Jonathan Groff, Cheyenne Jackson and More Join SRT's Benefit Honoring Julie Taymor at 92YTribeca, 11/12

Award-winning performers are scheduled to appear in SRT's 2012 Benefit and Cabaret, including: John Behlmann (Broadway's Journey's End; Off-Broadway's The 39 Steps; Wild Animals You Should Know, MCC Theater; Are You There, McPhee?, McCarter Theatre); Jonathan Groff (Drama Desk and Tony Award-nominated for Best Actor for Spring Awakening; TV's "Glee"); dancer and choreographer Ayo Jackson (Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark); Cheyenne Jackson (Broadway and Off-Broadway: The Performers; Finian's Rainbow – Drama Desk nomination; Damn Yankees; Xanadu – Drama League, Drama Desk nominations; The Agony & the Agony; All Shook Up – Theater World Award, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle nomination; the premiere casts of Altar Boyz, Aida, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Film: Mark Bingham in the 2006 Academy Award-nominated United 93; The Green, opposite Julia Ormond and Ileana Douglas; Price Check with Parker Posey. TV: "30 Rock" and "Glee"); Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche; Singer-songwriter Martin Luther McCoy (former member of the Roots touring ensemble; performed alongside George Clinton, Kid Rock, Jill Scott, Eric Benet, Mos Def, 311, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Dave Matthews and Cody Chestnutt; starred in Taymor's Across the Universe); the award-winning PigPen Theatre Company (The Old Man And The Old Moon; The Nightmare Story; The Hunter And The Bear; The Mountain Song); Heidi Rodewald (co-composer/orchestrator for Broadway's Passing Strange – Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award; performer, arranger, producer and composer for both The Negro Problem and the multi-disciplinary ensemble know as STEW); Rema Webb (Broadway's The Lion King; The Book of Mormon); and Alton F. White (Broadway's The Color Purple; Ragtime; The Lion King; The Who's Tommy; Miss Saigon; Smokey Joe's Cafe).

There will be video tribute appearances by Tony Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated Alan Cumming; Academy, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Helen Mirren; and multiple award-winning actor, Alfred Molina.

Additional performers and participants are to be announced.

Contributing composers include: Elliot Goldenthal (various works for concert, theater, dance and film, including Across the Universe, The Tempest, the Academy Award-winning score for Taymor's Frida, the Tony Award-winning carnival mass Juan Darièn, The Green Bird, and Grendel, his original two-act opera with Taymor); Sondre Lerche; Ray Leslee (award-winning composer of over 75 original scores including works for the Actor's Studio, The Acting Company, Steppenwolf Theatre, the Kennedy Center, ACT Seattle, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Festival, Theater for a New Audience; Avenue X at Playwrights Horizons; Standup Shakespeare directed by Mike Nichols); PigPen Theatre Company; Will Reynolds (The Greenwood Tree, Kennedy Center); Heidi Rodewald and STEW; and Ben Toth (composer for the musical of Sleepless in Seattle, scheduled for a 2013 world-premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse; recently completed the score for writer-director Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts, which premiered at 2012 Sundance and stars Radnor, Allison Janney, Richard Jenkins, Zac Efron, and Elizabeth Olsen).

Sonnet Repertory Theatre recently closed a 2012 production of a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. 2011's season featured a sold-out run of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 2010's a Richard II (co-produced with Fight or Flight Theatre) and a critically acclaimed production of Twelfth Night, which the New York Times called a "solid, talent-filled production." Sonnet Repertory Theatre is led by Co-Artistic Directors Tiffany Little Canfield (a casting director at NYC's Telsey + Company, the team behind casting for the films The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Song One, 17 Photos of Isabel, I Love You Phillip Morris, Rachel Getting Married, Sex and the City (both films), Dan in Real Life, Then She Found Me, Across the Universe, Ira and Abby, RENT, Pieces of April, Camp, Grey Zone, Finding Forrester, The Bone Collector, and countless Broadway shows including Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Chaplin, Annie, Glengarry Glenross, Bring It On, Rock of Ages, Elf, The Anarchist, Evita, Kinky Boots, Hands on a Hard Body, Newsies, Diner, Jekyll and Hyde, Sister Act, Wicked, and Baz Luhrmann's production of Puccini's La Boheme) and Todd Loyd (numerous on and off-Broadway credits as actor, director and everything in-between including the Broadway productions of La Boheme, The Color Purple, works at The Kennedy Center, The Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference, Lincoln Center Institute, Cedar Lake Dance, PCPA Theaterfest, The Belt Theatre, and such festivals as NYMF and NAMT). For more information, visit www.sonnetrepertorytheatre.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.

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