> by JAVIER

Stage and screen star Aaron Tveit (pictured above) scored big last Sunday, starring as Danny Zuko in television’s Grease: Live, Fox’s first entry into the live musical business. The broadcast was a ratings and critical success. A graduate of Ithaca College, Tveit is well known to TV audiences for his roles in Gossip Girl and Homeland. In 2012 he portrayed Enjolras in the film adaptation of Les Miserables. He was last seen on Broadway in 2011 starring in the musical Catch Me If You Can, which had a book written by Terrence McNally based on the popular movie. Soon after that, Tveit took part in a private reading of Anastasia, McNally’s new musical with previous collaborators Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime). The musical will have its world premiere in May at Hartford Stage (sans Tveit).

Speaking of McNally, he will be in Buffalo on April 1st appearing for a benefit for BUA which will presented in collaboration with the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site. The event, BUA Does McNally! is part of BUA’s Countdown to 25 celebration which began in January with BUA Sings!

Up next for Raices Theatre Company, The Happiest Song Plays Last by Pulitzer Prize winner playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes. The play is the third in the Elliot trilogy which began with Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue (Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007) and continued with Water by the Spoonful, (2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, beautifully produced by Road Less Traveled in Buffalo). The Happiest Song will be directed by Victoria Pérez, starring Anthony Alcocer, Marta Araceli, Monish Bhattacharyya, Rolando Martín Gómez, Dewel Pérez, and Ana Vafai. It will play March 4th -13th at the Manny Fried Playhouse. The 2014 New York production of the play was directed by Buffalonian Ruben Santiago-Hudson.

Road Less Traveled Productions (RLTP) will kick off its 2016-17 season with Dinner with Friends, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner by Donald Marguiles, last seen in Buffalo in 2006 when it was presented by the now dormant Kaleidoscope Theatre. The season will conclude with another Marguiles play, The Country House. Before playing Broadway, the play premiered at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, where RLTP Artistic Director Scott Behrend served as assistant director to Daniel Sullivan. The RLTP season will also include Sam Shepard’s True West, a world-premiere adaptation of Frankenstein by David Oliver, and The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis. On a side note, the RLTP New Play Workshop will go on hiatus for now and return in some revised form.

The line is open to make an appointment for Shakespeare in Delaware Park auditions, 716-856-4533. The season includes Winter’s Tale and Taming of the Shrew. The Public Theater in New York has just announced its Shakespeare in the Park season: Taming of the Shrew with an all-female cast; and Troilus and Cressida, directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan.

It is now official! The American Repertory Theater of WNY will be performing at a new space located in the Black Rock neighborhood, at 330 Amherst St., next to the Sportsmen’s Tavern. The flexible black-box fifty seat space is scheduled to open on March 10th with John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves directed by Drew McCabe.

The Kavinoky moves from London to DC with its next play The City of Conversation, directed by Robert Waterhouse. Set in Georgetown, and spanning over thirty years (from 1979 to 2009), and six presidential administrations, the play opens February 26th, starring Kristen Tripp Kelley, Adriano Gatto, Aleks Malejs, Debbie Pappas Sham, Steve Jakiel, Loraine O’Donnell, Aaron Moss, David Lundy, Joel Fesmire and Tyler Eisenmann.

Jay Desiderio kicks off his theater season at his new Cheektowaga location at 204 Como Park Blvd. on March 3rd with Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. The second in Simon’s auto-biographical trilogy (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound), the production will star Victor Morales, Jeremy Kreuzer, Bryan Patrick Stoyle, Jay Wollin, Ian Rawlins, Jordan Rosas, Trevor Dugan, Bekki Sliwa, and JoEllen Parry.

Happy birthday to the legendary Carol Channing (pictured below) who turned 95 on Sunday, January 31st.