Barack on Broadway!

NYT: September 7, 2007, 3:47 pm
Barack on Broadway
By Campbell Robertson

Here’s an intriguing event: “Barack on Broadway!” playing on Sept. 24 at the New Amsterdam theater on 42nd St.

One can picture it: Mr. Obama, cane in one hand, top hat in the other, doing a little soft-shoe, maybe belting out a few numbers from “Chicago.”

Alas, it’s only a fund raiser.

But the hosts of the event are some of Broadway’s biggest wheels: Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions (which owns the theater); Rocco Landesman, the president of the Jujamcyn chain of Broadway theaters; Scott Sanders, the lead producer of “The Color Purple”; Roger Berlind, the lead producer of “Curtains”; and Margo Lion, the lead producer of “Hairspray,” and Broadway’s most active supporter of the Obama campaign. The Tony-winning director George C. Wolfe will direct a short performance with the actors Christine Ebersole (who just won a Tony Award), Marcia Gay Harden and Jeffrey Wright, then Mr. Obama is scheduled to speak.

Broadway doesn’t regularly involve itself in electoral politics at such a scale, though similar benefits have been held at Broadway theaters in the past for Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/barack-on-broadway/index.html?hp

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