'Yank!' with Steggert, Denman & Anderson in Free Musical Reading 3/11 at The Zipper

Due to the overwhelming response to the previously-announced developmental reading at The York Theatre Company on Tuesday, March 11, the creative team of Yank! A New Musical has announced the addition of a second reading on Monday, March 10 from 2PM-5PM at The Zipper Factory Theatre (336 West 37th Street).

The performance is open to the public on a first come, first serve basis only. The York Theatre Company's reading of Yank!, on Tuesday, March 11 from 3PM-6PM at The York's own venue (St. Peter's Church at 54th Street & Lexington Avenue), currently is wait-listed.

After its recent critically-acclaimed month-long run at The Gallery Players in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Yank! A New Musical is mounting these readings with the show's most recent leads, Broadway talents Bobby Steggert (110 in the Shade, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island), Nancy Anderson (Wonderful Town, A Class Act) as well as Jeffry Denman (Encores! Face the Music, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, The Producers), who has been involved with the production since its sold-out inception at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2005.  They will join a talented cast including Michael Baker, Leo Ash Evens, Chad Harlow, Ivan Hernandez, Matt Loehr, Tally Sessions, Doug Shapiro, Dennis Stowe and Kevin Worley. Igor Goldin directs the cast of 12.  Dan Feyer is Musical Director.

"A love song to Hollywood's 'it takes one of every kind' platoon flicks and to 1940s Broadway, David and Joseph Zellnik's new-fashioned 1940s-style musical, Yank!, is a universal love story that brings to light to a forgotten slice of history.  The show tells the story of a war reporter named Stu and an army private named Mitch, who fall in love and struggle to survive in a time and place where the odds are stacked against them. Intelligent and impassioned, suffused with songs in swing, big band and boogie-woogie styles, the show explores the stories that don't get told in wartime, and how WWII became a great catalyst in bringing gay men and women together," describe press notes.

Yank! gets its title from Yank Magazine, a WWII publication which grew to become the most widely-read and most popular magazine in the history of the U.S. Army.  By the end of WWII, twenty-three various editions of Yank Magazine had been published.  At the height of the magazine's operations, there were printing presses in Honolulu, Cairo, Tokyo, Okinawa, Rob, Trinidad, Saipan and other places, and the weekly achieved a worldwide circulation of 2,600,000.  It is thought to have been read by ten million.   The magazine, which was staffed entirely by enlisted soldiers, printed its last issue in December 1945, realizing for the War Department a profit of $1,000,000.

Joe and David Zellnik's previous musicals include First in Flight: The Wright Brothers for TheaterworksUSA, which toured the country to raves in 2004-05, and City of Dreams, which was performed at the first International Music Theatre Festival (Cardiff, Wales 2002), the Midtown International Theatre Festival (New York, 2002), and which won the National Music Theatre Network competition in 2003. David Zellnik is the author of numerous plays, most recently Serendib (Ensemble Studio Theatre, 2007) and Ariel Sharon Hovers Between Life and Death and Dreams of Theodor Herzl (Theatre J, Washington DC 2007). Previous plays include Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom (2001 OOBR award, AllOutArtsBest Play 2000, and currently optioned for film by Rob Ahrens of Xanadu) and Killing Hand (EST Marathon, 1998). He is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and was a founding member of Youngblood.  www.davidzellnik.com. In addition to composing, Joe Zellnik has collaborated with his sister on the historical mysteries Murder at the Portland Variety and A Death at the Rose Paperworks (both from Midnight Ink).  He is currently at work on his first solo novelistic effort.

Photos, reviews, sound clips and more information on Yank! A New Musical and its creative team can be found on the show's sleek, new website, www.yankthemusical.com.  

Bobby Steggert (photo by Walter McBride / Retna Ltd)