Broadway.com to Livestream Starry Reading of Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart

Broadway.com is honored to announce a livestreamed reading of Terrence McNally's 1991 play Lips Together, Teeth Apart. The event, benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS' COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund, will appear on Broadway.com and Broadway.com's Facebook and YouTube channels on April 6 at 8:00pm ET. The reading will be dedicated to McNally, who passed away from coronavirus complications on March 24. The event will be produced by Broadway.com with Eric Kuhn and Justin Mikita and directed by Trip Cullman.

The performance will star Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Sam Truman, Celia Keenan-Bolger as Sally Truman, Zachary Quinto as John Haddock and Ari Graynor as Chloe Haddock. The play chronicles two straight couples visiting the Fire Island home of a relative who recently died of AIDS during the height of the pandemic.

"Terrence used his work to make seemingly insurmountable societal issues seem surmountable through his belief in our unwavering human spirit," said Tom Kirdahy, husband of the late McNally and a member of the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS board of trustees. "Seeing Terrence's rage, humor, love and empathy in the face of a virus feels right during this time."

Kuhn and Mikita added, "Theater has always been about bringing people together. For our first livestream play reading, we couldn't think of a playwright that represented that more than Terrence. In these uncertain times we are thrilled to partner with Broadway Cares and provide audiences some moments of relief."

Ferguson, who is slated to return to Broadway this spring in Take Me Out, is a New York theater veteran who has also been seen on Broadway in Fully Committed, On the Town and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (alongside Keenan-Bolger). He has earned five Emmy nominations for his turn as Mitchell Pritchett on ABC's Modern Family and is currently host of TV's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Keenan-Bolger won a 2019 Tony Award for her performance as Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Her extensive theater resume also includes Tony-nominated turns in The Glass Menagerie (alongside Quinto), Peter and the Starcatcher and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Quinto was last seen on Broadway as Harold in the Tony-winning revival of The Boys in the Band, and will appear in the upcoming Ryan Murphy film adaptation for Netflix. In addition to his Broadway turn in The Glass Menagerie, he has been seen off-Broadway in Angels in America, Smokefall and Nassim. His screen work includes Star Trek and an Emmy-nominated role in American Horror Story: Asylum.

Graynor's stage credits include the Broadway plays Brooklyn Boy, The Little Dog Laughed, Relatively Speaking and The Performers. Off-Broadway, she earned a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Yen, with other appearances including American Hero, Trust and Dog Sees God. 

McNally had a remarkably far-ranging career, including a new work on Broadway in each of the last six decades. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a 2019 recipient of a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. He won four Tony Awards, for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and his musical books for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. He wrote a number of TV scripts, including Andre's Mother, for which he won an Emmy Award. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards and three Hull-Warriner Awards from the Dramatists Guild. In 1996, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He wrote the libretto for the operas Great Scott and Dead Man Walking, both with music by Jake Heggie. Other plays and musicals include Mothers and Sons; The Lisbon Traviata; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; A Perfect Ganesh; The Visit; The Full Monty; Corpus Christi; Bad Habits; Next; The Ritz; Anastasia; It's Only a Play; Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?; and The Stendhal Syndrome.

Broadway.com recently presented the successful livestreaming return of The Rosie O'Donnell show on March 22, raising close to $700,000 for The Actors Fund.