NY City Center Announces ENCORES! Directors - Zaks, Bruni & Nicholaw

Jack Viertel, Artistic Director of New York City Center's Encores! series, today announced directors for the three 2009-10 season musicals: Jerry Zaks will direct the season opener, Girl Crazy, with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, opening on November 19, 2009. Marc Bruni will direct Fanny, a musical play by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome, opening on February 4, 2010. Fanny will be the 50th Encores! production presented by City Center since 1994. Casey Nicholaw will direct and choreograph Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' legendary 1964 musical, opening on April 8, 2010.

In addition, Mr. Viertel announced that Encores! Music Director Rob Berman will helm both Fanny and Anyone Can Whistle, and former Encores! Music Director Rob Fisher will return as Guest Music Director for Girl Crazy.

Jerry Zaks (Director) directed Stairway to Paradise and Bye Bye Birdie for Encores! and acted in the first production, Fiorello. He has received four Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Obie Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Mr. Zaks has directed more than 30 New York productions, including, on Broadway: Guys and Dolls (Tony Award), Six Degrees of Separation (Tony Award), Lend Me A Tenor (Tony Award), House of Blue Leaves (Tony Award), A Funny Thing...Forum, Smokey Joe's Café, Anything Goes, and A Bronx Tale. Film: Marvin's Room. TV: "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Fraiser," and "Two and a Half Men." Mr. Zaks served as resident director at Lincoln Center Theater from 1986-1990. Since 1990 he has been proudly affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters.

Marc Bruni is directing Ordinary Days for Roundabout Underground this fall. Other directing credits include Such Good Friends (NYMF Directing Award), The Music Man, My One And Only, Seven Brides... (St. Louis Muny), High Spirits (York), Glimpses Of The Moon (Oak Room). He was Associate Director of the Broadway, London and touring productions of Legally Blonde and appeared on MTV's "Search for Elle Woods." He has been associated with Walter Bobbie, Kathleen Marshall, Jerry Mitchell, and Jerry Zaks on thirteen Broadway shows including Irving Berlin's White Christmas, The Pajama Game, Grease, Wonderful Town, High Fidelity, Sweet Charity, La Cage Aux Folles, and Little Shop Of Horrors (Bway/Tour) as well as on City Center Encores! productions of Finian's Rainbow, No, No, Nanette; Applause; 70, Girls, 70; and Bye Bye Birdie.

Casey Nicholaw was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Choreography for Monty Python's Spamalot and also for his direction and choreography for the Broadway production of The Drowsy Chaperone. Other New York credits include Candide starring Patti LuPone and Kristin Chenoweth for NY Philharmonic (also on PBS Great Performances) and South Pacific at Carnegie Hall with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell (also on PBS Great Performances). His previous Encores! credits include director/choreographer of Follies, the musical staging of Can-Can and the Bye Bye Birdie choreography. Upcoming projects include the new musicals Minsky's, Elf, and Robin and the 7 Hoods.

Rob Fisher was the founding music director and conductor of Encores! from its inception in 1994 until 2005, for which he won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Special Achievement in 1997. He served as Music Director for the 40th anniversary production of Hair in Central Park (continuing his association with the Broadway revival in 2009), for the revival of My Fair Lady with the New York Philharmonic in 2007 and for Chicago and its Grammy Award-winning cast album. Along with conducting many leading orchestras, Mr. Fisher has collaborated recently in concert with Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Clark, Patti LuPone and David Hyde Pierce.   

Rob Berman is entering his third season as music director of Encores!, where he has conducted Stairway to Paradise, Damn Yankees, Music in the Air and Finian's Rainbow. This fall he will be conducting the Broadway transfer of Finian's Rainbow at the St. James Theater. Other Broadway credits include Irving Berlin's White Christmas, for which he serves as music supervisor, the Tony Award-winning revival of The Pajama Game, and Wonderful Town. Rob was music director of the Kennedy Center's production of Sunday in the Park with George for which he won a Helen Hayes Award for Best Musical Direction. He is also music director of the Kennedy Center Honors orchestra, for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Girl Crazy, the Gershwin's fanciful depression-era musical of 1930, is the tale of a sophisticated New Yorker marooned in a dusty Western cowtown with no one who understands him but the Yiddish-speaking cabbie who brought him there and no one to love but the only woman within 50 miles. The show gave birth to one of the all-time flashiest Broadway scores, featuring "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," "But Not For Me" and "Boy! What Love Has Done To Me," among others. Girl Crazy opened at the Alvin Theatre on October 14, 1930 and ran for 272 performances. The Encores! production will run November 19 - 22, 2009.

Fanny, based on Marcel Pagnol's trilogy Marius, Fanny and Cesar and set in Marseille, is among Broadway's greatest love stories - a tale of a young girl's passion for a young man so in love with the sea that he leaves her, little realizing that she is pregnant with his child. Her marriage of convenience to a wealthy older man desperate to have an heir is complicated by the sailor's return years later. Joshua Logan and S.N. Behrman provided an earthy book, and Harold Rome's score contains some of the most ardent and sweeping melodies ever written for the theater, including the title song, "Restless Heart" and "Never Too Late For Love." Fanny opened on November 4, 1954 at the Majestic Theater and played for a total of 888 performances. Fanny will run February 4 - 7, 2010.

Anyone Can Whistle, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' experimental satire of any and every target on the American cultural scene of the moment - conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion, politics - divided the critics, thrilled the emerging counter-culture, baffled the masses and closed quickly, becoming an instant legend that has grown over the years as Sondheim's reputation has soared. The title song and "With So Little to Be Sure Of" have survived as cabaret classics, but the rarely-heard complete score is a riot of jazzy, show-biz razzmatazz, waltzes, gospel numbers and Broadway pastiche. Anyone Can Whistle opened on April 4, 1964 at the Majestic Theatre and ran for a brief 12 previews and 9 performances. Anyone Can Whistle will run April 8 - 11, 2010.

The Newman's Own Foundation is a proud sponsor of Encores! The Newman's Own Foundation is an independent, private foundation which derives its grant-making income from royalty payments received in conjunction with the sale of Newman's Own food products. Since the inception of Newman's Own in the early 1980s, over $250 million has been donated to thousands of charitable organizations worldwide.

The season is also made possible, in part, by the Stephanie and Fred Shuman Fund for Encores!
New York City Center Encores! (Jack Viertel, Artistic Director; Rob Berman, Music Director) has, since 1994, celebrated the rarely-heard works of America's most important composers and lyricists. Conceived as

concert versions, each Encores! season gives three scores the chance to be heard as originally intended by their creators. Over the years, Encores! has presented the works of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart,

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Bock and Harnick, Burt Bacharach, Kander and Ebb, Comden and Green, and many others. The program is the recipient of a special 2000 Tony

Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award and Jujamcyn Theaters Award.

New York City Center (Arlene Shuler, President and CEO) has long been known and beloved by New York audiences not only as one of the City's preeminent performing art institutions but also as an accessible and welcoming venue for dance and theater. New York City Center produces the Tony-honored Encores!

musical theater series, and is home to some of the country's leading dance companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company and Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, as well as Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York's leading theater companies. In 2004 New York City Center launched the acclaimed Fall for Dance Festival, continuing to fulfill its mission to make the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience. In 2006, New York City Center formed partnerships with both London's Sadler's Wells Theatre to facilitate the exchange of innovative dance works, and with Carnegie Hall to work together on exciting new programming initiatives between the two neighboring institutions. In 2007 New York City Center introduced the Encores! Summer Stars series with the critically-acclaimed production of Gypsy¸ starring Patti LuPone, which subsequently enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, and which was followed by Damn Yankees starring Sean Hayes and Jane Krakowski and this past summer's The Wiz, starring Ashanti.

Tickets for the 2009-2010 Encores! season are available at the New York City Center Box Office (West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues), through CityTix® at 212-581-1212, or online at www.nycitycenter.org. Tickets for the Orchestra, Grand Tier and Mid-Mezzanine tickets are $95; tickets for the Rear Mezzanine and Front Gallery are $50; tickets for the Rear Gallery are $25.