"PETER AND ALICE" OPENING NIGHT IN LONDON

Craig Saavedra, (left) and Michael Shulman attend the Opening Night After Party with Dame Judi Dench who stars as Alice in John Logan's PETER AND ALICE.

Outside the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End theatre district, Starry Night toppers Craig Saavedra and Michael Shulman attend the opening night performance of John Logan's PETER AND ALICE starring Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.

LONDON -- The stars were out for Michael Grandage's brilliant production of John Logan's newest play, PETER AND ALICE and Starry Night's Craig Saavedra and Michael Shulman were not only thrilled to be part of the evening's festivities, but also about being involved with the entire season of five plays that began with PRIVATES ON PARADE last year and concludes with Jude Law in HENRY V in November.

The playbill's description for the show reads:

"When Alice Liddell Hargreaves met Peter Llewelyn Davies at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the original Alice in Wonderland came face to face with the original Peter Pan. In John Logan’s remarkable new play, enchantment and reality collide as this brief encounter lays bare the lives of these two extraordinary characters.  Judi Dench plays Alice, and Ben Whishaw plays Peter in Logan’s first new play since Red, which went on to win six Tony Awards in 2010."  

HIT THE WALL To Begin Releasing Memes Across The Internet

NY Times calls HIT THE WALL "an exciting visceral charge" that's "fierce and funny" and "deeply affecting"

NEW YORK --  “Hit the Wall” is being staged at the Barrow Street Theater, just a stone’s throw from Christopher Park in Greenwich Village where the events depicted occurred. That amplifies the historical echoes of truncheon blows and flying trash cans as angry drag queens, gay men and lesbians pushed back during a routine police raid on a sweltering June night.

"Watching the characters strut through a liberating dance that erupts into chaos and violence when police lights pierce the smoky haze gives the sense of being caught up in that momentous clash. Mr. Hoff’s adroit use of the playing space, J. David Brimmer’s balletic fight direction, Keith Parham’s atmospheric lighting and Dan Lipton’s galvanizing live music — from psychedelic guitars to primal bongos — combine to summon a raw emotional power." 

Read the entire New York Times review here.

HIT THE WALL Opens at Barrow Street Theatre

Starry Night principals Michael Shulman and Craig Saavedra arrive at the Opening Night of Ike Holter's HIT THE WALL. 

NEW YORK -- With an imaginative and theatrical blend of history and mythology, Ike Holter's new play Hit the Wall places the audience just on the periphery of the wild and enigmatic first night of the Stonewall Riots, June 28, 1969.

A routine police raid on The Stonewall Inn, a popular underground gay bar in Greenwich Village, sparks violent protests and street demonstrations continued for the next several days in what became known as The Stonewall Riots, thrusting a group of unlikely revolutionaries onto the front lines of history and igniting one of the most influential social and political movements of the 20th Century.

Starry Night Entertainment produces the Eric Hoff directed play at the Barrow Street Theatre alongside lead producers Jean Doumanian, Scott Morfee and Tom Wirtshafter. 

PONZI'S SCHEME AFOOT

NEW YORK -- The entertainment industry's lead trade publication VARIETY announced today that Starry Night Entertainment has hired screenwriter Christopher Weekes (MUPPET MAN) to pen the screenplay to PONZI'S SCHEME, based on Mitchell Zuckoff's best-seller PONZI'S SCHEME: THE TRUE STORY OF A FINANCIAL LEGEND. Film legend Milos Forman (AMADEUS, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST) is in talks to direct.

Producers Craig Saavedra (left) and Michael Shulman (right) with director Milos Forman at the 25th Anniversary screening of AMADEUS in London.

Screenwriter Christopher Weekes has been tapped to pen the biopic "Ponzi's Scheme," with Milos Forman in talks to helm.

Weekes, whose screenplay for Jim Henson pic "Muppet Man" attracted attention when it topped the 2009 Black List, will adapt Mitchell Zuckoff's 2006 bio "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend" for the brewing feature. Jean Doumanian Prods. and Starry Night Entertainment produce.

Storyline follows the real-life trajectory of Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi, creator of the eponymous financial scam and the precursor to the headline-grabbing fiscal misdeeds of Bernard Madoff and Kenneth Lay.

Weekes is repped by Britton Rizzio at Circle of Confusion and David Karp and Adriana Alberghetti at WME, while Forman is repped by WME's Chris Donnelly and Aspland Management's Dennis Aspland.

Doumanian's slate of upcoming films includes screen adaptations of plays "August: Osage County" and "Blackbird," while Starry Night principals Michael Shulman and Craig Saavedra are at work developing a new Broadway tuner and a reality TV skein. Doumanian Prods. and Starry Night previously worked together on the recent Off Broadway production of Michael Shannon starrer "Mistakes Were Made."

GREAT PROFILE ON MICHAEL SHANNON IN NY TIMES

NEW YORK -- Michael Shannon, and the wonderful vehicle playwright Craig Wright wrote, continues to garner much deserved attention including the recent full page profile The New York Times did on the Oscar nominated actor from Chicago and the play he stars in, MISTAKES WERE MADE, currently running through February 27, 2011 at the Barrow Street Theatre.

The Times describes his performance, in which he plays a theater producer cajoling, begging, seducing and threatening off-stage cohorts in an effort to mount a new play about the French revolution on Broadway, as "hilarious, tender and graceful."  His bravado, tour de force performance is one of the funniest, and showiest, you'll see on stage this, or any season.

TIME Magazine Names MISTAKES WERE MADE a Top Ten Play of 2010

In its December 20, 2010 issue, TIME Magazine honored MISTAKES WERE MADE as one of the Top Ten Plays of the year. This is in addition to New York Magazine doing the same in its December 13 issue. If you have yet to see the play, get yourself down to the Barrow Street Theater before February 27, 2011 when the limited engagement ends.

Read the TIME article here and the New York Magazine article here.