Patti LuPone, Richard Thomas and More Join SHINSAI: THEATERS FOR JAPAN Benefit

Patti LuPone, Richard Thomas, Mary Beth Hurt, Jay O. Sanders and Henry Stram will join forces with the previously announced Michi Barral, Cindy Cheung, Joel de la Fuente, Angel Desai, Ann Harada, Jennifer Ikeda, Paul Juhn, Peter Kim, Ken Leung, Li Jun Li, Jennifer Lim, Angela Lin, Paolo Montalban, Olivia Oguma, Jon Norman Schneider, Thom Sesma, Sab Shimono, Jade Wu, Jonny Wo, James Yaegashi and Stacey Yen to raise funds that will go directly to Japanese theater artists devasted by last year's earthquake when they appear in this Sunday's March 11 benefit performances of Shinsai: Theaters for Japan, at the Great Hall at Cooper Union (Seventh Street at Third Avenue). 

Patti LuPone and Henry Stram will appear in the 8pm performance only.  Jay O. Sanders and Mary Beth Hurt will appear in the 3pm performance only.  Richard Thomas will appear in both the 3pm and 8pm performances.

Under the direction of Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher, this assemblage of some of New York's leading Asian-American actors will perform a series of ten minute plays and musical numbers by an eclectic group of award-winning American and Japanese writers and composers including Edward Albee, Shoki Kokami, Oriza Hirata, Richard Greenberg, John Guare, Kumiko Shinohara, John Kander, Fred Ebb & Joseph Stein, Tony Kushner & Jeanine Tesori, Nen Ishihara, Toshiki Okada, Toshiro Suzue and Yoji Sakate.  Playwrights Philip Kan Gotanda, Richard Greenberg, Suzan-Lori-Parks, Naomi Iizuka and Doug Wright will contribute original work to the benefit which will also feature a segment from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures revised, with new lyrics, especially for the occasion by its creators librettist John Weidman and composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim. 

Tickets to Shinsai: Theaters for Japan, priced at $25 for each performance, are available at The Public Theater box office (425 Lafayette Street), by phone at (212) 967-7555 or by visiting www.publictheater.org