Ruthie Ann Miles

Parade, the 1998 Broadway musical featuring a Tony Award-winning score by the-then 28-year-old Jason Robert Brown, will be revived this spring by Greg Nobile’s Seaview Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group, according to a pitch deck distributed to investors.

Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen) will star in the dark historical drama, following an acclaimed weeklong tryout at New York City Center in November. Platt will reprise the role of Leo Frank, a Jewish Brooklynite transplanted to Marietta, Georgia, where he was falsely accused of murder and lynched by a mob in 1915. Micaela Diamond (The Cher Show), who earned stellar reviews playing Leo’s loyal wife, Lucille Frank, also returns to the cast. Platt, who like Diamond is Jewish, has spoken eloquently about the story’s timeliness amid rising antisemitism. Continue Reading

Fans of HBO’s Succession might be surprised that Stewy, the conniving cocaine-snorting private equity operator, is played by an emigré from Iran who co-founded a civic-minded theater company that teaches drama to public school students at New York’s Professional Performing Arts School. Its graduates have gone on to Juilliard and Yale.

The Courtroom is the latest project by Arian Moayed and his company, Waterwell. Created from courtroom transcripts that Moayed edited, the play concerns a recent Filipino immigrant named Elizabeth Keathley (Kristin Villanueva) who, while getting a driver’s license, illegally registers to vote at the behest of a careless government bureaucrat. Issued a voter registration card, she votes in a congressional election and faces deportation.Continue Reading

BEN PLATT TO LEAD $6.5 MILLION ‘PARADE’ (EXCLUSIVE)

‘SUCCESSION’ STAR CREATES IMMIGRANT COURTROOM DRAMA: INTERVIEW