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LIZARD BOY to Receive NYC Industry Reading at Playwrights Horizons

The new folk-rock musical Lizard Boy, which took Seattle by storm in it's world premiere at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2015, will receive two private industry readings directed byBrandon Ivie (Jasper in Deadland) at Playwrights Horizons on March 10.

Written by and starring Justin Huertas, the comic book-inspired Lizard Boy was a hit for Seattle Repertory Theatre premiering to rave reviews, sold-out houses, an extended run, and four Gregory Awards including Best New Play. Huertas will reprise his Gregory Award-winning leading performance, as will his original co-stars Kirsten deLohr Helland and William A. Williams, who also received Gregory Awards for their performances. Ivie repeats his duties as director.

The Seattle Repertory Theatre commission mixes indie folk-rock songs played by a three-person cast with quirky romantic comedy antics and superhero mayhem.

The show is described as Once-meets-X-Men-meets-Grindr: "The ashes of Mount St. Helens left a boy, Trevor, with lizard skin and mysterious powers. Even as an adult, Trevor continues to wrestly with whether he's a freak or a hero in this exhilarating new rock musical, equal parts comic book lore and coming-of-age love story."

Come From Away, another new musical that world premiered in 2015 at Seattle Repertory Theatre, just announced a spring 2017 Broadway bow.

Ten local luminaries who made a big splash in the last 12 months.  

From left: 

Greg Lundgren organized the massive—and massively successful—Out of Sight exhibition of Northwest art at King Street Station. 

Emmett Montgomery continued his run of “Weird and Awesome” and competed on Last Comic Standing. 

Justin Huertas premiered and starred in his superhero rock musical Lizard Boy at Seattle Rep. 

Jodi Ecklund refined the programming at Chop Suey and saved a beloved music venue from disaster. 

Courtney Sheehan merged artistry and activism with her inspired programming at Northwest Film Forum. 

Julia Shapiro punked the patriarchy with new albums from her bands Chastity Belt and Childbirth. 

Yonnas Getahun encouraged arts participation via the COLLECT bus, co-curated the Capitol Hill PSA campaign and catalogued a year of literary recordings for Torchlit. 

Grace Love was crowned Seattle’s reigning Queen of Soul. 

Molly Sides tore up stages with her band Thunderpussy, starred in Glimmer at ACT and continued her Trigger: New Dance Happenings. 

I wanted to first talk about Arrow. You started off playing Laurel, obviously, and then you sort of had this crazy and really cool transformation into Black Canary. I was wondering if you prefer playing Black Canary versus playing Laurel.

Cassidy: Honestly, I don’t really look at them as two different identities if that makes sense. As much as we could make it a realistic transition [from season one to three] I feel like we did. I obviously am having a blast doing action. It’s the greatest thing ever to be playing a superhero and to put on the suit. It’s so much fun. There’s a lot of action involved and not as much dialogue, so it’s definitely stimulating physically but emotionally, there’s not a lot of dialogue. With Laurel, being an attorney, there’s more of an emotional stimulation there, so I don’t think it’s fair to say which one I prefer. I think the character itself has probably been the most fun character I’ve ever played in my career, and I’m so grateful for it. It’s just been a blast.

RadioTimes has put together a nice article about several cancelled series, which includes our beloved show too. The article explains the premise of every programme, plus lists the social media platforms that are engaged/used in the issue. Surprise: our very own Tumblr account is listed too!

The best part is that you can vote for the show you would like to be back on air. Probably it's just for curiosity, but we should all show that our hearts are still aching because of the tragic fate of The Hour, even after almost 2 years of its cancellation, in the form of a little vote!

The article and the poll can be found here.