CSC Announces Faith Prince as Final CLASSIC CONVERSATIONS Guest of 2020

Classic Stage Company today announced its final virtual Classic Conversation of 2020, with Tony-winning actress and singer Faith Prince (Broadway: A Catered Affair, Noises Off, Guys and Dolls) on December 3. For its Fall 2020 season, while awaiting the return of live productions, CSC has scaled up its timely virtual Classic Conversations initiative (alongside the CSC Podcast), offering extraordinarily revealing discussions with an array of theater luminaries, often reflecting on the vast crisis currently confronting the American theater at large-and the best paths forward for the field. Classic Conversations episodes premiere on CSC's YouTube and Facebook and are available to view afterwards on Facebook and Instagram IGTV.

This Classic Conversation-a bookend to this season's lineup featuring eminent actors and directors, critics, and influential leaders of institutional theaters, all interviewed remotely by Doyle-reconnects the director and acclaimed performer, who starred in Doyle's 2008 Broadway production of A Catered Affair. Since her Broadway breakout performance as Ms. Adelaide in the 1992 revival of Guys & Dolls, which won her Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, Prince has developed a reputation, as Ben Brantley writes in The New York Times, as "one of those increasingly rare performers whose natural element is musical comedy." (Brantley also praises her ability to "remind us how musicals can kidnap an audience's empathy to the point that nothing exists but the song being sung"; luckily, Prince will be singing for this virtual CSC event).

When theaters were forced to shut down this spring, CSC quickly adapted its signature series Classic Conversations, with the theater releasing the episodes free of charge. The immediate focus was on cast members from John Doyle's upcoming production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, including Brandon Uranowitz; Will Swenson; Adam Chanler-Berat; Tavi Gevinson; Eddie Cooper; Ethan Slater; Steven Pasquale; Bianca Horn; Wesley Taylor; Andy Grotelueschen; Brad Giovanine, Katrina Yaukey, Whit K. Lee, and Rob Morrison; and Judy Kuhn. Then, this summer, CSC produced a new lineup featuring eminent actors who have collaborated with Doyle and/or CSC on other projects: George Takei, André De Shields, Becky Ann Baker, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, and Heather Headley. This fall, CSC further expanded the Classic Conversations programming to feature prominent voices across disciplines within the theater world, including Ben Brantley, Tonya Pinkins, Nataki Garrett, Rufus Norris, Marianne Elliott, Timothy Douglas, Anika Noni Rose, and John Weidman. The previously announced penultimate Classic Conversation of 2020 will feature Hilton Als (Staff Writer and Former Theatre Critic, The New Yorker), on November 19.

Due in part to Doyle's being a fellow artist, a collaborator, and, in many cases, a friend, the series' guests have spoken with remarkable candor about experiences ranging from the pandemic to this year's nationwide protests for racial justice. And because artists and audiences have been unable to convene in-person, the songs the musical theater stars have sung during the conversations have been particularly poignant.

This week, with a video by Patti LuPone, CSC launched the Coming Back Stronger Campaign to ensure the company's future in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, please visit classicstage.org/comingbackstronger.