Billie Holiday Theatre News

651 ARTS - Brooklyn's premier institution for the African Diasporic performing arts- in partnership with The Billie Holiday Theatre (The Billie) - one of the nation's preeminent arts and culture organizations – will present a new innovative live performance series this Spring with the Song Salon.

President Joseph R. Biden presented the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD) with the National Medal of Arts, along with eleven other renowned artists and arts organizations.

Audiences are invited to step back in time to a seedy Philadelphia bar in 1959 for the final performance of jazz icon Billie Holiday. Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) is proud to produce Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, written by Lanie Robertson with musical arrangements by Danny Holgate.

Fat Ham begins previews tonight, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, and will officially open on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, at the American Airlines Theatre. This is a 14-week limited engagement through Sunday, June 25, 2023.

The full cast and design team has been announced for the Broadway production of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Fat Ham by James Ijames. See who is starring in the show, how to purchase tickets and more!

See photos from The Billie Holiday Theatre's first major presentation of its 50th Anniversary season with the world premiere of  Black Genius in the American Theater: A Concert Reading.

The League of Professional Theatre Women will present its annual Theatre Women Awards on March 27th from 1 to 3 p.m., at a Midtown Manhattan location to be announced. 

Vineyard Theatre's 40th Anniversary Gala will honor Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor Billy Crudup with celebratory toasts to Ken Greiner, Chair, Vineyard Board of Directors and Marcia Pendelton, President and Founder of Walk Tall Girl Productions, on February 13, 2023 beginning at 6:00pm at Edison Ballroom.

Obie Award-winning director and playwright, Stevie Walker-Webb, will helm the new musical Gun & Powder.  Following a sold-out run at Washington D.C.’s Signature Theatre in 2020, reading presentations for the production will take place in New York City on December 15 and 16.

Other than a handful of playwrights 30 and under, all the playwrights spoken to for this piece believe their sex has impacted their careers in the theater. Women feel that they have trouble getting in the room and being taken seriously once there. But there is something more, a sense that when things get really bad -- beyond mansplaining bad -- there aren't many people to turn to in the theater.

In 2019, The Episcopal Actors Guild partnered with Quick Silver Theater Company for the Thomas Barbour Awards. Playwright, Reynaldo Piniella's play Black Doves was selected as the award winning play for the year.

From October 19 to November 6 at Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc. will present 'Our Voices, Our Time,' a program of three one-acts that have been co-commissioned by Penn Live Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.

Center Theatre Group is announcing six new commissions as an extension of Not a Moment, But a Movement initiative created to amplify, center and celebrate Black voices.

Premiere Stages at Kean University will present the New Jersey Premiere of Dominique Morisseau's Mud Row July 14-31 in Kean University's Bauer Boucher Theatre Center.

The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York announced that the Mellon Foundation has awarded the organization a fourth and final year of funding to administer the New York Theater Program, which will be distributed to the program’s current grantees in July 2022, extending the current grant cycle through June 30, 2023.

Detroit Repertory Theatre names Kendra Ann Flournoy as its new managing artistic director. Flournoy joins the theatre’s new executive artistic director Leah Smith in running the organization’s business operations and artistic programming.

The cast has been announced for A Medusa Thread. A partnership with NY Classical Theatre and the West Harlem Art Fund on Governors Island in Nolan Park (Building 10B) for FREE -- Saturday, June 25th at noon.

Quick Silver Theater Company - QSTC will host a FREE reading of Michael Mobley's play Monsters at 7pm on Saturday June 11th, 2022 during the 50th Anniversary season at The Billie Holiday Theatre.

The Public Theater and National Black Theatre will begin previews on Thursday, May 12 for the upcoming New York Premiere of FAT HAM, written by James Ijames and directed by Public Theater Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director Saheem Ali.

One of the ways The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc. (NEC) fulfills its mission to discover and nurture new, innovative works by skilled and creative artists is its NEC Cutting Edge Playhouse: Emerging Playwrights Competition, which will be mounted for the second time May 5 to 29, 2022.