Stagefright	by Javier

The remarkable Georgia Engel (pictured above) will be soon in Buffalo starring in the touring production of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone, which opens at Shea’s on March 4. Engel will play Mrs. Tottendale, the part she originated in the Broadway production and in the out-of-town tryout in Los Angeles. Widely known for her TV appearances in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, most recently, in Everybody Loves Raymond, Engel made her Broadway debut playing Minnie Fay to Ethel Merman’s Dolly. The Drowsy Chaperone, which had its beginning at the 1999 Toronto Fringe Festival, won the 2006 Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book of a Musical. The Broadway production just closed this past December.

Tickets for the musical Wicked will go on sale to the public on Saturday, April 5, exclusively at the Shea’s Ticket box office from 7am to 10am. Beginning at 10am, any remaining tickets will be available through Ticketmaster or sheas.org. Wicked will run June 18-July 13. The Los Angeles production just celebrated its first anniversary at the Pantages Theatre.

UB Department of Theatre and Dance will present David Shire and Richard Maltby’s musical Baby, February 27-March 2 at the Black Box Theatre in the Center for the Arts. Directed by Jerry Finnegan, with musical direction by Nancy Townsend, the production will feature Tim Voit, Kelsey Mathes, Louis Napoleone, Lauren Hodsdon, Rob Dunn and Laurel Flynn.

Broadway veteran André De Shields is back in Buffalo directing the upcoming production of Hair for Buffalo State College Theater Department. The show will run March 13-22 at the Warren Enters Theatre in Upton Hall. Hair opened on Broadway 40 years ago, on April 29, 1968. Diane Keaton was one of its original cast members. It was recently announced that the Public Theater in New York will present Hair and Hamlet as part of its summer Shakespeare in the Park season. Before transferring to Broadway in 1968, Hair had its world premiere at the Public Theater in October 1967.

Speaking of the Public Theatre, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls transferred there from London’s Royal Court in 1982 and won the Obie Award that year. This coming weekend (February 22-24), Niagara University Theater will present a reading of Top Girls at The Church in Lewiston, directed by Lawrence Smith. Incidentally, Top Girls will be making its Broadway debut this April. Manhattan Theatre Club will present the play at the Biltmore with a cast that includes Martha Plimpton and Marissa Tomei.

Kurt Schneiderman’s play Foundations will have a staged reading on March 16 at the Stage Left Theatre in Chicago as part of the theater’s Downstage Left Program. The play will then become a candidate for a full production at the theater’s annual new play festival. Foundations premiered in Buffalo at the New Phoenix in January 2007.

Buffalo United Artists in association with Subversive Theatre Collective will present the Buffalo premiere of the one woman play My Name is Rachel Corrie, directed by Tim Klein and starring Katie White. The play was compiled from the e-mails and journal entries of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who died on March 16, 2003, in Gaza when she stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer set to demolish a Palestinian home. The production opens March 7 at Main Street Cabaret.

Dana Block, who will be appearing in the upcoming production of The Great Gilly Hopkins at TOY, has been cast as Calpurnia in the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival production of Julius Ceasar. Block, who was seen at the Irish Classical Theatre in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, will also appear in the festival’s production of Pericles. The festival runs April-July in Louisville.

Fresh after her stint in Waiting for Lefty, Jennifer Linch has joined the cast of the Road Less Traveled production of Melody Von Smith’s play Bonegrinders, which opens this Friday, February 22.

Steve Henderson and Ruben Santiago-Hudson will be part of the upcoming Kennedy Center celebration of the work of the late August Wilson. Under the title August Wilson’s 20th Century, this project will present Wilson’s 10-play cycle, which chronicles the African-American experience in the 20th century. Henderson will appear in The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running and King Hedley II. Santiago-Hudson will appear in Gem of the Ocean and The Piano Lesson, and will direct Radio Golf. The program runs March 4-April 6.

Joyce Carolyn and N’tare Ali Gault will portray Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes in the upcoming Lady Day & Langston which opens March 21 at TheaterLoft.