Woodshed member Jessica Pabst will design costumes for Center Theatre Group’s production of This, starring Saffron Burrows and Eisa Davis.  Brian Scott Lipton reports:

The play focuses on Jane, a single mom in her late 30s who has shut down after her husband’s death.

The show will feature scenic design by Louisa Thompson, costume design by Jessica Pabst, lighting design by Matt Frey, original sound design by Matt Tierney, and original music by Peter Eldridge.

Read more at TheaterMania.com or Playbill.com.

Contributing artist Caridad Svich has won the Francesca Primus Prize for her play The House Of Spirits (which was directed at the Denver Center by another contributing artist, Jose Zayas).  Brian Scott Lipton reports:

Caridad Svich has won the $10,000 Francesca Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits. Jointly sponsored by ATCA and the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation, the Primus Prize is given annually to an emerging woman theater.

Svich’s play is a dramatic adaptation of Isabel Allende’s sprawling novel, The House of the Spirits, which follows the fortunes of three generations of a Chilean family against the backdrop of political upheaval that shaped and split the country during the major part of the 20th Century. The play was read as part of the 2010 Colorado New Play Summit and given a full production at the Denver Center Theatre Company in the fall.

Read full article at TheaterMania.com.

Reed Birney, Evan Enderle, Matt Stadelmann, and Jenny Seastone Stern will take part in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference in July.

Under the leadership of artistic director Wendy C. Goldberg, the National Playwrights Conference will nurture eight new plays July 6-30.

Read more at Playbill.com

Erika Sheffer’s play, Russian Transport, will receive its world premiere as part of The New Group’s 2011-2012 season! Russian Transport was developed in Woodshed’s PlayDates reading series in late 2009 and was subsequently passed along to Scott Elliott and Ian Morgan at The New Group.  Broadway.com says:

Kicking off the season will be the world premiere of Sheffer’s Russian Transport, directed by New Group artistic director Scott Elliott. Set in the Russian-Jewish enclave of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, the play is a tale of an immigrant couple, their two assimilated teenagers and the fierce and fiery upheaval they experience when sexy, mysterious Uncle Boris from the old country comes to stay with them for his shot at the American dream.

Read more at Broadway.com or check out similar articles at TheaterMania.com, BroadwayWorld.com, Playbill, Variety, and The New York Times.

Company member Jocelyn Kuritsky will begin development on a project revolving around medieval female mystics, along with Kate MacCluggage, Christina Pumariega, Jennifer Joan Thompson, and Amirah Vann.  The project is being produced through Studio Tisch at the NYU Grad Acting Alumni Association.

Studio Tisch is a place in which alumni of the Graduate Acting Program can explore and present work – either known plays or work alumni have developed or are curious about developing.

Read more about Studio Tisch here.

Contributing artist Duncan Sheik releases a new album covering some 80s favorites.

There was more to the 1980s than mullets and Happy Pants. And fans of bands like Talk Talk or the Blue Nile know there’s more to the music from the dawn of synth pop than squiggly sounds wrapped around inane choruses. That’s why I so love Duncan Sheik’s new album, Duncan Sheik Covers ’80s. Lush and sexy, it’s also a serious inquiry into what’s still relevant about music that many would keep frozen in a mist of Aqua Net hair spray.

Read more at NPR.org.

Woodshed Collective member Jocelyn Kuritsky will act opposite Tina Benko, Rocco Sisto and others in Red Bull Theater Company’s Obie Award-Winning reading series.

Presented as part of the company’s Revelation Readings series, the program will feature works by Liz Duffy Adams, Mike Anderson, Heidi Armbruster, Elizabeth Egloff, David Grimm, Wendy MacLeod, Elizabeth Miller, and Jason Gray Platt.

Read whole article at TheaterMania.com.

This summer, the Amoralists will present HotelMotel, a double-feature New York premiere of Animals and Plants, written and directed by Adam Rapp, along with Pink Knees on Pale Skin, written and directed by Derek Ahonen. The site-specific theatrical event will play The Gershwin Hotel, August 4-29, with an opening on August 10.  Dan Bacalzo of TheaterMania reports:

Rapp’s play is set on the night of a terrible blizzard, as two drug runners are snowbound in a cheap motel room at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. As they wait for their connection, they are visited by a mysterious young woman who may or may not figure into their future. The cast will include Matthew Pilieci, William Apps, and Katie Broad.

In Ahonen’s play, to save their undersexed marriages, The Wyatt and Williams families are meeting with Dr. Sarah, aka The Orgy Counselor. The plan: to participate in an organized orgy held in a discrete hotel room. But on this particular night, Dr. Sarah has designed a self-destructive twist, guaranteed to unleash chaos upon all involved. The cast will feature Sarah Lemp, Jordan Tisdale, James Kautz, Vanessa Vache, Byron Anthony, Anna Stromberg, Sarah Roy and Nick Lawson.

The design team for HotelMotel will include Alfred Schatz (set design), Keith Parham (lighting design), Jessica Pabst (costume design), and Phil Carluzzo (sound design).

Read the full article on TheaterMania.com or check out a similar release on Playbill.com.

The Book of Mormon has been awarded Broadway’s highest honor, picking up 9 Tony Awards on Sunday, including Best Musical and Best Lighting Design of a Musical (LD: Brian MacDevitt).  Woodshed Collective Member Carl Faber, who served as the Assistant Lighting Designer on the production, was thrilled with the news, and especially ecstatic for Lighting Designer Brian MacDevitt, who picks up his first Tony for the design of a musical, to join his four previous Tony Awards for his work designing plays.

Check out all of the coverage on the Tony Awards website: TonyAwards.com.

All of the acceptance speeches can be found here on TonyAwards.com.

New York Times reviewer Claudia La Rocco complements Fish Eye, noting:

This production gets a lot right, beginning with the actors’ fully realized takes on their characters and continuing through much of the script’s witty back-and-forths.

Full review here at NYTimes.com.  Will Fulton at NYTheater.com applauds the production:

Colt Coeur has assembled an extremely talented group of artists for Fish Eye. They have created a show that is confidently nuanced, if somewhat comfortably familiar. They are certainly a company worth keeping on one’s radar and hopefully they will use this fantastic momentum to pursue work in the future that is more formally ambitious so as to match the talent of the people making it.

Full review here at NYTheater.com.

Variety reports that Contributing Artist Martin Snyder will direct Missed Connections, a script he co-wrote with Marnie Hanel. Mickey Sumner, Jon Abrahams, Julia Jones and Malcolm Barrett will star. Read the release here on Variety.com.

The installation performance of Lanford Wilson’s 1965 drama played one-night-only, Sunday June 5th at South Brooklyn’s Industry City warehouse complex.  Co-directed by Brian Mertes, Alex Harvey, and Farragut North author Beau Willimon.  Lighting designed by Nicholas Houfek, Ben Stanton, Austin R. Smith, Ben Krall, & Carl Faber.

New York Times reporter Patrick Healy spent several days with the production as it was being installed.  Read Healy’s piece with a photo slideshow of the development and performance here at NYTimes.com.