Odds & Ends: Waitress Lineup Makes History, Lea Salonga & Sierra Boggess Team Up & More

Here's a quick roundup of stories you may have missed today.

Waitress Lineup Makes History
Waitress is baking up a storm before it even hits the Great White Way! The new tuner will be the first Broadway musical in history with an all-female creative team. Choreographer Lorin Latarro (Waiting For Godot) has boarded the production, joining book writer Jessie Nelson, composer Sara Bareilles and director Diane Paulus on the project. Headlined by Jessie Mueller, Waitress will start serving up performances on March 25, 2016 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Lea Salonga & Sierra Boggess Team Up
Lea Salonga, Sierra Boggess, Lindsay Mendez, Derek Klena, Katie Rose Clarke, Alysha Umphress and many more will join forces for Artists Striving to End Poverty’s New York City Christmas: A Concert to Benefit ASTEP. Directed by Stafford Arima and conceived by Lynne Shankel, the starry seventh annual benefit event will take place on December 14 at Joe’s Pub and feature Broadway faves singing new and classic holiday songs. Many of the numbers will also appear on the Sh-KBoom/Ghostlight album New York City Christmas, available for purchase at the concert. There’ll also be a special silent auction, with items including Hamilton tickets and the chance to hang out with King Jonathan Groff…

Gabriel Byrne & More Will Pay Tribute to Brian Friel
Gabriel Byrne, Jim Dale, Bill Whelan and more will honor the life and legacy of Irish playwright Brian Friel with remembrances and readings on December 7. The Irish Repertory Theatre memorial celebration is set to take place at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre; the event will be free and open to the public (but attendees must RSVP to friel@irishrep.org). Friel, who penned more than 30 plays in a career spanning six decades, including the Tony-winning Dancing at Lughnasa, died on October 2 at the age of 86. Broadway theaters will dim their lights in his honor on December 8.

Hunter Foster & Jennifer Cody Return to Grease
This is all fabulously meta! Real-life couple Hunter Foster and Jennifer Cody, who starred together in (and got married during) the 1994 Broadway revival of Grease, will direct and choreograph, respectively, a production of the classic tuner. The show is set to run, courtesy of North Carolina Theatre, February 9, 2016 through February 14 in the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Hopelessly devoted to each other over Valentine's Day...we love it!