\n<\/p>\n
\n\tMonday is usually a day of rest for Broadway. But instead of catching up on sleep, this season\u2019s biggest stars were out in force at Variety\u2019s<\/em> Business of Broadway Breakfast to preview the fall\u2019s buzziest shows.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI had a really great joke about the name of this breakfast,\u201d said Ethan Slater, who hosted Monday\u2019s event, presented by City National Bank. \u201cI was workshopping it, but it took, like, seven years to develop, and we\u2019re struggling to get the funding. Hopefully next season.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSlater, the star of \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d and the upcoming play \u201cMarcel on the Train,\u201d spoke about the close-knit theater community before he introduced the featured conversations, including \u201cChess\u201d stars Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher; \u201cThe Queen of Versailles\u201d actors and creatives Kristin Chenoweth, F. Murray Abraham, Stephen Schwartz, Michael Arden and Lindsey Ferrentino; \u201cWaiting for Godot\u201d leads Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter\u201d; as well as \u201cRagtime\u201d stars Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, John Clay III and director Lear DeBessonet.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat a beautiful thing it is to be a part of a community where people devote their time and energy, whether or not they\u2019re getting paid, to creating art, to creating something that speaks to people,\u201d Slater said. \u201cAnd thank you, Variety<\/em>, for giving this community a place to eat without having to pay the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHere are four takeaways from the artists bringing some of the most exciting theater to New York.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cChess\u201d star Lea Michele is brushing up on the rules of the game as she prepares to debut the revival that revolves around two grandmasters who clash during the Cold War. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m reading \u2018Chess for Dummies.\u2019 I have two kids, so I\u2019m trying to read as much as I can,\u201d she confessed before cracking, \u201cNo reading jokes, please,\u201d referencing an internet rumor that falsely claims she\u2019s illiterate. \u201cI have a lot of chess jargon I say throughout the show. I\u2019ll look through the guide and be like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s what that means. But don\u2019t ask me to play chess right now.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMichele, who is co-starring in the revival with Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher, is taking on another challenge \u2014 to make \u201cChess,\u201d a cult favorite that\u2019s notoriously difficult to adapt, into a mainstream hit. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEvery revival brings a history for better or worse,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen recently revivals come back, like \u2018Merrily We Roll Along.\u2019 Sometimes it\u2019s just the right time, right place and right people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs she gears up to return to the stage, she won\u2019t be too far from fellow \u201cGlee\u201d actors, Jonathan Groff, who plays Bobby Darin in \u201cJust in Time,\u201d and Darren Criss, who returning to \u201cMaybe Happy Ending.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI haven\u2019t been on Broadway at the same time as Jonathan in many years, so we\u2019re very excited,\u201d Michele said. \u201cWe\u2019re basically neighbors. Jonathan, Darren and I are on a text chain, so we plan to get together once \u2018Chess\u2019 is up and running.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSamuel Beckett seems far removed from Bill and Ted, the two slacker buddies that made Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter famous, but the deep friendship forged by the duo while making the 1988 comedy \u201cBill and Ted\u2019s Excellent Adventure\u201d and its two sequels was helpful in their stage dynamic in \u201cWaiting for Godot.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201c[Director] Jamie [Lloyd] remarked that our friendship, our history together, really suits the play because of the friendship and connection that two characters have,\u201d says Winter. <\/p>\n \n\tAsked if they\u2019d revive their buddy act and do a fourth \u201cBill & Ted\u201d movie once their Broadway run ends in 2026, Reeves emphatically said, \u201cYes and yes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn \u201cQueen of Versailles,\u201d Kristin Chenoweth had to confront her own preconception in portraying the socialite Jackie Siegel. She met the woman behind America\u2019s most over-the-top McMansion and realized Siegel is more grounded than her Chanel pumps would suggest.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a dichotomy with her. Did she marry somebody or did she work hard?\u201d Chenoweth said. \u201cThis is just an example of who Jackie can be: I was meeting her and she had on a dress. I said, \u2018I love your dress.\u2019 That night she sent me the dress and said, \u2018I couldn\u2019t find it in your size, but maybe you can alter it.\u2019 That took me off guard. I made an assumption about someone.\u201d While the two have their differences, she adds, \u201cthat\u2019s what makes the world go around.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tComposer Stephen Schwartz added that he admired Siegel\u2019s response to having her life dramatized to song and dance.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cImagine if somebody came to you and said, \u2018We\u2019re going make a show about you. It\u2019s going to be your name. A lot of the facts are going be your life, though not all of them. We\u2019re going make some up, but we\u2019re not going tell people which ones we\u2019re making up and which ones are true. And you have no right to approve any of it.\u2019 How many of us would be brave enough to say, \u2018Sure, go ahead and do that.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cRagtime\u201d is set in the dawn of the 20th Century, but its searing look at race relations, the immigrant experience, and political polarization isn\u2019t too far off from America today. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere are some elements that are truthful to this society that we live in today. Sometimes systems can outlive people and democracy has a way, we would hope, of prevailing most of the time,\u201d says John Clay III, who portrays Booker T. Washington in the musical. \u201cBut I just would love people to walk out of the theater and just pay attention to certain signs of \u2018are we going backwards or are we moving forward?\u2019 And \u2018what part are we actually playing in that?’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFirst produced on Broadway in 1998, the musical is returning to the stage after three decades amid a period of unprecedented upheaval.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019re in a moment of intense fatigue and almost numbness in some ways because of the inability to sustain those operatic feelings at all times,\u201d said the show\u2019s director Lear DeBessonet. \u201cThis is a space not just to feel something by yourself, but to actually reconnect to other in a unique space of emotion. I hope that feeds a deep human need that we all have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday is usually a day of rest for Broadway. But instead of catching up on sleep, this season\u2019s biggest stars were out in force at Variety\u2019s Business of Broadway Breakfast to preview the fall\u2019s buzziest shows. \u201cI had a really great joke about the name of this breakfast,\u201d said Ethan Slater, who hosted Monday\u2019s event,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1215,142,9797,14898,3866,2656,4925,8310],"class_list":{"0":"post-26314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alex","9":"tag-bill","10":"tag-broadway","11":"tag-keanu","12":"tag-open","13":"tag-reeves","14":"tag-ted","15":"tag-winter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\t\tAll the Knight Moves\t<\/h3>\n
\n\t\tBill & Ted, Back for More\u2026? \t<\/h3>\n
\n\t\tDon\u2019t Judge a Trophy Wife by Her Couture\t<\/h3>\n
\n\t\tHistory Repeats Itself\t<\/h3>\n