First Listen: Jennifer Hudson, Eloise Kropp, Katie Boeck & Sandra Mae Frank Sing from THE COLOR PUPLE, SPRING AWAKENING & DAMES AT SEA in NY Times Fall Preview!

Now that Labor Day is over, Broadway is officially gearing up for its upcoming Fall season, which is set to include a slew of Broadway debuts, starry revivals, and exciting new projects. In anticipation of the incoming theatre slate, the New York Times invited some special Broadway guests to perform at their 2015 Fall Preview, hosted at 54 Below.

Below, check out a first listen of Jennifer Hudson, performing "Too Beautiful for Words" from THE COLOR PURPLE; Katie Boeck and Sandra Mae Frank, performing "Mama Who Bore Me" from SPRING AWAKENING; and Eloise Kropp, performing "Star Tar" from DAMES AT SEA.

THE COLOR PURPLE, directed by Tony Award winner John Doyle, will begin preview performances on Tuesday, November 10 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (242 West 45th street) and will officially open on Thursday, December 10. Based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning novel and the Warner Bros. / Amblin Entertainment motion picture, The Color Purple is adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winnerMarsha Norman, with music and lyrics by Grammy award winners Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray.

SPRING AWAKENING, the Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 2007, will run 18 weeks only, through Saturday, January 9. It will be performed simultaneously in American Sign Language and spoken and sung in English by a cast of 28. Deaf West Theatre was last represented on Broadway with the triumphant production of Big River in 2003. Deaf West Theatre's innovative production of SPRING AWAKENING recently completed an extended, critically-acclaimed engagement at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles where the production was expanded from its original, sold-out run at the Rosenthal Theatre in downtown L.A.

DAMES AT SEA will set sail at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre (240 West 44 Street), beginning performances Thursday, September 24, 2015, with an opening night of Thursday, October 22, 2015. With a book and lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller, music by Jim Wise, and music supervision and vocal & dance arrangements by Emmy Award winner Rob Berman (Irving Berlin's White Christmas, Finian's Rainbow), Dames at Sea will be directed and choreographed by three time Tony Award nominee Randy Skinner (42nd Street, Irving Berlin's White Christmas).