Hugh Jackman, Joel Grey, Sharon D. Clarke & More Featured in 92NY Fall Theater Events

See Tom Stoppard on Leopoldstadt, Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, André De Shields, and Miranda Cromwell on Death Of A Salesman, Joel Grey, Steven Skybell, and Zalmen Mlotek on Fiddler On The Roof In Yiddish and more at 92NY this fall.

CONVERSATIONS & PERFORMANCES
***In Person & Online***

TOM STOPPARD IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL KEHLMANN

Sun, Sep 18, 4:30 pm, from $20

Here's a couple waving goodbye from the train, but who are they? No idea. That's why they're waving goodbye. It's like a second death, to lose your name in a family album.

Tom Stoppard (The Real Thing, Coast of Utopia) opens the Unterberg Poetry Center's 84th season with a conversation about Leopoldstadt, his most personal play to date, which comes to Broadway this fall. He is interviewed by novelist Daniel Kehlmann, who translated Leopoldstadt into German and whose family history, like Stoppard's own, informed the writing of the play. "Leopoldstadt feels like an act of personal reckoning for its creator-with who he is and what he comes from," wrote Ben Brantley. "Here, recollection is a laser, a tool to be focused on a past teeming with harsh and essential lessons for the present. For once in a Stoppard work, words aren't what leave the most lasting impression. It is instead the vision of people frozen as if for a photograph, beckoning with poignantly immediate life from a distant time before they dissolve into anonymous darkness."

***In Person & Online***

DEATH OF A SALESMAN: A CONVERSATION WITH WENDELL PIERCE, SHARON D. CLARKE, ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS, AND MIRANDA CROMWELL

Mon, Oct 3, 7:30 pm, FREE with registration

From the right, Willy Loman, the Salesman, enters, carrying two large sample cases ... Even as he crosses the stage to the doorway of the house, his exhaustion is apparent.

In a co-presentation with NYPL's Schomburg Center, the stars of the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman-Wendell Pierce (Willy Loman), Sharon D. Clarke (Linda Loman) and André De Shields (Ben Loman)-discuss the play's legacy and their new production alongside its director Miranda Cromwell.

"So many of the elements of the play are fundamentally questioning of the American dream, and when you put that through the perspective of the Black experience, that enriches it," said Cromwell. "The obstacles are harder, the stakes become higher."

*This is a free event taking place at the Schomburg Center.

***In Person & Online***

THE SON: ADVANCE SCREENING AND CONVERSATION WITH HUGH JACKMAN AND WRITER-DIRECTOR FLORIAN ZELLER

Sun, Oct 23, 6:15 pm, from $30 (NOTE: Online tickets are for the talk only and do not include the screening. The talk begins at 8:30 pm)

Moderator Annette Insdorf will interview Hugh Jackman and Florian Zeller after a preview screening of The Son, a highly anticipated drama that co-stars Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath. Hugh Jackman's movies include The Front Runner, Les Miserables, The Greatest Showman, Prisoners, The Prestige and-as Wolverine-X-Men films including Logan. Among his acclaimed stage performances are The Boy from Oz (for which he received a Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical) and The Music Man, currently on Broadway. In The Son , he plays Peter, whose hectic life with his infant and new partner Beth (Kirby) is upended when his ex-wife Kate (Dern) appears with their troubled teenage son (McGrath). The screenplay was adapted by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller from the 2018 play by Zeller, whose theatrical work has been staged in more than 45 countries. His directorial debut was The Father (2020), winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins (who appears in The Son).

***In Person***

TO LIFE--AGAIN! FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH RETURNS

Joel Grey, Steven Skybell, and Zalmen Mlotek

Sun, Oct 30, 7 pm ET, from $25

Miracle of miracles! National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's beloved Off-Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish is back this November in a seven-week return engagement at New World Stages, directed by Academy Award and Tony winner Joel Grey and starring Steven Skybell, who reprises his role as Tevye, a funny and honest milkman navigating family and faith in the little Russian shtetl of Anatevka. The evening will feature Joel Grey discussing the genesis of the production, Steven Skybell on preparing for a role in a language you don't know, Mlotek on the resurgence of Yiddish interest - and cast members performing Fiddler's signature songs. Don't miss the buzzy, Drama Desk Award-winning production of one of the greatest musicals ever written, presented in Yiddish with English and Russian supertitles. Laugh, cry, and feel the love at this powerful and universal testament to the strength and resilience of the Jewish community.

CABARET CONVERSATIONS WITH MICHAEL KIRK LANE

Award-winning cabaret performer and 92NY School of Music faculty member Michael Kirk Lane returns for his series of online conversations about the art form of cabaret in New York City. Welcoming performers, directors, and journalists, these conversations will delve into the history and current state of this unique performance style. Each conversation will also include a Q&A session for the participants.

CAROLYN MONTGOMERY

Mon, Sep 19, 7 pm, $20

Carolyn Montgomery is a multi-MAC, Bistro and Nightlife award winning singer/ songwriter, who has performed in major venues across 36 states, Montreal and London. In 2017, she co-founded the American Songbook Association, a 501(c)3 nonprofit arts organization that promotes and preserves classic American musical legacies (Jazz, Musical Theatre and the American Songbook, old and new) through education programs, senior enrichment, live events, and Cabaret Scenes magazine. As the Executive Director as well as the Director of Education and Outreach, Carolyn creates programs that reach thousands of public school students annually, across all five boroughs of New York City. She employs some of New York's finest entertainers as instructors. She partners with some of New York's most underserved communities, nurturing their students with music.

MARK NADLER

Mon, Oct 24, 7 pm, $20

Mark Nadler is the recipient of eight awards from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets, three Backstage Bistros, two New York Nightlife Awards and two Broadway World Awards. Additionally, he was awarded two Bay Area Outer Critics' Circle Awards. He has been a soloist with major orchestras, playing everywhere from Carnegie Hall to Philadelphia's 14,000 seat amphitheater at The Mann Center. His most recent off-Broadway show, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, was honored with a New York Nightlife Award, a Drama Desk nomination and a nomination for Australia's highest performing arts honor, the Helpmann Award. www.MarkNadler.com.

ROUNDTABLE

These programs part of Roundtable, 92NY's online learning destination. The courses take place live (all times ET), with an opportunity to interact with the expert and recordings are available for participants for later viewing.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM: GYPSY

Louis Rosen

Thu, Oct 6, 1:30 pm, $55

Stephen Sondheim's second Broadway musical - and his second collaboration with Arthur Laurents (book) and Jerome Robbins (direction/choreography) - finds him as a lyricist at his first fully realized and brilliant maturity. The score, written with composer Jule Styne, is flawless and filled with songs that come to be considered theatrical masterpieces - "Some People", "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Together (Wherever We Go)", "You Gotta Get a Gimmick", "All You Need is the Girl", and the most theatrically startling and striking of all, "Rose's Turn." Gypsy is broadly considered one of the high points of mid-twentieth century American musical theater and announced to anyone who was paying attention that Stephen Sondheim was a writer to be reckoned with.

SHAKESPEARE AND REFORMATION POLITICS

Richard McCoy

Starts Tue, Oct 25 - Nov 29, 10:30 pm, $210 for 6 sessions

Explore the religious divisions of the Protestant Reformation and the political underpinnings of several of Shakespeare's frequently overlooked history plays: Henry VI, Part 1, King John, Henry VIII and All Is True. Join Shakespeare scholar and professor Richard McCoy to examine plays throughout Shakespeare's career--including his first and final plays, which he produced in collaboration with other dramatists. His earliest play, Henry VI, Part 1, written with Thomas Nashe, juxtaposes the heroism of Lord Talbot and his son with their adversary, Joan of Arc, who is depicted as a witch and a whore. Dating from the middle of Shakespeare's career 1596, King John depicts a medieval monarch who is celebrated for opposing Catholic and papal supremacy. Finally, Henry VIII, which Shakespeare wrote in collaboration with John Fletcher, portrays the culmination of the Tudor reign in England and Wales, capturing the birth of Elizabeth I along with a hostile attitude towards Cardinal Wolsey and a sympathetic depiction of Katherine of Aragon.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM: SONGS THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT TO OPENING NIGHT

Louis Rosen

Thu, Nov 3, 1:30 pm, $55

Songs from early Sondheim musicals that didn't make it to opening night finally began to see the light of day with the 1973 Carnegie Hall tribute to the composer; more emerged with the moving 1981 theater piece, Marry Me a Little; and over time these once-orphaned songs from musicals such as "Saturday Night", "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Forum", "Company", "Follies", "A Little Night Music" and more have gradually become a much loved sub-set of Sondheim's song catalog, often leading his admirers to wonder why they were cut from the initial production in the first place.

WHEN BROADWAY WAS BLACK: THE UNENDING FIGHT FOR RACIAL REPRESENTATION ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY

Caseen Gaines

Tue, Nov 8 - 22, 6:30 pm, $108 for 3 classes

During one of the most artistically prolific times in the history of New York City, the roaring 1920s, an all-Black cast and creative team produced the wildly popular musical Shuffle Along , leaving an indelible mark on popular culture. In the aftermath of a World War, with a decimated economy, worldwide pandemic, and in the aftermath of the greatest period of racial violence since the Civil War, Shuffle Along was an unlikely Broadway sensation that was a watershed moment for racial representation, brought jazz into the mainstream, and helped usher in the Harlem Renaissance. Yet many of these trailblazing Black performers, producers, choreographers, and musicians have become only footnotes in the histories of Broadway. Cultural historian and author of Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way , will take an expansive view at racial representation on New York's greatest stages across three lectures, looking at pivotal eras in Broadway history, from the early 20th century, through the 1970s and 1980s through today, and the performers and performances that forever changed the face of history.

***Online***

ADAM GOPNIK ON THE AMERICAN LYRIC

Starts Thu, Nov 10 - Dec 1, 2:30 pm, $120 for 3 sessions

A deeper relation between words and music - the way they land in the listener's ear, and then her soul - is more complicated than it seems," writes Gopnik. "Music alone is puzzling enough - how it is that the mind makes sound into music and music into meaning is one of the big unanswered questions. No matter how hard we craft them for lucidity and shape and dramatic clarity - and it's the good faith of the librettist's art form to do so as elegantly as he can - music and words together exist in the end in an older realm of magic and enchantment, a place where the nursery rhyme and the church hymn and the pop single all meet. In this series of lectures, Adam Gopnik, staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986, reviews some of America's most profound lyricists, whose works mine "the power of voice, the limits of language to insist and invoke, and the mysterious magnetism passing between an audience and art.

Session 1: Stephen Sondheim
Session 2: W. H. Auden and Richard Wilbur
Session 3: Lin Manuel Miranda and Kendrick Lamar

THE GENIUS OF COLE PORTER

Harvey Granat

Thu, Nov 17, 12 pm, $40

Join Harvey Granat for a celebration of Cole Porter in song and story. Granat will focus his expertise on The Great American Songbook on this iconic creator of some of our most popular songs. The legendary Porter is one of a handful of composers who also wrote all the lyrics. His lyrics have been recognized for their sophistication and wit. You'll hear live performances from shows and films including "Anything Goes", "Kiss Me Kate", "Can Can", "Silk Stockings and "High Society", stories behind their creation, as well as special videos featuring Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Howard Keel & Kathryn Grayson.

FROGS: 1974 - SONDHEIM TAKES A BREAK FROM BROADWAY

Louis Rosen

Thu, Dec 1, 1:30 pm, $55

Burt Shevelove, Sondheim's collaborator on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, first wrote and directed an adaptation of Aristophanes' The Frogs in 1941, his senior year at Yale University. Returning to the idea in 1974, he enlists Sondheim, fresh off the brilliant success of A Little Night Music, to compose a score for this new production. More of a play with songs and music then a complete musical, Sondheim creates a marvelously inventive, musically daring score that emphasizes choral numbers and, in the footsteps of A Little Night Music , further explores the crossing of his remarkable talent as a theater songwriter with his skills as a classically trained composer. And all of this for a show that was performed in the Yale University gymnasium's swimming pool! Plus, we'll compare this original score with a few selected songs from the expanded 2004 Lincoln Center version.