Author Archives: Pawdesh Salawi - Broadway Theatre Nerd

Pawdesh Salawi - Broadway Theatre Nerd

About Pawdesh Salawi - Broadway Theatre Nerd

She'll be the first to admit that it sounds corny, but Pawdesh just loves to help people, so obviously customer service is a perfect fit. Pawdesh has mostly worked in retail, doing everything from ringing up clothes to selling custom light fixtures. She much prefers working at nytix.com., where she gets to help customers find an awesome Broadway show at a price that won't leave them broke. Pawdesh is currently studying jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and in her free time (free time? what free time??) she likes to go to museums and hang out with her friends.

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Harry Potter Actor Christian Coulson To Star Off-Broadway

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Christian CoulsonChristian Coulson, the actor known by Harry Potter movie fans for his role as Tom Riddle, will star in A Picture of Autumn Off-Broadway. The Mint Theater Company is presenting the American premiere of this play by N.C. Hunter.

Coulson will be joined onstage by George Morfogen, Jonathan Hogan, Jill Tanner, Helen Cespedes, Barbara Eda-Young, Curran Connor, Paul Niebanck, and Katie Firth. Directed by Gus Kaikkonen, the production will feature costumes by Sam Fleming, set design by Charles Morgan, sound design by Jane Shaw, props by Joshua Yocum, and lighting design by William Armstrong.

A Picture of Autumn, a family drama, originally played in London in 1951. The production opens on June 10 and will play through July 14. Call 212-315-0231 for information and tickets.

Tony Winner Faith Prince Releases Live Album

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Faith PrinceTony Award winning actress and singer Faith Prince is releasing a solo recording entitled Total Faith: Live from the Royal Room at The Colony today, April 16 (the album is also available for digital download). The album was recorded in Palm Beach, Florida in 2010.

The recording offers a lively mix of stories and songs. Among the varied collection of songs that Prince features are “If He Walked Into My Life,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and “Not While I’m Around”. She also includes a few medleys, such as “Somewhere That’s Green” / “Suddenly Seymour” and “Take Me Back to Manhattan” / “Before the Parade Passes By”.

Faith Prince debuted on Broadway over 20 years ago and has been seen on the Great White Way in many productions since. She has had starring roles in the revival of Bells Are Ringing, the Disney musical The Little Mermaid, and, most recently, the intimate musical A Catered Affair. Faith Prince won a Best Actress Tony Award for her role in the hit 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls.

Audra McDonald To Release New Album May 21

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Audra McDonaldMultiple Tony Award winner and Broadway star Audra McDonald (Porgy and Bess) is set to release her fifth solo recording on May 21. The album, titled Go Back Home, will be available on Nonesuch Records.

Along with the title song (from John Kander & Fred Ebb’s musical The Scottsboro Boys), Go Back Home will feature an array of songs from Broadway shows and other musicals, including Stephen Sondheim’s “The Glamorous Life,” Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Edelweiss,” Kander & Ebb’s “First You Dream,” and Jule Styne and Comden & Green’s “Make Someone Happy”.

As she has often done before, McDonald will feature the work of two of her favorite modern musical theater composers, Adam Guettel and Michael John LaChiusa. The album will also highlight songs by emerging composers like Adam Gwon and Will Reynolds.

Shortly before the recording’s release, Audra McDonald will perform in a May 9 concert at Avery Fisher Hall to promote the album. PBS will film the concert and subsequently broadcast it as a part of the “Live From Lincoln Center” series on May 24.

Adam Pascal Will Join the Cast of Broadway’s Chicago

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Adam PascalStarting April 8, Adam Pascal will take on the often-replaced role of slick lawyer Billy Flynn in the long-running Broadway revival of Chicago. Pascal is taking over for actor Christopher Sieber.

Adam Pascal was most recently seen on Broadway playing Huey in the Tony Award winning musical Memphis. His other Broadway credits include Aida, Cabaret, and, most famously, Rent, in which he played the role of Roger.

The Tony Award-winning Chicago revival came to Broadway in 1996. Playing at the Ambassador Theatre, the production currently stars Amra-Faye Wright as Velma, Amy Spanger as Roxie, and Raymond Bokhour as Amos Hart. On the same day that Adam Pascal joins the cast, so will Christine Pedi in the role of Mama Morton.

Broadway Favorites To Honor Barbra Streisand

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Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that it will be honoring stage, film, and recording legend Barbra Streisand at the 40th Annual Chaplin Award Gala on April 22, and some of Broadway’s brightest will be on hand to pay their respects through performance. Liza Minnelli and Kristin Chenoweth will be among the Broadway favorites offering up their musical talents during the ceremony.

The tribute to Barbra Streisand, which will culminate in the famed artist being presented with the Chaplin Award by President Bill Clinton, will also include performances from luminaries like Tony Bennett and Wynton Marsalis. Many film stars will be in attendance at the gala, such as Kris Kristofferson, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Dreyfuss, Amy Irving, and Blythe Danner.

“The Board is very excited to have Barbra Streisand as the next recipient of The Chaplin Award,” stated The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s board chairman Ann Tenenbaum. “She is an artist whose long career of incomparable achievements is most powerfully expressed by the fact that her acclaimed Yentl was such a milestone film.”

Sutton Foster and Jesse Tyler Ferguson To Announce Tony Nominees

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Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

The 2013 Tony Award nominations are set to be announced on April 30 at 8:30am. Two famous faces, known both on Broadway and on television, will make the announcements from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, located at Lincoln Center. The well-known performers in question are Tony winners Sutton Foster (Anything Goes, TV’s Bunheads) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee).

Other Broadway luminaries will be there along with Sutton Foster and Jesse Tyler Ferguson when the Tony Award nominees are announced. Noted Broadway costume designer and American Theatre Wing chairman William Ivey Long, American Theatre Wing executive director Heather Hitchens, Broadway League chairman Nick Scandalios, and Broadway League executive director Charlotte St. Martin will all be in attendance.

Once the Tony nominations are announced, it will be a little more than a month until the main event, the Tony Awards ceremony, is held on June 9. The Tonys will be broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on the CBS network. Find more information at www.tonyawards.com.

broadwayUNLOCKED Benefit To Be Held April 22

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Andrew Keenan-Bolger

Andrew Keenan-Bolger

Broadway performer Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Newsies) will join songwriters Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen (Tuck Everlasting) for broadwayUNLOCKED, a special event that will benefit the Crime Victims Treatment Center, on April 22. Taylor Trensch (Matilda), Eryn Murman (Spring Awakening), Jason Hite (Bare), and Eric Namaky are also scheduled to participate in the concert event.

Held at The Green Space (44 Charlton Street), broadwayUNLOCKED will also be webcast for those who can’t make the concert.   Visit www.broadwayUNLOCKED.com to purchase tickets or to learn more.

“This year we will be able to reach out to thousands across the country, broadening our community and inviting anyone to be a part of helping survivors heal,” Crime Victims Treatment Center director Susan Xenarios said in a statement. “This is a celebration of recovery and transformation and we are thrilled to know that through this concert, our mission will reach anyone who chooses to be touched by it.”

Off-Broadway Play The Vandal To Air on PBS

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Hamish Linklater

Hamish Linklater

Actor and playwright Hamish Linklater’s new play The Vandal, playing Off-Broadway at the Flea Theater, has garnered a great deal of acclaim and is now getting a chance to be seen by television audiences. Thirteen WNET, the PBS station that serves the New York City area, will film the March 29 performance of The Vandal for later broadcast (a date has not yet been set).

The Vandal is a darkly humorous three-person play about a boy and a woman who meet and share stories while waiting for a bus one cold night. Directed by Jim Simpson, the production stars Noah Robbins, Deirdre O’Connell, and Zach Grenier.

Playwright Hamish Linklater has, up until now, been better known to Broadway and television audiences as a performer. He was recently in the Broadway production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar and will soon be seen in The Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare in the Park this summer.  Linklater is perhaps best known for his role on the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine.

New Album and TV Special from Matthew Morrison

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Matthew Morrison

Matthew Morrison

Broadway’s Matthew Morrison (South Pacific, Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza, Footloose), now known to a much wider audience thanks to his starring on the musical theater-friendly hit television series Glee, has announced that his latest solo album will be released on June 4. Called Where It All Began, it will be the first recording from Adam Levine’s new 222 label.

Produced by Phil Ramone, Where It All Began is a 12-track collection of Broadway classics, including “Younger Than Springtime,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Luck Be a Lady,” and “Send in the Clowns”. “Singin’ in the Rain,” which Morrison performed on Glee, is also on the album.

Matthew Morrison will be promoting the recording release with a television special titled Where It All Began – Live From the Bushnell, which will be shot in Hartford and air on PBS on June 1.

Hands on a Hardbody Documentary Gets New Release

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Hands on a Hardbody DocumentaryFans of the new Broadway musical Hands on a Hardbody will be pleased to learn that the 1997 documentary of the same name is now getting released on DVD and in movie theaters. The documentary directed by S.R. Bindler, which hasn’t been available for over 10 years, has been digitally restored and re-mastered.

Hands on a Hardbody offers a candid look at a 1995 competition that offered 24 Texans in a small town the chance to win a pickup truck. The contestants were challenged to keep at least one hand on the truck as long as possible, with the last person still touching the truck winning it. The competition lasted 77 hours.

New York City film-goers can catch Hands on a Hardbody at the IFC Center on March 20, before it continues on a screening tour that will take it to locations in Texas, California, and Washington. And after seeing the documentary, you can buy a ticket to see the musical version — written by Trey Anastasio, Amanda Green, and Doug Wright — at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway!