Hamilton won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, Lin-Manuel Miranda accepting the award with – what else? — a rap:

That the winner of the musical theater category was actually announced on the TV broadcast was the least of it. For the first time, a musical number from a Broadway show was presented on the Grammys live via satellite from the theater.

(To see a video of the full performance, please click on my New York Theater Facebook page.)

Week in New York Theater News

The Golden Bride, the Yiddish musical lovingly restored by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, returns to the Museum of Jewish Heritage starting July 4th

Kelli O’Hara departing The King and I on April 17. Ken Watanabe returns from March 17 to April 17.

O’Hara will be succeeded by Marin Mazzie, 11-time Broadway veteran (Ragtime, Kiss Me Kate, Man of LaMancha,etc.)

To Kill A Mockingbird, the novel by Harper Lee, is being adapted by Aaron Sorkin (Social Network), directed by ‪Bartlett Sher (‪The King and I) and set for Broadway 2017-18

9/11 musical ‘Come From Away’, about the small Canadian town that welcomed thousands of airplane passengers grounded by the September 11th attacks, aims for Broadway in 2017

The first annual ‪Lincoln Center ‪Legends: Louis Armstrong, ‪Placido Domingo, ‪YoYo Ma, ‪Audra McDonald, Leontyne Price, Harold Prince

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Cabin in the Sky

Five years after the Gershwin brothers debuted Porgy and Bess, a Gershwin protégée born Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky (aka Vernon Duke) composed the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, which lasted longer on Broadway. Its restoration by the Encores concert series shows why it was a hit — and why it has since virtually disappeared.

Prodigal Son

Robert Sean Leonard was 20 years old when he portrayed one of the boarding school students inspired by teacher Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poets Society. In Prodigal Son, John Patrick Shanley’s autobiographical new play, Leonard now portrays an inspiring boarding school teacher and Timothee Chalomet, 20 years old, his student.

But Shanley reverses the formula of the familiar genre, focusing on one troubled, self-centered student – himself at 15 — and turning the inspiring teacher into an almost peripheral character. Near the end of the 90 minute play covering two years in the student’s life, the teacher even behaves very close to a villain, which feels abrupt and unearned.

The Week in New York Theater Photo Essays

Presidents on Stage

Nearly every one of the 43 presidents has been portrayed on Broadway at one time or another.

Stage Kisses

Week’s Theater Q and A

My interview with Color Purple composer Allee Willis

Jonathan Mandell: The Color Purple cast recording is ready to be released. What should we know about it?

Allee Willis: The cast recording for the revival is very different from the original cast precording….The singing this time is looser, in the best sense of the word, and the arrangements are more stripped down to match the rawness and minimalism of the production.

Week in Theater Reads

Miles of aisles: Theater critic Misha Berson tallies the highlights of 25 years on the beat

Hamilton is being taught in classrooms

In classrooms from New York City, where the show packs the Richard Rodgers Theatre nightly, to the West Coast, Hamilton is making educators rethink how they teach early U.S. political history—and making students rethink how much they care.

Staging a Comeback: How the Nonprofit Arts Sector Has Evolved since the Great Recession

The Connection Between the Arts and Neighborhood Diversity

The study finds that nonprofit arts organizations are attracted to relatively advantaged neighborhoods with a mix of creative, finance, tech, and media industries and moderate levels of racial diversity. And yet these organizations do the most good in disadvantaged, even more diverse neighborhoods that lack this kind of industry mix.

Liz Swados (1951-2016) by Hilton Als

In a way, shows like “Runaways” and “Alice in Concert,” and her many books for children, are a kind of self-portrait in fragments. They’re stories about survival, but not at the expense of wonder, and hope, and the dream we all share—the dream of inclusion, of being cherished, remembered, and loved.

Memorial Concert for Liz Swados at La MaMa

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