Brenda Braxton, Judith Ivey, Jefferson Mays & More to Join SHAKESPEARE SONNET SOIREE

David Staller, Artistic Director of Gingold Theatrical Group, today announced that Brenda Braxton, Alison Frasier, Harriet Harris, David Lee Huynh, Judith Ivey, Jefferson Mays, Charlotte Moore, Thom Sesma, Renee Taylor, Jon Patrick Walker, Karen Ziemba, and more will join the SHAKESPEARE SONNET SOIRÉE in honor of Shakespeare's 458th birthday, live, online, on Saturday April 23rd at 6PM EDT. FREE! Livestream on the GTG Facebook page. Line-up subject to change.

Join the GTG family and this all-star company for a virtual open mic! Come as you are and share what you'd like: a Shakespeare Sonnet or quote or a song based on a Sonnet! This is a birthday party! Not a fundraiser!

Throughout the evening, members of that extended family will join in and volunteer offerings of favorite Shakespeare's Sonnets and Sonnet-inspired work, too! We ask that you kindly keep it to under 3 minutes, so we may hear from as many guests as possible. Register before 4pm on April 22nd! If you just want to watch the livestream on Facebook, toast, and add good vibes to the room, that's more than welcome, too. Just a chance to raise a glass and cut the cake!

For more information, click HERE

To register as a participant, click HERE

"We're given to believe that William Shakespeare knew how to party with the best of them," said Mr. Staller, "and who better to celebrate than the person who contributed more than anyone to the world of the theatre? Join us to light the 458 candles on his birthday cake. He wrote more than 150 sonnets and, no, we don't plan on getting through them all, but here's an opportunity to speak the speech he prayed you. Sonnet, song, quote, snippets, soliloquies, everything to satisfy your Bardolatry."

This fall, GTG returned to live, in person performance with the acclaimed revival of Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession starring Robert Cuccioli, David Lee Huynh, Alvin Keith, Nicole King, Raphael Nash Thompson, and Tony® Award winner Karen Ziemba as Mrs. Warren, which recently completed its acclaimed Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row, directed by David Staller. Terry Teachout, reviewing Mrs. Warren's Profession in The Wall Street Journal, declared "Mr. Staller, who knows everything there is to know about Shaw, has not only staged the play but edited the text with his accustomed skill. All the more reason, then, to praise David Staller, the artistic director of Project Shaw, a long-running series of semi-staged concert readings of the playwright's 60-odd shows. In addition to Project Shaw, Mr. Staller's Gingold Theatrical Group presented fully staged small-scale off-Broadway versions of Heartbreak House in 2018 and Caesar and Cleopatra in 2019, and now they're doing Mrs. Warren's Profession. The production is completely satisfying... Sprinkled with tart, school-of-Wilde epigrams ('There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses') and overflowing with glittering talk, it's a foolproof vehicle for six accomplished actors and a director who, like Mr. Staller, knows better than to let the play become a static chat-fest. Instead, he keeps the actors moving and the pace brisk, and the results are immensely pleasurable."

These online Gingold events have been attracting a global audience! Join people from Ireland, England, France, Brazil, Australia, Shanghai, Japan, Iceland, and from all across the U.S.A. Mr. Staller will be hosting the event from Los Angeles, where he'll be participating in the TCM Film Festival's evening celebrating his late partner, Robert Osborne, as Leonard Maltin is given the annual Robert Osborne Award.

GINGOLD THEATRICAL GROUP creates theater that supports human rights, freedom of speech, and individual liberty using the work of George Bernard Shaw as our guide. All of GTG's programs are inspired by Shaw's humanitarian values. Through full productions, staged readings, new play development, and inner-city educational programs, GTG brings Shavian precepts to audiences and artists across New York, encouraging individuals to breathe Shaw's humanist ideals into their contributions for the future. Shaw created plays to inspire peaceful discussion and activism and that is what GTG aims to accomplish. GTG's past productions include Man and Superman (2012), You Never Can Tell (2013), Major Barbara (2014), Widowers' Houses (2016), Heartbreak House (2018), and Caesar & Cleopatra (2019). Founded in 2006 by David Staller, GTG has carved a permanent niche for the work of George Bernard Shaw within the social and cultural life of New York City, and, through the Project Shaw reading series, made history in 2009 as the first company ever to present performances of every one of Shaw's 65 plays (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches). GTG brings together performers, critics, students, academics and the general public with the opportunity to explore and perform theatrical work inspired by the humanitarian and activist values that Shaw championed. All comedies, these plays boldly exhibit the insight, wit, passion and all-encompassing socio-political focus that distinguished Shaw as one of the most inventive and incisive writers of all time. Through performances, symposiums, new play development, and outreach, as well as through our discussion groups and partnerships with schools including SUNY Stony Brook, Regis, the De La Salle Academy, and The Broome Street Academy, GTG has helped spark a renewed interest in Shaw across the country, and a bold interest in theater as activism. Young people are particularly inspired by Shaw's invocation to challenge the strictures society imposes, to embrace the power of the individual, to make bold personal choices and to take responsibility for these choices. GTG's new play development lab, Speakers' Corner, created to support playwrights inspired by Shaw's ideals, is now in its second cycle. Through monthly prompts and feedback, writers develop work inspired by or in response to a specific Shaw text. Plays developed through Speakers' Corner will be nurtured in workshops and readings with the expectation that GTG will publish or produce them. GTG encourages all people to rejoice in the possibilities of the future. All of GTG's programming is designed to inspire lively discussion and peaceful activism with issues related to human rights, the freedom of speech, and individual liberty. This was the purpose behind all of Shaw's work and why GTG chose him as the guide toward helping create a more tolerant and inclusive world through the exploration of the Arts.

For more information about the Shakespeare's birthday soirée or any of Gingold Theatrical Group's projects, please call 212-355-7823 or email info@gingoldgroup.org, or visit online at www.gingoldgroup.org.

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