Theater News

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cynthia Erivo, and More Join The Children's Monologues Lineup

Sienna Miller, Audra McDonald, Ewan McGregor, and others are also on board.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is set for The Children's Monologues.
Catherine Zeta-Jones is set for The Children's Monologues.
(© Tristan Fuge)

Dramatic Need, an Africa-based creative arts charity, has announced that Academy Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tony Award winner and Broadway star Cynthia Erivo (The Color Purple), and rising star Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beauty and the Beast) will join the cast of the U.S. premiere of The Children's Monologues. The event will take place at Carnegie Hall on November 13.

The cast will also feature Charlize Theron, Trevor Noah, James McAvoy, Audra McDonald, Daniel Kaluuya, Daveed Diggs, Ewan McGregor, Javier Muñoz, Susan Sarandon, and Sienna Miller. Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle, who is also a Dramatic Need trustee, directs the production. The show will also include musical performances by Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding, British rapper Little Simz, and more to be announced later.

The play is made up of "the unforgettable stories of children growing up in Rammulotsi, a small rural township in the Free State province of South Africa." The monologues are adapted by N'gozi Anyanwu, Zawe Ashton, Yael Farber, James Graham, David Hare (The Blue Room), Joel Horwood, Amy Jephta, Dennis Kelly, Neil LaBute (Reasons to Be Pretty), Jamie Minoprio, Mongiwekhaya, Dominique Morisseau (Pipeline), Lynn Nottage (Sweat), Tom Stoppard (The Coast of Utopia), Jack Thorne, and Laura Wade (The Riot Club).

Dramatic Need helps vulnerable children in Africa build hope and self-belief in the face of conflict, trauma, and hardship, using the creative arts as a nonthreatening way of addressing development issues and trauma in children.

For tickets and more information, click here.