Tickets to LCT's Annual Benefit Honoring Moss Hart, Featuring Kelli O'Hara & Stephen Colbert, Now On Sale

Performance-only tickets are now on sale to the general public for ACT TWO: A SWELL PARTY WITH MOSS HART AND FRIENDS, An Evening of Songs Sketches, Scenes and More Celebrating the Genius of Moss Hart, Monday April 21 at 8pm at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street). Performers scheduled to appear in the entertainment, which will serve as the centerpiece of Lincoln Center Theater's Annual Benefit and which will be directed by Bartlett Sher, are Victoria Clark, Stephen Colbert, David Garrison, Malcolm Gets, Reneé Elise Goldsberry, Byron Jennings, Kelli O'Hara, Steven Pasquale, and Lewis J. Stadlen.

Performance-only tickets to the 1 hour 15 minute show, priced at $77 for side orchestra seats and $52 for loge seats, are available at the Lincoln Center Theater box office, at telecharge.com or by visiting LCT.org.

Lincoln Center Theater's current production of ACT ONE, a new play written and directed by James Lapine, based on the autobiography of Moss Hart, tells the story of Hart's early years culminating in his becoming an overnight success as a playwright with the opening of his first Broadway play Once In A Lifetime in 1930.

ACT TWO: A SWELL PARTY WITH MOSS HART AND FRIENDS celebrates the playwright-director's prolific output over the 30 years which followed. The effervescent evening of comedy and song will feature material Hart either authored, collaborated on or directed with such legendary artists as George S. Kaufman, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe. The shows that will be represented in this fast-paced evening of songs, scenes and sketches include The Man Who Came To Dinner, As Thousands Cheer, Face The Music, Lady in the Dark, My Fair Lady and Camelot.

Honorary Chairmen for the evening are Janine and J. Tomilson Hill, with Donald G. Drapkin and Sue Hostetler serving as Chairmen. André Bishop is the Producing Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater.

Born in 1904, Moss Hart was raised in the Bronx and Brooklyn and as a teenager worked as an office boy for the theatrical producer Augustus Pitou. It was while working for the producer that Hart, under a pseudonym, wrote a play produced by Pitou called, variously, The Hold-Up Man or The Beloved Bandit. Hart's first big success, his collaboration with playwright-director George S. Kaufman on his own original play about Hollywood, Once in a Lifetime, opened on Broadway in 1930. The two men went on to collaborate on a series of plays including Merrily We Roll Along (1934), You Can't Take It With You (for which they won the Pulitzer Prize, the film version by Frank Capra won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1939) and the musical I'd Rather Be Right , with a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (both in 1937), The Fabulous Invalid (1938) , The American Way and The Man Who Came To Dinner (both in 1939) and their final collaboration George Washington Slept Here (1940). During this period Hart also collaborated with Irving Berlin on the musical Face the Music (1933) and the revue As Thousands Cheer (1933); adapted the book for the musical The Great Waltz (1934); and wrote the book to Cole Porter's score for the musical Jubilee (1935). Hart wrote the book for the 1941 musical Lady in the Dark, which he also directed, with a score by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin and was the playwright and director of Winged Victory, a tribute to the Air Force (1943), Christopher Blake (1946), Light Up the Sky (1948) and The Climate of Eden (1952). As a director, he had successes with Junior Miss (1941), Dear Ruth (1944), Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty (1948) and Anniversary Waltz (1954). His film work includes the screenplays for Gentleman's Agreement (1947 Academy Award for Best Picture), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), A Star is Born (1954) and Prince of Players (1955) , among others. In 1956, Hart directed Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, one of the greatest successes in musical theater history for which he won both the Tony and New York Drama Critics' Awards for Best Director. It was equally well-received in London in 1958. Hart collaborated with Lerner and Loewe a second time, on the musical Camelot (1960). In 1946, Hart married the actress and singer Kitty Carlisle with whom he had two children, Christopher and Catherine. After Camelot, Hart moved his family to Palm Springs for health reasons. He began work on what he called a "comedy of manners" when he was stricken suddenly with heart failure in 1961.

This spring, in addition to ACT ONE, Lincoln Center Theater is producing Anthony Giardina's new play The City of Conversation, directed by Doug Hughes, beginning Thursday, April 10 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and the LCT3 production of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar's The Who & The What, directed by Kimberly Senior, beginning Saturday, May 31 in the Claire Tow Theater.

For more information about gala tickets which start at $2500 each and include a cocktail party, center orchestra seats, and a post-show dinner with the artists, please call Karin Schall at 212-501-3201. Proceeds from this Benefit will support Lincoln Center Theater's productions and education programs.