What's Next for the 2008 Tony Winners
Rondi Reed: August: Osage County's featured actress Tony winner will rejoin the Chicago company of Wicked as Madame Morrible, effective immediately.
Anna D. Shapiro: First she'll direct the Lookingglass Theatre's production of Our Town, starring David Schwimmer. Then it's onto Regina Taylor's adaptation of The Cherry Tree. As for plans to bring August: Osage County to London, Shapiro coyly offered, "If you heard a rumor, and the rumor said we're coming to the National, and that the original cast was coming, too, perhaps that's a good rumor."
Tracy Letts: His new play, Superior Donuts, opens June 29 at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. "I'm actually missing tech rehearsals to be here," he said. Seems like a good enough reason, huh?
Deanna Dunagan: The Best Actress winner has told her agent she's not doing anything until after Christmas. "I need to go home and see my mother, my family, my son, my grandkids. It's been well worth it, obviously, but I need a break."
Paulo Szot: He'll keep playing Emile in South Pacific until the end of November, then return to the international opera circuit. "I had to cancel a lot of contracts this year, and I'm going back to them."
Patti LuPone, Boyd Gaines, Laura Benanti: Gypsy's winning trio are committed to the show for the rest of the year. But LuPone will moonlight in concerts with her Evita co-star Mandy Patinkin and in a concert of Weill's Seven Deadly Sins with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Jim Norton: The Seafarer star plans to re-team with playwright Conor McPherson for an upcoming film written and directed by McPherson. He willl also face the monstrous task of reading an unabridged recording of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
Stew, Heidi Rodewald: There's talk of a Passing Strange movie, and the Best Book winners have ideas for another album, their own movie and a new show. Asked about a possible replacement though he has no plans to leave, Stew said he could see Corey Glover from the rock band Living Colour going into the show. "He wouldn't be playing me, really. He'd play himself in Passing Strange, the same way I play myself in the show. I think there are hundreds—maybe not hundreds, but tens—of people who can not only do the show, but do it better than me."
Andy Blankenbuehler: The Tony-winning choreographer and winning orchestrator Alex Lacamoire are working on the upcoming musical version of the movie 9 to 5. Says Blankenbuehler, "It's great that it's a totally different world. I love the idea of choreographing for characters who are stuck in an office. There's potential for a lot of great movement."
Lin-Manuel Miranda: "I've got a couple of ideas," he said, "and I'm not going to tell you what they are, since I haven't secured the rights. It took eight years to get this project to where it is tonight. Now I know how it works, and I want to do it right." However, Miranda did let on that he's been talking with Dreamworks about writing music for some animated films.
Mark Rylance: After offering what had to be the most rambling, oblique acceptance speech in Tony Award history it was actually a poem! the Boeing-Boeing actor was a bit more succinct regarding his near future. "I don't know," he said from the press room at the 2008 Tony Awards. "It's a surprise, isn't it?"