Page 73 Gala To Honor Producer Barbara Whitman

Page 73 announces the 2022 Page 73 Spring Benefit. The event this year honors Barbara Whitman, producer of A Strange Loop on Broadway and, previously, of Fun Home, the 2018 revival of Angels in America, The Humans, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Next to Normal, to name just a few. Hosts James Jackson, Jr. and John-Andrew Morrison-both from the world premiere production of Michael R. Jackson's universally acclaimed musical co-produced by Page 73 and Playwrights Horizons, and continuing in the Broadway production-return after carrying last year's online benefit event.

The benefit takes place at City Winery at Pier 57, 25 11th Ave at 15th St, NYC.

The celebratory evening begins 7-8pm with a Cocktail hour in the Hudson River Room, followed by a seated dinner with entertainment in the main hall at 8pm. Tickets and ticketing information are available here.

With this benefit, the organization honors a producing collaboration that led to Page 73's farthest-reaching production to date. Page 73 Artistic Director Michael Walkup, who met Whitman during an early workshop of A Strange Loop, was immediately compelled by her dedication to Jackson's voice. A producer who has provided Broadway audiences with some of its most daring, unabashedly unique, and radical visions, Whitman joined fellow Loop enthusiast-and champion of bold theatrical work-Walkup, both aiming to set A Strange Loop on a trajectory toward the recognition it deserved.

Says Walkup, "Barbara's partnership and guidance has been instrumental as Page 73 undertook the largest project in our history: developing and ultimately co-producing A Strange Loop's wildly successful world premiere with Playwrights Horizons. Her believing in Page 73's mission and joining us as a partner meant that we could imagine the largest possible future for the show."

When the "ferocious, pungent" (Wesley Morris, The New York Times) show, directed by Stephen Brackett, premiered at Playwrights Horizons, The New York Times praised it, with Ben Brantley calling it a "a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins" and noting its "assortment of the kind of infectious, richly harmonic melodies that would have your grandparents leaving the theater humming. That is, if they hadn't walked out before." Vinson Cunningham, in The New Yorker, described: "To watch this show is to enter, by some urgent, bawdy magic, an ecstatic and infinitely more colorful version of the famous surreal lithograph by M. C. Escher: the hand that lifts from the page, becoming almost real, then draws another hand, which returns the favor." It went on to win the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Barbara Whitman is a theatrical producer who made her Broadway debut producing A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, and Sanaa Lathan. Other Broadway credits include Diana - The Musical, Burn This starring Adam Driver and Keri Russell, Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk Award, Best Play Revival), 1984, The Glass Menagerie starring Sally Fields, War Paint starring Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, The Humans (Tony Award, Best Play), Oh, Hello starring Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, Fully Committed starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Fun Home (Tony Award, Best Musical), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Tony and Drama Desk Award, Best Musical Revival), Of Mice and Men starring James Franco, If/Then starring Idina Menzel, Hands on a Hardbody, Red (Tony and Drama Desk Awards, Best Play), Next to Normal (Pulitzer Prize), Hamlet starring Jude Law, 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda, Mary Stuart, Legally Blonde - The Musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. National tours include Fun Home, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, If/Then, Murder for Two, Next to Normal, Legally Blonde - The Musical, ...Spelling Bee, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Frost/Nixon. A native New Yorker, Barbara attended NYU's Gallatin School and received an MFA in Theatre Management and Producing from Columbia University. She's a member of the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee of the Broadway League, and also serves as a Co-Chair of the Equity Diversity and Inclusion Committee. In addition, she's on the Board of Tectonic Theater Project, and Columbia University School of the Arts Dean's Council. Upcoming productions include A Strange Loop and Good Night, Oscar starring Sean Hayes.

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