Shoshana Bean, Susan Blackwell & More Set for 2018 Encores! Off-Center Season

A star-studded trio of initial casts has been announced for the 2018 summer lineup of City Center's Encores! Off-Center series. The previously announced season will open, June 27-30, with Jason Robert Brown's breakout musical Songs for a New World and close with Micki Grant and Vinnette Carroll's vibrant work Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, July 25-28. The centerpiece of the season will be Michael Friedman's Gone Missing (July 11 and 12).

Songs for a New World, Brown’s 1995 song cycle about life, love and the choices ordinary people make when faced with extraordinary moments, will star Shoshana Bean (Wicked), Mykal Kilgore (Motown) and Solea Pfeiffer (Hamilton). The production will feature choreography by Rennie Harris for an ensemble of dancers being added to the cast for the Off-Center engagement. Songs for a New World will be directed by Kate Whoriskey, with music direction by Tom Murray.

The special two-night-only engagement of Gone Missing, presented in honor of late composer and 2017 Encores! Artistic Director Michael Friedman, will feature John Behlmann (Significant Other), Susan Blackwell ([title of show], Side by Side by Susan Blackwell), Aysan Celik (The Black Eyed), Deborah S. Craig (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and Taylor Mac (A 24-Decade History of Popular Music). This wry and whimsical 2007 docu-musical was created by The Civilians from interviews with real people about physical objects they’d lost; the show offers a very personal account of how we deal with loss in our lives. Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, with music direction by Chris Fenwick, the production will feature choreography by Karla Garcia.

The cast for Grant and Carroll's Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope (1971), the radical and irreverent protest cycle that laid bare the political issues facing the African American community, will include Malik Akil (Holiday Inn), Alexandria Bradley (Shuffle Along), C.K. Edwards (Shuffle Along), Shonica Gooden (Cats), Marla McReynolds (The Color Purple) and Allysa Shorte (After Midnight). Savion Glover will direct and choreograph the production with music direction by Chris Fenwick.

City Center has also announced a partnership with The Civilians as artists-n-residence for The Lobby Project, a series of free, pre-performance events presented in conjunction with Encores! Off‐Center productions. Utilizing The Civilians’ unique brand of artistic and journalistic exploration, a group of up-and-coming composers will create three original 25-minute docu-musicals based on and inspired by interviews with each of the season’s original creative teams, as well as other artists and community members who have been affected by the legacy of the shows. As artists-in-residence, The Civilians aim to illuminate their creative process for Lobby Project attendees by exploring the impact the original productions have had on audiences and artists alike. The Civilians will perform these original docu-musicals, with the corresponding production, in the Grand Tier Lobby one hour before the performance. The performances will be recorded and later released as podcasts. There will be no Lobby Project performance on June 27 or July 25.

Additional casting for the three Encores! Off-Center productions will be announced at a later time.