Four honorees in front of a wall of logos: Deaf West Theatre brought its 35th birthday to New York on Monday, September 28, with One Night in New York at Joe’s Pub, the Los Angeles company’s first gala in the city.
The honorees were Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur, five-time Tony Award-winning producer Eva Price, and the Tony-winning directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch. The night marked 35 years since the company’s founding in 1991, and a footprint on the East Coast that keeps getting bigger. Artistic director DJ Kurs and managing director Jeff Perri lead the company.
Barrett Foa (Oh, Mary!) hosted, and the program leaned hard on Deaf West’s own history. Kathryn Gallagher and Sandra Mae Frank, both alumni of Spring Awakening, reunited for Mama Who Bore Me: one guitar, one microphone, the song carried in voice and in sign at once. LJ Benet and Josué Martinez, from Deaf West’s American Idiot, took on Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends.
Tony nominee Michael McElroy and Tyrone Giordano went back to the company’s Big River with Muddy Water. Tony nominee Elizabeth Stanley (Jagged Little Pill) and Alexandria Wailes (for colored girls..., Deaf West’s Spring Awakening) paired No One Is Alone with Somewhere.
The rest of the bill: three-time Tony winner Michael Arden, whose credits include Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, Parade and The Lost Boys; Daniel Durant (Deaf West’s Elephant Shoes and Spring Awakening); Mya Rena Hunter (Deaf West’s Whistle Down the Wind, the Les Misérables national tour); Camryn Manheim; Austin McKenzie; Tempress Chasity Moore (CATS: The Jellicle Ball); James Olivas; Zachary Noah Piser (Maybe Happy Ending); and Alona Jane Robbins.
Henry Gottfried and Sandra Mae Frank co-directed the evening. Meghann Zervoulis Bate was music director, Spencer Gualdoni, CSA cast it, and Rico Froehlich was production stage manager.
It caps a busy stretch. This summer the company staged a developmental concert reading of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down the Wind at New York Stage & Film, in a new version with Rauch. In June, its world-premiere musical Elephant Shoes closed at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, a co-production that ended as the best-selling show in that theater’s history.
Next is Love Me, an immersive comedy from Emmy-nominated comedian Drew Michael (Saturday Night Live), which Deaf West co-produces. It plays 22 performances only at SoHo Playhouse, October 24–November 22.
