MTC Announces LoveMusik After Words Discussion Series

Manhattan Theatre Club has announced that its "After Words: LoveMusik" discussion series will begin Saturday, May 12 following the matinee performance at the Biltmore Theatre (261 West 47th Street). After Words: LoveMusik will kick off with a discussion between Dr. Kim Kowalke, President of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and co-editor of the book Speak Low (When You Speak Love), and David Shookhoff, MTC's Director of Education.

After Words: LoveMusik is part of MTC's continuing effort to deepen and enrich the play-going experience for its audiences. Held after selected Saturday matinees at the Biltmore Theatre, this exciting series of talks with writers, cultural critics, journalists, and members of the LoveMusik cast and creative team provides provocative and illuminating insights into the political, cultural, and artistic contexts of the work MTC produces at the Biltmore Theatre.

Topics of discussion may include Kurt Weill's musical legacy; the challenges of adapting the lives of Weill and Lotte Lenya, two great musical theater titans to the stage; and other issues raised by this musical collaboration between legendary director Harold Prince and Pulitzer Prize-winning book writer Alfred Uhry.

Other editions of After Words: LoveMusik are scheduled to include:

May 19 – Dr. Foster Hirsch, author of Kurt Weill – On Stage: From Berlin to Broadway and Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre and Beowulf Borritt, LoveMusik's Drama Desk-nominated set designer

May 26 – Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, and Erik Liberman, cast member of LoveMusik

June 2 – Michael Feingold, noted Brecht translator and Chief Theater Critic for The Village Voice, and David Pittu, Drama Desk & Outer Critics Circle Award nominee for his portrayal of Bertolt Brecht in LoveMusik.

June 9 – Pamela Katz, screenwriter and novelist who has written extensively on Lotte Lenya, and John Scherer, who plays George Davis in LoveMusik

June 16 – Michael Barrett, co-founder and co-artistic director of the acclaimed New York Festival of Song, and Herndon Lackey, LoveMusik cast member

Suggested by the letters of Weill and Lenya, LoveMusik features a book by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy, Parade). Musical staging is provided by Patricia Birch (A Little Night Music), and direction by 21-time Tony Award-winner Harold Prince (The Phantom of the Opera, Cabaret, and Sweeney Todd). "LoveMusik follows the lives of the unlikeliest of lovers – the brilliant, intellectual German composer Kurt Weill (Michael Cerveris) and the woman who became his muse and star, Lotte Lenya (Donna Murphy). LoveMusik is an epic romance, set in Berlin, Paris, Broadway and Hollywood, spanning 25 years in the lives of this complicated couple," state press notes.

The production also features David Pittu (Bertolt Brecht) and John Scherer (George Davis), with Judith Blazer, Edwin Cahill, Herndon Lackey, Erik Liberman, Ann Morrison, Graham Rowat, Rachel Ulanet and Jessica Wright.  LoveMusik features the lyrics of Maxwell Anderson, Bertolt Brecht, Howard Dietz, Roger Fernay, Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Langston Hughes, Alan Jay Lerner, Maurice Magre, Ogden Nash, Elmer Rice and Kurt Weill.

For more information on After Words: LoveMusik, please visit: www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

Photo of Donna Murphy by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.