Kenny Leon Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Kenny Leon, director of A Soldier’s Play, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, expanded backstage on his acceptance-speech call for greater diversity in the theater.

UPDATE The 2022 Broadway revival of Melvin Van Peebles’ groundbreaking 1971 musical Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death will go on as planned, producers – including the late filmmaker’s son Mario Van Peebles – confirmed today.

Melvin Van Peebles’ groundbreaking 1971 musical Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death will return to Broadway next year with the playwright’s son Mario Van Peebles onboard as Creative Producer and Tony Award winner Kenny Leon directing.

Amber Ruffin has joined the Broadway-bound team of Some Like It Hot as a co-writer of the film-to-stage adaptation. The host of Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show will partner with Tony nominee Matthew López on the new musical’s book.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorTina Fey and Wayne Brady have joined the line-up for this year’s Educational Theatre Foundation Gala.Theatre Alive!: A Celebration of School Theatre, to be held virtually on Jan. 28, will honor director-producer-actor Kenny Leon with the Crag Zadan Theatre for Life Award.

Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon will join Roundabout Theatre Company’s artistic leadership team as Senior Resident Director next month. The director, most recently of Roundabout’s Tony-nominated A Soldier’s Play, is expected to help develop and nurture the careers of young BIPOC directors and play a key part in the non-profit’s “commitment to anti-racism and increased equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe upcoming season of Encores! at New York’s City Center will include an adaptation by Pose‘s Billy Porter of The Life, a musical last seen in New York on Broadway in 1997.Porter’s adaptation, which he’ll direct, is one of two upcoming Encores! productions reviving rarely staged Broadway musicals centering on Black lives; also in development is director Kenny Leon’s production of 1983’s The Tap Dance Kid.

Dino-Ray Ramos Associate Editor/ReporterLifetime has extended its partnership with journalist Robin Roberts for four new movies and they are about to fuel the soul with Robin Roberts Presents: The Mahalia Jackson Story. The movie will star Tony Award nominee, SAG and Grammy Award-winning actress Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black, Broadway’s The Color Purple) as the titular iconic gospel legend and civil rights activist while Tony winner Kenny Leon (Broadway’s A Raisin in the Sun, Fences,

Now, that’s what I call a play! Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “A Soldier’s Play,” now being revived on Broadway by Roundabout Theatre Company, packs plenty of dramatic tension into smoldering issues of racial justice and injustice, military honor and dishonor, and the solemn struggle to balance their harrowing demands on characters who are only human.