Arts

The Seagull took wing Oct. 2 for what seems like its annual flight over Manhattan and will hover over the Walter Kerr for a limited stay of 14 weeks, through Dec. 21.

Slava's Snowshow, the surreal and wordless clown show set in a stark, wintry landscape, will make its Broadway debut this fall at the Helen Hayes Theatre, according to Telecharge.com.

Critics like to tell American theatregoers that Chekhov is good for them, like medicine. But then, when reviewing an individual production of the Russian writer, they usually go on to say that this particular dose of medicine will taste terrible.

Hairspray, the Tony Award-winning hit Broadway musical, is expected to close in mid-January 2009, but not before welcoming back the Mother of All Ednas - Harvey Fierstein.

William Saroyan's ensemble play, The Time of Your Life, set in a San Francisco saloon in 1939, gets a revival Oct. 3-Nov. 1 by the Off-Off-Broadway troupe Storm Theatre.

The Canadian premiere of the recent Andrew Lloyd Webber-produced London revival of The Sound of Music plays its first performance Oct. 3 in Toronto. As in London, the "Maria" was cast in a reality TV competition.

The Broadway revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, which co-stars Jeremy Piven, Ra™l Esparza and Elisabeth Moss, begins previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre Oct. 3 with an official opening scheduled for Oct. 23.

Committed to contemporary voices, New Theatre in Coral Gables, FL, presents the world premiere of Andrew Case's thriller, The Rant, Oct. 2-26.

"Good Morning America" will go behind the scenes at Broadway's The 39 Steps Oct. 3, in a segment running nationally between 8:30-9 AM (ET).

Actors' Equity Association announced the appointment of veteran staff member Mary Lou Westerfield to the position of Western Regional Director, effective immediately.

Johanna Day, who earned a Tony Award nomination for playing a chilly older sister in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof, takes on another tough-love, older sibling role in another Pulitzer winner Oct. 14 when she joins the cast of Broadway's August: Osage County.

David Jones, the respected if undersung English director who forged career relationships with major stage figures such as playwright Harold Pinter and actors Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley, and helped rehabilitate the reputation of Gorky as a playwright, died on Sept. 18 in Rockport, ME, where he lived. He was 74.

Rob Guest, a star of the musical stage in Australia, died in Melbourne following a massive stroke on Oct. 1. He was 57.

Casting is set for the U.S. premiere of Peter Whelan's The School of Night, the Elizabethan-set murder mystery about playwright Christopher Marlowe, to run Oct. 30-Dec. 17 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's new production of Romeo and Juliet, Oct. 15-Nov. 16 at the F. M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, will feature Jordan Coughtry as Romeo and Rebecca Brooksher as Juliet.

Pittsburgh Public Theater's season-opening production of August Wilson's final play, Radio Golf, Oct. 2-Nov. 2, completes the troupe's effort to produce all ten plays of Wilson's cycle charting the African-American experience in the 20th century.

John Cudia and Kyle Barisich will be joining the national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, as the Phantom and Raoul, respectively, beginning with the San Francisco engagement Nov. 26, 2008-Jan. 4, 2009.

Tobacco Road, a smash on Broadway during the Depression but rarely revived today, resurfaced Sept. 30 at the La Jolla Playhouse, introducing a new generation to novelist Erskine Caldwell's hardscrabble Georgia characters.

The Marquis Theatre box office for Irving Berlin's White Christmas will open Oct. 6 with gifts for ticket buyers, a tree lighting, hot beverages and appearances by the costumed cast members of the coming Broadway production.