Broadway-Bound ‘1776’ Musical Revival announces a female, non-binary and trans cast

A revival of the Broadway musical 1776Kicking off next month at New York’s previous engagement at the Cambridge American Repertory Theater, it has announced the cast that will consist entirely of female, non-traditional and trans performers.

The cast announced Friday was specific to the ART production and may not necessarily hit the stage at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater on Broadway in September (or the planned US tour will begin in February 2023), but the news clearly indicates this. An innovative and re-emerging approach to production.

First premiered on Broadway in 1969, a musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the so-called Founding Fathers, contains music and poetry by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone based on the Edwards concept. The film version was released in 1972.

The new staging by Jeffrey L. Paige and Diane Paulus (choreographed by Paige) will be the co-director. I Program The interview has been published. artePaulus’ website, which directs the Broadway hit waitressJeffrey and I are fascinated by the idea that history is not the straightforward or straightforward story we read about in our textbooks, but rather the difficulties we face in understanding our past in order to move forward. Together. “

“When I worked with Diane, we explored the untold, the untold and the unwritten and, as a result, I found myself within an important work of art in American history and learned something new about both. “Paige said. .

ART Productions, presented in collaboration with the Roundabout Theater in New York, begins at Cambridge’s Loeb Drama Center on May 17 and runs through July 24.

Actors announced today include Gisela Addis as Robert Livingstone, Nancy Anderson as George Redd, Becca Ayers as Colonel Thomas McKinn, Tiffany Barbour as Andrew McNair, Stephen Hopkins and Ellison Brainer Darden’s Hopkins. Jonathan Witherspoon Elizabeth A. Davis as Thomas Jefferson, Mehri Islamin as Charles Thomson, Joanna Glushak as John Dickinson, Shauna Hemich as Richard Henry Lee, Erin Lecroy as Martha Jefferson / PhD. Lyman Hall, Crystal Lucas-Perry as John Adams, Liz Michael as John Hancock, Patrena Murray as Benjamin Franklin, Oneika Phillips as Joseph Hughes, Lulu Picard as Samuel Chase Simpson. Like Roger Sherman, Salome Smith as Courier, Sav Souza as Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Jill Valerie as Caesar Rodney and Grace Stockdale and Iman Pearl Williams, who serve as waiters.

The creative team includes production designer Scott Pask; the costume designer Emilio Sosa; lighting designer Jennifer Shriver; sound designer Jonathan Diane; screening project by David Bengal; And Mia Neil’s hair, wig and makeup models.