Dan Knechtges to Direct Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn’s Lysistrata Jones Off-Broadway in May

Dan Knechtges will direct and choreograph Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn’s new musical Lysistrata Jones for the Transport Group in a production to begin previews in the Judson Memorial Church gymnasium in May. A complete schedule, casting and creative team will be announced in the near future.

The musical, which is based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, is set at Athens University, where head cheerleader Lysistrata Jones swears to hold out on “giving it up” until the school’s basketball team breaks a 30-year losing curse by winning a game.

Knechtges received a Tony Award nomination for his choreography for Xanadu. Among his other credits are Sondheim on Sondheim, for which he provided musical staging, as well as 110 in the Shade and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which he choreographed. As a director, he has staged musicals such as The Wiz, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and Crazy for You at theaters around the country.

Beane wrote the book for the musical Xanadu and has written such plays as the Tony Award-nominated The Little Dog Laughed, Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, As Bees In Honey Drown and The Country Club.

Flinn’s credits include music for Charles Busch’s The Third Story, as well as Die Mommie Die and Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed.