Savion Glover & More Sign On for 2018 City Center Encores! Off-Center Season

Encores! Off-Center's co-artistic directors Anne Kauffman and Jeanine Tesori have announced a trio of talented directors slated to helm the 2018 season, which begins on June 27. The popular summer musical-theater series at New York City Center will welcome Outer Critics Circle Award nominee Kate Whoriskey directing Songs for a New World (June 27-30), two-time Obie Award winner Ken Rus Schmoll at the helm of Gone Missing (July 11-12) and Tony winner Savion Glover directing Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope (July 25-28). All three directors will make their City Center directorial debuts.

Whoriskey has lent her talents to productions of The Miracle Worker, Cardinal, Her Requiem and Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer-winning plays Sweat and Ruined. Schmoll's extensive off-Broadway résumé includes Antlia Pneumatica, Iowa, The Invisible Hand, Middletown and The Internationalist. Glover earned a 1996 Tony Award for Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. His credits as a director, choreographer and actor also include Jelly's Last Jam, Black and Blue, The Tap Dance Kid and Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.

Songs for a New World (1995), the first musical from Tony winner Jason Robert Brown (created in collaboration with Daisy Prince), is a collection of powerful songs examining life, love and the choices ordinary people make when faced with extraordinary moments. From the deck of a 1492 Spanish sailing ship to the ledge of a Fifth Avenue high-rise, each character faces the new world which follows the unique challenge they encounter.

In 2003, the New York City theater company The Civilians interviewed real people about the physical objects they’d lost—keys, a sapphire ring, a Gucci pump. The wry and whimsical docu-musical that emerged, Gone Missing, written and directed by Steven Cosson, features a fresh and breezy score by Michael Friedman and presents a very personal account of how we deal with loss in our lives.

Frequent collaborators Micki Grant (composer and lyricist) and Vinnette Carroll (creator and director) produced a total of nine musicals for Urban Arts Corps including the Grammy-winning and Tony-nominated Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope (1971). A celebration of African-American culture and community, this radical work presents the issues of race politics in America through a lively mix of song and dance with a score that includes gospel, jazz, soul, calypso and rock.

Encores! Off-Center was founded in 2013 with the mission of presenting off-Broadway musicals that pushed creative boundaries when they were first produced. Filtered through the lens of today's artists, these shows are presented not as historical documents but as living, vital works that speak to audiences both new and old. 

Casting for the 2018 Encores! Off-Center season will be announced at a later date.