatre presents Wit by Margaret Edson Pulitzer Prize winning play continues B Street Theatre's hit "B3 Series" The B Street Theatre, Sacramento's professional new works theatre, is pleased to present Wit by Margaret Edson. Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Wit is the third production of the B Street Theatre's 2008-2009 "B3 Series." Wit is the story of Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., renowned professor of English who has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. In her study of the metaphysical poems of 17th-century writer John Donne, she is intense and probing yet detached. In her journey through an experimental chemotherapy treatment, Vivian finds insight, humor and humanity. Wit was premiered in 1995 at South Coast Repertory and went on to win the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Lucille Lortel Award for best play. Wit is the first play by playwright Margaret Edson, who lives in Atlanta...

The blog entry "In Search of Redemption" inspired an outpouring of reader comments remarkable not only for their number but for their intelligence and thought. It became obvious that many of us go to the movies seeking some sort of release or healing. Many of you mentioned titles that especially affected you; two of my most-admired films, "Hoop Dreams" and "Grave of the Fireflies," were frequently listed. You all had your reasons. Now Ali Arikan, a longtime contributor to this site, has written me about why he was so affected by a relatively unlikely title, "The Out-of-Towners." His reasons were personal; he can post them below if he chooses to. But in connection with his explanation, he quoted the first paragraph of one of my reviews.

It was for "Frequency" (2000), Gregory Hoblit's movie about a man who uses a freak of his dad's old ham radio to be able...