Audra McDonald is said to return to Broadway a lot sooner that expected; It has been already announced that she’ll be co-starring with Oprah Winfrey in 1983 play Night, Mother, which is scheduled for a 2015/2016 run.
But it has been recently announced that before the play she might be playing Billie Holiday in a production of Lanie Robertson’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.
The multi-Tony Award winning actress is said to be in talks to star in the show, which is based on a 1959 seedy Philadelphia bar. The production made its first appearance at the Vineyard Theatre in 1989, which starred Lonette McKee. The show recently played Porchlight Music Theatre last Spring in Chicago, starring Alexis J. Rogers.
However, if an agreement is reached , McDonald’s version will be seen at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
It has also been spotted that Danai Gurira has received a special grant from Playwrights Horizons, who have promise to support and develop the contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists.
A grant to commission Gurira was given by theVirginia B. Toulmin Foundation. She is best known for her role as Michonne on The Walking Dead, she made her first debut in 2010, in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, and is equipped with an accomplished playwright qualities. She co-wrote In the Continuum with Nikkole Salter which received the Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for writing. She also received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in In The Contiuum. She was recently awarded the Whiting Writers Award – a $50,000 award given annually to ten emerging authors and playwrights.