BOOP! THE BETTY BOOP MUSICAL Will Have its Pre-Broadway Engagement in Chicago in November

A new musical about Betty Boop has officially announced its pre-Broadway engagement. The World Premiere of BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical will play a limited six-week engagement, November 19 - December 31, 2023, at the CIBC Theatre in Chicago.

Tony Award®-winning director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, La Cage Aux Folles, Hairspray) brings the Queen of the Animated Screen to the theater with celebrated multiple Grammy® Award-winning composer David Foster ("I Have Nothing," "After The Love Is Gone," "The Prayer"), Tony Award®-nominated lyricist Susan Birkenhead (Working, Jelly's Last Jam), and Tony Award®-winning book writer Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone, The Prom).

Director Jerry Mitchell said, "Creating a NEW Broadway musical is such a gift. It is a special joy to be working on BOOP! in Chicago, so close to my hometown, at the very theatre where I first fell in LOVE with musicals when I saw A CHORUS LINE there back in 1978.

"David Foster and Susan Birkenhead have created a first-class score to frame Bob Martin's touching tale about an ICON, Betty Boop and her indomitable spirit in this Jazz Hot love story.

"BOOP! is for everybody. I promise the entire family will be singing and dancing as they walk up the aisle. BOOP! is a musical for our time"

"Broadway In Chicago is thrilled to host BOOP! for the World Premiere of this exciting new original musical, and to welcome back Tony Award®-winning director Jerry Mitchell to what we consider his pre-Broadway home, Chicago," said Broadway In Chicago President Lou Raizin. "The announcement of BOOP! is our Valentine to the city."

Betty Boop, that sassy-sweet champion of empowerment, that spit-curled icon of joy, that songstress of strength, comes alive in BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical, the new Broadway-bound musical comedy extravaganza.

For almost a century, Betty Boop has won hearts and inspired fans around the world with her trademark looks, voice, and style. Now, in BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical, Betty's dream of an ordinary day off from the super-celebrity in her black-and-white world leads to an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and love in New York City - one that reminds her and the world, "You are capable of amazing things."

Boop-oop-a-doop!

BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical is based on the characters created by Max Fleischer.

First introduced in 1930, Betty Boop was created by Max Fleischer for his "Talkartoons" series, the world's first animated "talkies" which Max's company, Fleischer Studios, produced for Paramount Studios. Betty initially appeared as a dog-like stage performer who sang and danced with another dog-like character named Bimbo, joyfully entertaining vast audiences of other Fleischer characters from the animal kingdom.

Inspired by the collective energy, style, and sound of the many popular Jazz Age flappers and entertainers of the 1920s, Betty quickly evolved into a full-fledged human character, and by 1932 she had become the only female animated screen star in the world. Voiced by Mae Questel, Betty starred in more than 100 cartoons, 90 of which are included in the official Betty Boop series, which ended in 1939. Since then, Betty has appeared in dozens of hit movies, television specials, commercials, and was the first cartoon character to be profiled by A&E's Biography series.