Theater News

Jenn Colella to Play Title Role in Beebo Brinker Chronicles

Jenn Colella
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Jenn Colella
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

Jenn Colella will play the title role in Beebo Brinker Chronicles, which will play a 10-week engagement Off-Broadway run beginning February 19 at 37 Arts, with an opening set for March 5. Adapted from Ann Bannon’s groundbreaking, award-winning pulp novels of the 1950s and 1960s, the play is written by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman, and directed by Leigh Silverman.

Beebo follows the lives and loves of four friends in pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village. Beth and Laura, secret lovers in college, still pine for each other. Before they can reunite, they find themselves entangled in a web spun by Beebo Brinker, a butch denizen of the underground bar scene, and Jack, a flamboyant fop with caustic wit.

The production will feature Carolyn Baeumler, Bill Dawes, Autumn Dornfeld, David Greenspan, and Marin Ireland, all of whom appeared in the show’s previous production last fall. Colella’s credits include the Broadway musicals High Fidelity and Urban Cowboy. The design team will include Theresa Squire (costumes), Rachel Hauck (set), Nicole Pearce (lights), and Jill BC DuBoff (sound).

Ryan co-authored Judy Gold’s solo show 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, which won a 2007 GLAAD Media Award Winner for Best Play. Chapman co-created and played Alice B. Toklas in the Obie Award-winning and GLADD Media Award Nominee Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving. Silverman directed Lisa Kron’s award-winning Well on Broadway in 2006. She also recently directed Yellow Face at the Public, and will be directing Brooke Berman’s Hunting and Gathering at Primary Stages later this month.

Featured In This Story