Mark O'Donnell News

Television and comedy star John Thomson (Cold Feet, The Fast Show) will join the smash hit UK tour of Hairspray as Wilbur Turnblad this Christmas for three weeks at Blackpool Winter Gardens (13 December – 2 January).

It has been announced that musical theatre star and television presenter Brenda Edwards (Chicago, We Will Rock You, The X Factor, Loose Women and Songs of Praise) will star as Motormouth Maybelle in the UK and Ireland tour of Hairspray.  Comedy legend Norman Pace (ITV's The Hale and Pace Show) will play Wilbur Turnblad alongside West End leading man Alex Bourne (Annie, Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You) as Edna Turnblad.

Hairspray has returned to the West End, playing at the London Coliseum through 29 September 2021. Read reviews from BroadwayWorld, WhatsOnStage, and more!

La obra estuvo nominada a 13 premios en 2003, incluyendo los Premios al Mejor Musical, Guión, Música y Dirección

Flushing Town Hall will celebrate the vibrant choreography of New York's diverse, Asian American, contemporary dance community at 7:30 PM on Friday, June 11 when it presents the 7th Season of Nai-Ni Chen's CrossCurrent Contemporary Dance Festival.

Based on the 1990 cult-classic John Waters (Hairspray) film, CRY-BABY The Musical will be presented in the Opera House's Drama Theatre from 22 July – 15 August, 2021. Highly subversive and proudly irreverent, CRY-BABY The Musical, which won four 2018 Sydney Theatre Awards during its season at the Hayes Theatre Co, is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the teen rebel genre.

Iyvon Edebiri is the new Director of Artistic Programs at Signature Theatre the company announced today. Ms. Edebiri comes to Signature Theatre from The Parsnip Ship, where she has led the radio-play platform for more than six years.

In this week's Theater Stories, we are learning about the Neil Simon Theatre! Learn about who Neil Simon was, what the theater was originally named, which Broadway stars made their debuts there, and more!

Audible has announced  its latest Emerging Playwrights Fund class.

In this time of social distancing and remaining responsibly indoors, we are all looking for ways to brighten our days and get moving any way we can! In the spirit of celebrating theater and providing motivation to get up and get shakin', we're taking a look back and paying tribute to some of the greatest dance numbers in musical theater history! Today's number, You Can't Stop the Beat from Hairspray!

The Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble has found it necessary to cancel its spring season REAL+SURREAL at the Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center, April 17-19 and 25-26.

Hairspray is hitting the road again in 2020-21! It can now be confirmed that the tour will open at Leicester Curve on 20 August and will visit the following venues in 2020: Manchester Palace, Bradford Alhambra, Blackpool Winter Gardens, Aylesbury Waterside, Birmingham Hippodrome, Glasgow Kings Theatre, Northampton Royal and Derngate, Woking New Victoria, Liverpool Empire and Brighton Theatre Royal.  

Norte Maar, a committed Brooklyn-based think-tank dedicated to the creation, promotion, and presentation of collaborations in the visual, literary, and the performing arts, together with Brooklyn Ballet, presents Counterpointe8, a curated performance series of new choreographic works by female artists and the pointe shoe. Six women choreographers have been paired with six female visual artists to collaborate and create both a new physical and visual work by each while investigating the process of creation, inspiration and development. The annual series will be presented February 28- March 1, at The Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center in downtown Brooklyn. 

HAIRSPRAY will launch a new North American tour in Fall 2020. Following the Baltimore launch November 10-15, 2020, HAIRSPRAY will visit more than 60 additional cities in its first touring season. Casting will be announced at a later date.

The hit musical Hairspray is returning to the West End! Tonight the production announced that actor Paul Merton will be joining the cast in the role of Wilbur Turnblad.

a??a??a??a??a??a??a??Brooklyn Ballet, a unique and interdisciplinary dance company rooted in the classical idiom, presents Revisionist History 2, an unprecedented evening of dance that bridges diversity to classicism in a profound way, while exploring movement and its history. With 5 performances, February 13-16, Brooklyn Ballet's Season takes place in The Mark O'Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center in downtown Brooklyn.

After the artful, intimate INTO THE WOODS last year, TEMAN (Teater Musikal Nusantara) is back with the bombastic and bodacious HAIRSPRAY. Directed by Broadway's Brandon Bieber, the glam production was worthy of Broadway barring noticeable technical issues.

After their impressive debut with INTO THE WOODS last year, musical company TEMAN (Teater Musikal Nusantara) announces their 2019 show: HAIRSPRAY. As fitting of the musical's bombastic reputation, TEMAN is going bigger and glitzier. The show will take place in the grand 1.157-seater CIPUTRA ARTPRENEUR theatre and feature a celebrity heartthrob.

New Line Theatre, whose tagline is fittingly #MusicalTheatreAF, opens their 29th season with Cry-Baby, the 2007 musical with book by Mark O'Donnell & Thomas Meehan and songs by David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger. It is based on Cry-Baby the film, written and directed by Hairspray creator, John Waters. Let me just pause here and say if you have only ever seen the film, you're missing out, as the musical has a much more cohesive, developed...

Dance company Spark Movement Collective celebrates their 10th anniversary season this fall with the premiere of TEN. Artistic Director Chelsea Koenig has created TEN to celebrate Spark's first decade of making dance for all audiences with greatest hits from the company's repertoire and three new works choreographed by current company dancers Melissa Galano, Kristen Santos, and Michelle Thompson Ulerich. An evening of eclectic contemporary dance, TEN also includes selected pieces from Spark's 2018 original dance interpretation of 1984, as well as an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland, one of Spark's reimaginings of classic tales for family audiences.