Television and stage star David Burtka (pictured above) is back on Broadway, starring in the musical, It Shoulda Been You. Burtka, who will turn 40 this month, made his Broadway debut as Tulsa in the 2003 revival of Gypsy starring Bernadette Peters. He and actor Neil Patrick Harris married in Italy in September.

O’Connell & Company will hold Take a Seat 2015 “Sweet Chair-ity” Auction & Reception fundraiser on Wednesday, May 20 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at The Park School’s Dining Hall.

Cass Morgan who appeared at Studio Arena in the musical Ring of Fire prior to its Broadway run, is currently at the Geva Theatre in Rochester starring in The Road to Where, an autobiographical piece with music. Most recently, Morgan was on Broadway in The Bridges of Madison County, Memphis, and Mary Poppins. The Road to Where runs through May 10th.

The Cleveland Play House is this year’s recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award. The company recently announced its 100th anniversary season, which will kick off in September with the world premiere of Ken Ludwig’s farce A Comedy of Tenors. Ludwig’s work includes Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. The season will also include Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and the musical Little Shop of Horrors. By the way, Little Shop will be the Encores! concert production at City Center in New York this summer. Jake Gyllenhaal will be making his musical theater debut as Seymour, joining the previously announced Ellen Greene as Audrey, a part she played in the original stage production and film version.

Though it did not get any Tony nominations, the new musical Finding Neverland is doing very well at the box office. The producers already have announced plans for a US tour set to start in Upstate New York in October 2016, in association with Albert Nocciolino. By launching the tour in this part of New York state, the production will utilize the Upstate NY Theatrical Tax Incentive recently passed by Cuomo. So it could be Syracuse, Rochester, or Buffalo. We are rooting for Shea’s!

As previously noted, the Kavinoky will open its 2015-16 season with Tom Dudzick’s King O’ The Moon, the sequel to his popular Over the Tavern. The season will also include: Maxwell Anderson’s Pulitzer Prize (1933) political drama Both Your Houses; The City of Conversation, a play about Washington politics that was a hit in New York last year; End of the Rainbow, a musical drama by Peter Quilter, which focuses on Judy Garland in the months leading up to her death in 1969; Quartet, Ronald Harwood’s play about aging opera singers that was made into a movie in 2012. Harwood is best known for his play The Dresser. Quilter also wrote Glorious!, the play about Florence Foster Jenkins that was presented at the Kavinoky a few years ago.

Casting Hall Productions at Buffalo State will present The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis next fall. The play was nominated for a 2011 Tony Award. Guirgis just won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Between Riverside and Crazy. Some of his other plays include Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, Our Lady of 121st Street, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.

Katherine Boswell, Ntare Ali Gault, Donna Hoke, Cathy Lanski, Diane Almeter Jones, and James Marzo will be the participating playwrights in the 2015 Emanuel Fried New Play Workshop (NPW) put together by Road Less Traveled Productions. Also, for the first time in its ten-year history, the workshop will include three Canadian playwrights: Ann Snead, Judith Robinson, and Lezlie Wade. Public readings of the plays developed in the 2015 NPW will begin in September. Marzo’s one act play, No One Will Know, is currently part of ART’s Rust Belt Grotesque.

Manny Fried’s autobiographical non-fiction novel The Un-American has been adapted for the stage by Anna Kay France (both pictured below) and will premiere this week at The Manny Fried Playhouse, home of Subversive Theatre. Set in 1954, the novel tells the story of Manny’s stand against the House on Un-American Activities Committee, the devastating effects of McCarthyism on his life, and his battle for Buffalo’s unions. The project has been in development since Manny died in 2011. Subversive has assembled a number of sponsors for this production, among others, the Western New York Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, the Buffalo Teachers Federation, and the printing company Keller Brothers and Miller, Inc.—the same printing house that published Manny’s book in 1995.