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Katie Rose Clarke has joined the cast of the North American touring production of the Adam Guettel-Craig Lucas musical The Light in the Piazza as Clara, replacing Elena Shaddow. The 50-week tour began in August 2006 in San Francisco and will continue through July of this year.

Clarke played Clara in the Broadway production of Piazza for seven months, having succeeded Kelli O'Hara in the role. For the tour, she joins a principal cast that also features Christine Andreas as Margaret Johnson and David Burnham as Fabrizio Naccarelli.

"Katie's story is a classic Broadway story," stated Bartlett Sher, director of The Light in the Piazza. "When we could find nobody in New York who could play the part of Clara, we discovered her literally fresh out of college in Texas, with all of her extraordinary talents. We moved her to New York and put her in the Broadway show, which she starred in and in which she was dazzling. It has made all of us just unbelievably thrilled that there was a window of time in her schedule when she could make a return to Piazza."