THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY Tickets Up for Bid for Typhoon Relief, 12/18

New York, December 18, 2013--A pair of tickets to the Broadway transfer of "The Bridges of Madison County," a new musical by the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning team of Marsha Norman ("The Secret Garden") and Jason Robert Brown ("The Last Five Years"), opening at Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Thursday, February 20, will be up for bid--via a silent auction--tonight at New York-based advertising and media agencies' fundraiser for typhoon Haiyan victims at the International Center of Photography (43rd Street and Sixth Avenue) from 7 to 10:30 p.m.

Agency employees can enter for free or buy tickets at adreliefnyc.splashthat.com.

Alongside Zenith Media, SellerCrowd & BuyerCrowd, The Media Kitchen, Verve Mobile, Moxie, Mashable, Deep Focus, Commonground, Maker Studios, MOAT and Spotify, Liz Marmer, one of the event organizers, said, "With support from many in the NYC community, our goal is raise a five-figure amount that will go directly to UNICEF's relief efforts in the Philippines."

Tacloban on Leyte island in the east-central of the Philippines has been a hot topic in the international news lately when supertyphoon Haiyan, touted as one of the most powerful storms on record, slammed into the province Friday, November 8. Deaths have been estimated at 6,000; nearly 1,800 people are still missing.

On Broadway, "The Bridges of Madison County," inspired by the 1992 best-selling novel by Robert James Waller, stars Kelli O'Hara ("South Pacific"), Steven Pasquale ("Reasons to be Pretty"), Hunter Foster ("Hands on a Hardbody"), Cass Morgan ("Memphis), Michael Martin ("Catch Me if You Can"), Caitlin Kinnunen ("Spring Awakening") and Derek Klena ("Wicked"), among others.

The new stage adaptation will present a more fleshed out narrative compared to the novel, which tells the story of Francesca Johnson, a married but lonely Italian woman, who lives in Madison County, Iowa. Francesca meets and falls in love with Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer from Bellingham, Washington, who is photographing covered bridges in the county.

"The Bridges in Madison County" on Broadway is directed by Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher ("The Light in the Piazza"), and produced by Jeffrey Richards, Stacey Mindich and Jerry Frankel, together with Gutterman Chernoff, Hunter Arnold, Ken Davenport, Carl Daikeler, Michael DeSantis, Scott M. Delman, Aaron Priest, Red Mountain Theatre Company, Independent Presenters Network, Libby Adler Mages/Mari Stuart, Caiola Productions, Remmel Dickinson, David Lancaster, Bellanca Smigel Rutter, Mark S. Golub and David S. Golub, Will Trice, with Warner Bros Theatre Ventures and The Shubert Organization.

The musical had its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts on Thursday, August 1.

Bloomberg News describes the piece as "a rich new musical that reverberates with gorgeous songs."