NYCPlaywrights June 13, 2026
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NYCPlaywrights
Jun 13, 2026, 5:03:47 PM (4 days ago) Jun 13
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
HAMLET
The Hudson Classical Theater Company Presents Hamlet by William Shakespeare, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith.
Though Hamlet claims that he is “mad in craft,” there’s inevitably going to be a little overlap. Three actors tackle Hamlet’s desperate struggle to ‘hold it all together’ in this imaginative, visceral, and immediate production of Shakespeare’s classic.
Hamlet runs June 25 – July 19. All shows are Thursdays to Sundays at 6:30pm. No reservations–arrive by 6:15pm for a good seat. Cushions provided. Hudson Classical Theater Company Shows are “Pay What You Can.” Audience donations help pay for artists stipends and production costs.
https://riversideparknyc.org/event/hudson-classical-theater-company-presents-hamlet/2026-06-25/
*** RHINESTONES, TIGERS & REVENGE — SHANGRI-LA-LA Comes to NYC July 25 & 26 ***
Come for the tigers. Stay for the revenge.
Shangri-La-La is a wildly funny new comedy musical inspired by a real-life Las Vegas lawsuit against Siegfried & Roy — told with rhinestones, tigers, courtroom chaos, showbiz glitter, and the wisecracking ghost of Bugsy Siegel.
Written by Mike Meier, with co-writer Peter Giambalvo, the one-hour festival version of Shangri-La-La leaves the courtroom behind and dives into the dazzling creation myth of Siegfried & Roy — two outsiders who transform themselves into Las Vegas legends through ambition, illusion, rhinestones, reinvention, and a little help from the ghosts of Sin City.
Tickets/info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shangri-la-la-a-comedy-musical-about-siegfried-roy-tickets-1989267183696?aff=odcleoeventsincollection
*** WORKSHOP: WRITE A NEW PLAY IN FIVE WEEKS ***
Tuesdays June 23, 30 and July 7, 14, 21 / 6-9PM EASTERN
$250
Having trouble getting started? Kickstart your process with this five-week workshop which includes exercises to revitalize your creativity, weekly office hours to discuss your progress, a complimentary post-workshop one-on-one, and a supportive, non-competitive environment.
Instructor: John J. Caswell, Jr. was a recent fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and holds an MFA from Hunter College.
MORE INFO: WWW.JOHNJCASWELLJR.COM/WORKSHOPS
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Putting three widows and a divorcee together in a Miami house and letting them be flinty, funny, and even sexual proved to be a genius recipe, and one that has eternal gay appeal because of its groundbreaking content. True, the gay cook only lasted one episode, but he was so negligible anyway--a real fly-by-night with a lazy spatula. I could also do without the bitchy caterer who snaps at Dorothy ("Well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant!"), as well as the running gags about Dorothy's cross-dressing brother Phil, which always seemed a little cheap (though it was too delicious when the seemingly boring politician played by John Schuck turned out to be a female-to-male trans person). But the show really triumphed when dealing with Blanche's brother's gayness and his right to marry whom he pleased, not to mention the great episode where an old friend of Dorothy's turns out to be a lesbian who develops a passionate crush on Rose, while Blanche wonders why it isn'tshe who's the object of the lady's craving. "Some people like girls instead of guys," responds Sophia, nonchalantly--and she's also the one who tells Blanche to get over her qualms about her brother's sexuality. How perfect that the crusty old lady is the one to break down barriers and speak sense in order to educate the others (and the audience).
More...
https://www.out.com/entertainment/michael-musto/2014/07/14/why-golden-girls-still-gayest-show-tv
***
Barry and I were theater geeks, and had been since the day we had separately moved to New York two years earlier: Cutting out of work early to stand in line for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park, getting rush tickets at the Public Theater, spending our Saturdays at the TKTS booth in Times Square, occasionally second-acting Broadway shows that we couldn’t afford a ticket to.
But this play sounded like something we had never seen before.
A few days later, we headed over to the Richard Allen Center on West 62nd Street and mounted six narrow flights of stairs, to confront a stage no bigger than my living room, and entered a cramped theater filled with others who had heard the same siren call.
Previously my only experiences of gay theater had been plays like “The Boys in the Band,” “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” “Tea and Sympathy” and “Streamers” — plays where the gay character was either closeted or bitter or suicidal, and usually all three. It was a shock to see Mr. Fierstein, as Arnold, strutting around his apartment in his floppy rabbit slippers, cracking jokes, sharing affection with both his lover and his foster son, and going ferociously head-to-head with his disapproving mother, played by Estelle Getty, then unknown.
More...
https://archive.ph/ywxQ4
***
Betty White in "The King and I" in 1963
"The King and I," one of the foremost musical plays resulting from the 17-year collaboration of composer Richard Rodgers and author Oscar Hammerstein II, will be the seventh attraction of the season at Municipal Opera, opening tomorrow night for a week. It will star Betty White as Anna Leonowens and Charles Korvin as the King of Siam.
More...
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15284124/1963the-king-and-i-at-the-muny/
***
“I just thought it would be fun,” said TV sitcom specialist Rue McClanahan, about the new musical, “Oedipus, Schmedipus, As Long as You Love Your Mother” opening tonight at the Golden Theatre in Burbank. McClanahan, who plays the lusty Blanche on NBC’s long-running “Golden Girls,” penned the lyrics and music for the farce about a father and son in love with the same woman. “It was always my pet. Friends would want to go out, and I worked on it instead. It really made me laugh harder than any of them.”
And maybe cry. McClanahan started the project in 1984, before “Golden Girls.” At first, she collaborated with Norman L. Hartweg, a friend from college, until he bowed out. Then, it went through more rewrites than a high school term paper. “There are a few of Norman’s words left,” she joked.
McClanahan spent long days on the set with Betty White, Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty, her TV co-stars, and long nights at the computer screen with the stars of her imagination.
She composed songs and lyrics in her car, always carrying a portable tape recorder. She sang aloud, except at traffic lights.
More...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-12-ca-2091-story.html
***
“Thank you for being a friend” You know the iconic theme song and now Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia and Rose return to their Miami Beach home in the raunchy stage show “Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue.” Produced by Murray and Peter, notable for their national Drag Race tours, the duo has branched into bringing a more theatrical drag play to the stage. The show plays the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts...
The house opens with a playlist of classic bops, everything from Dolly Parton to the “Grease” soundtrack setting us up for a 1980s gay romp as ABBA plays overhead. As the stage lights illuminate the Miami Beach abode, we meet the elderly Sophia (Christopher Kamm) being brought into the house by her dour daughter Dorothy (Ryan Bernier) after Sophia tries to leave the property, triggering her ankle monitor. Dubbed the “El Chapo of Shady Pines,” the Sicilian senior found herself in a snafu after the DEA busted her for peddling LSD to the residents and put on house arrest. Meanwhile, the Southern dame Blanche (Vince Kelley) and her younger, less bright friend Rose (Adam Graber) have launched a dating app for seniors called CreakN that has taken off.
More...
https://wtlgomag.com/2024/09/08/review-golden-girls-the-laughs-continue-offers-broad-jokes-and-broad-shoulders/
***
Many original cast members of the legendary 1954 production of "The Threepenny Opera" will reunite for a one-night-only performance to benefit the Actors' Fund of America Mon., Dec. 18. Bea Arthur, Charlotte Rae, William Duell and Jo Sullivan Loesser are among the original cast members who will perform a concert version of the Kurt Weill-Bertold Brecht musical (as adapted by Marc Blitzstein). Robert Cuccioli—who hadn't yet been born when the show opened at the Theatre de Lys 46 years ago—and George S. Irving, who joined the cast after the opening, will join them.
More...
https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/bea-arthur-headline-threepenny-fund-29683/
Bea Arthur, Barbara Song, Threepenny Opera, 1954
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yes4V_DEncQ
***
The Golden Girls on the Royal Variety Performance, at the London Palladium. It was shown on BBC1 in November 1988.
It was the joint 4th most watched programme of the year with 18.15 million viewers. At the time The Golden Girls was broadcast on Britain's fourth terrestrial channel (Channel 4.) which had existed since 1982 and was one of its most popular shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KrLLPb6xVU
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
HAMLET
The Hudson Classical Theater Company Presents Hamlet by William Shakespeare, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith.
Though Hamlet claims that he is “mad in craft,” there’s inevitably going to be a little overlap. Three actors tackle Hamlet’s desperate struggle to ‘hold it all together’ in this imaginative, visceral, and immediate production of Shakespeare’s classic.
Hamlet runs June 25 – July 19. All shows are Thursdays to Sundays at 6:30pm. No reservations–arrive by 6:15pm for a good seat. Cushions provided. Hudson Classical Theater Company Shows are “Pay What You Can.” Audience donations help pay for artists stipends and production costs.
https://riversideparknyc.org/event/hudson-classical-theater-company-presents-hamlet/2026-06-25/
*** RHINESTONES, TIGERS & REVENGE — SHANGRI-LA-LA Comes to NYC July 25 & 26 ***
Come for the tigers. Stay for the revenge.
Shangri-La-La is a wildly funny new comedy musical inspired by a real-life Las Vegas lawsuit against Siegfried & Roy — told with rhinestones, tigers, courtroom chaos, showbiz glitter, and the wisecracking ghost of Bugsy Siegel.
Written by Mike Meier, with co-writer Peter Giambalvo, the one-hour festival version of Shangri-La-La leaves the courtroom behind and dives into the dazzling creation myth of Siegfried & Roy — two outsiders who transform themselves into Las Vegas legends through ambition, illusion, rhinestones, reinvention, and a little help from the ghosts of Sin City.
Tickets/info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shangri-la-la-a-comedy-musical-about-siegfried-roy-tickets-1989267183696?aff=odcleoeventsincollection
*** WORKSHOP: WRITE A NEW PLAY IN FIVE WEEKS ***
Tuesdays June 23, 30 and July 7, 14, 21 / 6-9PM EASTERN
$250
Having trouble getting started? Kickstart your process with this five-week workshop which includes exercises to revitalize your creativity, weekly office hours to discuss your progress, a complimentary post-workshop one-on-one, and a supportive, non-competitive environment.
Instructor: John J. Caswell, Jr. was a recent fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and holds an MFA from Hunter College.
MORE INFO: WWW.JOHNJCASWELLJR.COM/WORKSHOPS
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Announcing the fourth annual cycle of PlayList, a short play development series. Each participating playwright will write a new 10-minute play, ready for submission to festivals and other opportunities, supported by the new play dramaturgy community of the CRY HAVOC Company. The project will culminate in a public presentation of the play collection.
***
We at Native Voices believe that stories are medicine that lives inside every one of us. We believe representation matters, and for far too long, our stories have been absent from stages. Native Voices is proud to be the only equity theater in the United States dedicated to developing and producing new works for the stage by Alaska Native, First Nations, Native American, and Native Hawaiian playwrights.
17th Annual Short Play Festival Theme: All Our Relations and Their Baggage
***
Submissions for Boo! are now OPEN
Scare us or force us to laugh till we die – horror plays and musicals including a great spoof.
ELIGIBILITY: Short Plays and Musicals with a performance time of 15 minutes or less, no more than 15 pages in length. Writers are eligible to submit up to 2 plays. Plays submitted must not have performances at other venues in New York City within a three month period preceding the festival.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
***
We at Native Voices believe that stories are medicine that lives inside every one of us. We believe representation matters, and for far too long, our stories have been absent from stages. Native Voices is proud to be the only equity theater in the United States dedicated to developing and producing new works for the stage by Alaska Native, First Nations, Native American, and Native Hawaiian playwrights.
17th Annual Short Play Festival Theme: All Our Relations and Their Baggage
***
Submissions for Boo! are now OPEN
Scare us or force us to laugh till we die – horror plays and musicals including a great spoof.
ELIGIBILITY: Short Plays and Musicals with a performance time of 15 minutes or less, no more than 15 pages in length. Writers are eligible to submit up to 2 plays. Plays submitted must not have performances at other venues in New York City within a three month period preceding the festival.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GOLDEN GIRLS ON STAGE ***
Putting three widows and a divorcee together in a Miami house and letting them be flinty, funny, and even sexual proved to be a genius recipe, and one that has eternal gay appeal because of its groundbreaking content. True, the gay cook only lasted one episode, but he was so negligible anyway--a real fly-by-night with a lazy spatula. I could also do without the bitchy caterer who snaps at Dorothy ("Well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant!"), as well as the running gags about Dorothy's cross-dressing brother Phil, which always seemed a little cheap (though it was too delicious when the seemingly boring politician played by John Schuck turned out to be a female-to-male trans person). But the show really triumphed when dealing with Blanche's brother's gayness and his right to marry whom he pleased, not to mention the great episode where an old friend of Dorothy's turns out to be a lesbian who develops a passionate crush on Rose, while Blanche wonders why it isn'tshe who's the object of the lady's craving. "Some people like girls instead of guys," responds Sophia, nonchalantly--and she's also the one who tells Blanche to get over her qualms about her brother's sexuality. How perfect that the crusty old lady is the one to break down barriers and speak sense in order to educate the others (and the audience).
More...
https://www.out.com/entertainment/michael-musto/2014/07/14/why-golden-girls-still-gayest-show-tv
***
Barry and I were theater geeks, and had been since the day we had separately moved to New York two years earlier: Cutting out of work early to stand in line for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park, getting rush tickets at the Public Theater, spending our Saturdays at the TKTS booth in Times Square, occasionally second-acting Broadway shows that we couldn’t afford a ticket to.
But this play sounded like something we had never seen before.
A few days later, we headed over to the Richard Allen Center on West 62nd Street and mounted six narrow flights of stairs, to confront a stage no bigger than my living room, and entered a cramped theater filled with others who had heard the same siren call.
Previously my only experiences of gay theater had been plays like “The Boys in the Band,” “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” “Tea and Sympathy” and “Streamers” — plays where the gay character was either closeted or bitter or suicidal, and usually all three. It was a shock to see Mr. Fierstein, as Arnold, strutting around his apartment in his floppy rabbit slippers, cracking jokes, sharing affection with both his lover and his foster son, and going ferociously head-to-head with his disapproving mother, played by Estelle Getty, then unknown.
More...
https://archive.ph/ywxQ4
***
Betty White in "The King and I" in 1963
"The King and I," one of the foremost musical plays resulting from the 17-year collaboration of composer Richard Rodgers and author Oscar Hammerstein II, will be the seventh attraction of the season at Municipal Opera, opening tomorrow night for a week. It will star Betty White as Anna Leonowens and Charles Korvin as the King of Siam.
More...
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15284124/1963the-king-and-i-at-the-muny/
***
“I just thought it would be fun,” said TV sitcom specialist Rue McClanahan, about the new musical, “Oedipus, Schmedipus, As Long as You Love Your Mother” opening tonight at the Golden Theatre in Burbank. McClanahan, who plays the lusty Blanche on NBC’s long-running “Golden Girls,” penned the lyrics and music for the farce about a father and son in love with the same woman. “It was always my pet. Friends would want to go out, and I worked on it instead. It really made me laugh harder than any of them.”
And maybe cry. McClanahan started the project in 1984, before “Golden Girls.” At first, she collaborated with Norman L. Hartweg, a friend from college, until he bowed out. Then, it went through more rewrites than a high school term paper. “There are a few of Norman’s words left,” she joked.
McClanahan spent long days on the set with Betty White, Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty, her TV co-stars, and long nights at the computer screen with the stars of her imagination.
She composed songs and lyrics in her car, always carrying a portable tape recorder. She sang aloud, except at traffic lights.
More...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-12-ca-2091-story.html
***
“Thank you for being a friend” You know the iconic theme song and now Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia and Rose return to their Miami Beach home in the raunchy stage show “Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue.” Produced by Murray and Peter, notable for their national Drag Race tours, the duo has branched into bringing a more theatrical drag play to the stage. The show plays the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts...
The house opens with a playlist of classic bops, everything from Dolly Parton to the “Grease” soundtrack setting us up for a 1980s gay romp as ABBA plays overhead. As the stage lights illuminate the Miami Beach abode, we meet the elderly Sophia (Christopher Kamm) being brought into the house by her dour daughter Dorothy (Ryan Bernier) after Sophia tries to leave the property, triggering her ankle monitor. Dubbed the “El Chapo of Shady Pines,” the Sicilian senior found herself in a snafu after the DEA busted her for peddling LSD to the residents and put on house arrest. Meanwhile, the Southern dame Blanche (Vince Kelley) and her younger, less bright friend Rose (Adam Graber) have launched a dating app for seniors called CreakN that has taken off.
More...
https://wtlgomag.com/2024/09/08/review-golden-girls-the-laughs-continue-offers-broad-jokes-and-broad-shoulders/
***
Many original cast members of the legendary 1954 production of "The Threepenny Opera" will reunite for a one-night-only performance to benefit the Actors' Fund of America Mon., Dec. 18. Bea Arthur, Charlotte Rae, William Duell and Jo Sullivan Loesser are among the original cast members who will perform a concert version of the Kurt Weill-Bertold Brecht musical (as adapted by Marc Blitzstein). Robert Cuccioli—who hadn't yet been born when the show opened at the Theatre de Lys 46 years ago—and George S. Irving, who joined the cast after the opening, will join them.
More...
https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/bea-arthur-headline-threepenny-fund-29683/
Bea Arthur, Barbara Song, Threepenny Opera, 1954
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yes4V_DEncQ
***
The Golden Girls on the Royal Variety Performance, at the London Palladium. It was shown on BBC1 in November 1988.
It was the joint 4th most watched programme of the year with 18.15 million viewers. At the time The Golden Girls was broadcast on Britain's fourth terrestrial channel (Channel 4.) which had existed since 1982 and was one of its most popular shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KrLLPb6xVU
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