Some of Broadway’s biggest stars played some “Strip-opoly” in New York City Sunday night to raise money for a good cause. Lucky for us!
Broadway Bares XX: "Strip-opoly" featured over 200 of New York's sexiest dancers at Broadway's hottest night in an event produced by and benefitting Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS. It was held Sunday, June 20th at Roseland Ballroom. Broadway Bares XX: "Strip-opoly" was produced by and benefits Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS.
The event was produced by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Executive Produced by Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell (Love Never Dies, Catch Me If You Can, Legally Blonde), and was directed by Josh Rhodes (The Drowsy Chaperone, Fosse).
The first Broadway Bares in 1992 featured seven dancers stripping at Splash bar and raised over $8,000. Since then, the 19 subsequent editions of Broadway Bares have collectively raised over $6 million to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and grown to a full-fledged production featuring over 200 of Broadway's sexiest dancers.
At this year's performance, Tony winner Alan Cumming kept most of his clothes on but got into the spirit of things with a dazzling look. Wearing next to nothing was Broadway’s best bod Nick Adams currently appearing in La Cage aux Folles.
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is one of the nation's leading industry-based, nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. By drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community, since 1988 BC/EFA has raised over $175 million for essential services for people with AIDS and other critical illnesses across the United States.
BC/EFA is the major supporter of seven programs at The Actors' Fund - including The AIDS Initiative, The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, The Al Hirschfeld Free Health Clinic, The Dancers' Resource and three supportive housing residences. BC/EFA also awards annual grants to over 400 AIDS and family service organizations nationwide.
For more information, please visit the BC/EFA website at http://www.broadwaycares.org/. To see many, many more photos from this near-naked night, go to BroadwayWorld.com.
Tony winner Alan Cumming took to his own website to slam Newsweek writer Ramin Seetodeh fir his recent article that took to task openly gay actors in straight roles.
Seetodeh singled out recent work by Sean Hayes and Jonathan Groff specifically and has been slammed for his comments by Kristen Chenoweth, Ryan Murphy, Dustin Lance Black, Michael Urie and Cheyenne Jackson, among others.
Here’s some of what the openly gay Cumming, who has played many straight roles in his career on stage, film and television, had to say:
Ramin Seetodeh is gay. He is a self-hating gay, and he is a danger to us all … But sadly he is not alone. His article has ignited a conversation that I think highlights the fact that self-hating gays operate at the highest level of the entertainment industry: casting directors, producers, directors, agents, managers, publicists, who are themselves gay willingly engage in the oppression of their fellow gay actors. An actor who is publicly out is not heralded as a role model or celebrated amongst this dark little band of unhappy people but derided and mocked, and their exclusion from projects in which they might play straight is borne, often, by this band of their self-hating brothers and sisters.
Actor Alan Cumming has dropped out of the upcoming Spider-man Broadway musical to take a role on hit the TV show The Good Wife, according to a new report.
The GoldenEye star was set to play the villainous Green Goblin in the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark production at New York City's Hilton Theatre. But Cumming has pulled out after landing a regular part opposite Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife, according to www.PerezHilton.com.
The superhero stage show, which features a score by U2 stars The Edge and Bono, has been hit with a string of problems - it was due to begin previews in February but the performances were scrapped. Bosses maintain they aim to open the musical in 2010 but a new launch date has not yet been set.
The show suffered another major blow when lead actress Evan Rachel Wood quit last month, citing scheduling difficulties.
Cumming has previously spoken of his frustration over the delays.
"I Bought a Blue Car Today," the debut solo album from stage star Alan Cumming, will be released on Tuesday, September 22nd on Yellow Sound Label. The Tony-winning actor, who will return to Broadway in 2010 in "SPIDER-MAN: Turn Off the Dark," performed a concert version of the material on the album at London’s Vaudeville Theatre in early September.
Led by musical director Lance Horne, Cumming explores a variety of musical styles on the album, with material range from songs by artists like Cyndi Lauper ("Shine"), Dory Previn (“Dance and Dance and Smile and Smile”), John Bucchino (“Unexpressed”) and Jimmy Webb (“All I Know”) to theatrical gems (“Mein Herr” from Cabaret, the show that earned Cumming a Best Actor Tony; “Where I Want to Be” from Chess; “What More Can I Say?” from Falsettos; “Wig in a Box/Wicked Little Town” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and more.
“The album title comes from the naturalization test I took to become a citizen of the U S of A,” says Cumming. “In the test, there is a bit where the man says a sentence and you have to write it down to prove your prowess in English. My sentence was ‘I bought a blue car today,’ which initially I thought was really sweet and childlike, but on closer examination I realized that it’s all about consumerism and gas guzzling, which rather brilliantly encapsulates America’s financial and energy crises in one fell swoop. [The album is] made up of songs and stories about my ten years living in the states culminating in my becoming a citizen.”
Cumming will play the Green Goblin, the villain of "SPIDER-MAN: Turn Off the Dark" when it starts performances at the Hilton Theatre in early 2010. In addition to Cabaret, he has appeared on Broadway in Threepenny Opera and Design for Living and off-Broadway in The Seagull. His many London stage credits include Bent and the title role in Hamlet.
Scottish actor Alan Cumming was delighted to be allowed to marry his longterm partner - because it meant he could throw a big party for his family and friends.
The X2 star wed Grant Shaffer in a lavish star-studded civil partnership ceremony in 2007, three years after same-sex marriage was introduced in the U.K.
And Cumming was thrilled to finally wed Shaffer after two years of dating, as his loved ones had waited so long to celebrate their union.
He says, "It meant a lot here (in the U.K.) and in a symbolic way, being able to claim rights that everyone should have and here you do and in America you don't.
"Gay people didn't have that thing until recently where you can have all your family and friends to celebrate your relationship and that was a really lovely thing to do. I hadn't realised that was something gay people aren't allowed to do."
Alan Cumming has just been cast as lead villain Green Goblin (aka Norman Osborn) in the Broadway production of Spider-Man, opening March 2010.
The 44-year-old British actor joins Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane Watson. The role of Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) has not been officially announced yet, although musician Reeve Carney is rumored to have gotten the part.
U2’s Bono and The Edge will be bringing the music and lyrics to the near $40-million production called Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Director Julie Taymor, who staged The Lion King, has said that Spider-Man won’t be singing and dancing in tights and the show isn’t a musical, but a “circus rock-’n'-roll drama.”
Alan’s film credits include X2: X-Men United (Nightcrawler), the Spy Kids trilogy (scientist Fegan Floop), 1999’s Titus (directed by Taymor) and the soon-to-be-released The Tempest (also directed by Taymor)
Taymor is thrilled to be working with Alan again. She says, “I obviously love him as this is my third collaboration with Alan - and finally we get to do it on stage. He has such range and such charisma as a performer that I feel confident his Green Goblin will bring many surprises that will move and entertain us.”
Surrounded by huge projections of scantily clad supermodels from photographer Russell James’s new book, partygoers at Donna Karan’s Urban Zen space couldn’t help but fantasize about who else they’d like to see naked. “I’d like to see Obama naked,” Alan Cumming mused. But get your mind out of the gutter; the actor is curious simply from a scientific standpoint, to prove a theory.“I think great leaders, charismatic leaders and men who are so confident and who have achieved so much, usually have big penises,” Cumming told us. “I think there’s a correlation between the level of confidence, the level of the way a man can hold a room and the way he conducts himself in life, with his penis size — with his comfort with his penis size.”
Cumming developed this theory, he says, through extensive research. “So much of male psyche is taken up with how big your cock is; it’s a huge deal in our lives, and so when you’re confident about your penis size, it shows.”And his highly trained eye says Obama is hung. “Well, just look at him,” Professor Cumming explained. “Just the way he’s so kind of elegant and very confident in his body and himself.”
“Also,” Alan added as an afterthought, “someone told me that they worked out with him in a gym in Chicago, and it was big.”
Some of Broadway’s biggest stars played some “Strip-opoly” in New York City Sunday night to raise money for a good cause. Lucky for us!
