Leslie Odom, Jr., Jeanine Tesori, Jason Robert Brown & More Set for New ENCORES! Unscripted Series

Arlene Shuler, New York City Center President & CEO, today announced that City Center will partner with The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC to expand the reach of the Tony-honored Encores! series with a new live-streamed series of conversations and performances about the glorious, complicated legacy of the Broadway musical. City Center Encores! Unscripted at The Greene Space at WNYC will go beyond the "talkback"-and beyond nostalgia-for a smart, unsentimental look at how musicals have reflected and shaped American life.

Hosted by Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel, the serieskicks off on December 14, 2015 with Sexism. Racism. Show Tunes. Discuss., in which Sheldon Harnick, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Jeanine Tesori examine the troublingly sexist and racist attitudes embedded in classic musicals. The second Encores! Unscripted event, Keeping Score, digs into the art of orchestration and score restoration with Rob Berman, Jason Robert Brown, and Jonathan Tunick, on February 1, 2016. The series concludes with Who Tells Their Stories?: Historical Narratives on Broadway, featuring Michael Friedman and Leslie Odom, Jr., on March 14, 2016.

"At Encores!, we're always asking questions about the American musical: where it's been, where it's going, what we can learn from the songwriters of Broadway's Golden Age, and about the attitudes of any given era, which might be very different from our own," said Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel. "This series opens up that conversation to everyone. There's no one else who does what we do at Encores! in terms of restoring and presenting great musicals as they were originally intended. Our hope is that Encores! Unscripted will explore the connections between the shows we do here-from Cabin in the Sky to 1776-and the shows currently playing on Broadway."

"City Center is delighted to join forces with The Greene Space at WNYC for this new series, which allows us to share the Encores! tradition of passionately researched and performed musical theater with a much wider audience," said City Center President & CEO Arlene Shuler. "This is not the first time that these two landmark institutions have worked together. After Mayor Fiorello La Guardia dedicated City Center in 1943, I'm told that he liked to plug our musicals and ballets during his weekly radio chats on WNYC."

"The Greene Space and Encores! know that our audiences not only delight in the electricity of a live performance, they want to dig deeply into the stories and ideas that propel their favorite shows," said Jennifer Sendrow, Executive Producer at WNYC. "We're convening some of the brightest minds on Broadway to make a must-listen oral history of a fiercely creative time in American theater that will inspire and challenge future generations of artists and fans alike."

All tickets will cost $15. Shows will be webcast live and available as archived videos and podcasts. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.thegreenespace.org.

Sexism. Racism. Show Tunes. Discuss.

December 14, 2015 at 7pm

The phrase "golden age of Broadway" conjures up visions of romantic innocence, but the original scripts of many classic American musicals, from Babes in Arms to Annie Get Your Gun, are full of troublingly sexist and racist attitudes. How can we make sense of an art form that has produced so many beautiful songs and perpetuated so many ugly stereotypes? Encores! Unscripted will explore that question with the help of Tony Award winners Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof), Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Jelly's Last Jam), Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home), and other guests and performances to be announced.

Keeping Score

February 1, 2016 at 7pm

In the beginning, the American musical was a throwaway art. Musicians doodled on their sheet music and used it to swat mosquitoes; scores were often trashed after a show closed. City Center's Encores! series was founded in 1994 with a commitment to uncovering these orchestrations-and in some cases, painstakingly restoring them to their original glory. Discover how great orchestrations are created and how they can transform a musical in this Encores! Unscripted event, featuring legendary orchestrator Jonathan Tunick (Follies, A Chorus Line); Encores! Music Director Rob Berman; and Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years), who began his career by writing vocal arrangements for other composers' shows.

Who Tells Their Stories?: Historical Narratives on Broadway

March 14, 2016 at 7pm

From the Gershwins' madcap Of Thee I Sing to Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop masterpiece Hamilton, Broadway composers have long been drawn to stories about towering political figures, the women they will never satisfy, and the complicated legacies they leave behind. Dig into the process of bringing American icons to life with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson composer Michael Friedman; Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr.; cast members from the Encores! production of 1776; and other guests and performances to be announced.

Artists and programs subject to change.