Blackwell, Blumenkrantz, Eikenberry, Jenkins, Moriber, Steele & More Set For Musical Reading Of THE KID

The New Group's will present an industry reading of The Kid, a new musical based on Dan Savage's book The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (slated as the third show of the company's current 2009-10 season).

The reading will take place Thursday, September 24, 2009 at Playwrights Horizons. The reading is by invitation only.

The Kid features music by Andy Monroe, book by Michael Zam and lyrics by Jack Lechner. This reading is directed by The New Group Artistic Director Scott Elliott and features musical direction by Dominick Amendum. The cast includes: PJ Benjamin, Susan Blackwell, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Matt DeAngelis, Trent Dawson, Luke Dow, Jill Eikenberry, Jeannine Frumess, Jeff Hiller, Capathia Jenkins, Brooke Sunny Moriber and Lucas Steele.

This musical is based on the true story of what happened when sex columnist Dan Savage and his boyfriend decided to create a family. Step one: Convince an adoption agency and homeless teenage mom that two gay men are the perfect parents for her child. Step two: Convince themselves.

The authors of The Kid were honored with the 2009 BMI Foundation Jerry Bock Award for Best New Musical. This marks The New Group's return to musical theater after producing Avenue Q, which received the Tony Award for Best New Musical in 2004.J

ack Lechner has a varied career in the entertainment business: He was an executive producer on the Oscar-winning Errol Morris documentary The Fog of War; on Parking Lot, a reality series for the Trio Network; on the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Left of the Dial; and a songwriting contributor to the 2003 film View from the Top. Lechner won the 2004 Jerry Harrington Award For Outstanding Creative Achievement in Musical Theater. Jack's non-fiction book, Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You: One Man, Seven Days, Twelve Televisions, was published by Crown in November 2000.

Andy Monroe has been cited by The Village Voice as one of "the most talented openly gay singer-songwriters in the country." They called his song-cycle, Days Of Hope And Circumstance, "a raw cri de coeur...undeniably moving." In addition, he has recorded three solo albums: Joyful Noise: Disc One, Joyful Noise: Disc Two, and the dark and brooding Rain. As a composer for musical theatre, Andy wrote the score for The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, which premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2006. He also contributed songs to the successful revue Sex - The Musical. Monroe won the 2002 Jerry Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Musical Theatre.

Michael Zam teaches screenwriting at NYU and Modern British Drama at NYU in London (Teaching Excellence Award, 1998 and 2007). He also created the successful Professional Certificate in Screenwriting, the first on the East Coast. He is a former American Film Institute Fellow where he won the top screenwriting prizes. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Details, Time Out, and indieWIRE. Michael is an alumnus of BMI's Librettist Workshop. Currently he's penning a stage adaptation of the novel Selfish & Perverse by Bob Smith for director Jerry Mitchell, and developing screenplays for major studios with Jaffe Cohen.

The New Group (Scott Elliott, Artistic Director; Geoff Rich, Executive Director): The 2008-2009 season began with the U.S. premiere of Kevin Elyot's Mouth to Mouth followed by Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. The company's 2007-2008 season featured the premiere of Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want directed by Ethan Hawke, Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years and Ayub Khan-Din's Rafta, Rafta.... The 2006-07 season featured Jay Presson Allen's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Wallace Shawn's The Fever and Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. Other past productions include David Rabe's Hurlyburly, Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples and Ecstasy, Wallace Shawn's Aunt Dan and Lemon, Kenneth Lonnergan's This is Our Youth, Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg, and many more. The New Group is a recipient of the 2004 Tony® Award for Best Musical (Avenue Q).

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.