(HOBOKEN, NJ) -- Mile Square Theatre presents their annual holiday benefit, Broadway Night, on Monday, December 4, 2023 at 8:00pm. This annual event features Broadway performers singing a few songs for the audience in their intimate theater.
“Often, we pay the same ticket price - $150 - to see a show on Broadway, but we can’t even see the performers’ eyes. In our O’Connor Theatre, audiences can see their favorites close up,” says Kevin R. Free, Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre.
This year’s diverse cast has includes Drew Gehling (Waitress; Almost Famous); Hobokenite Nirvaan Pal (School of Rock; 13 The Film); Kennedy Kanagawa (Into The Woods); Zonya Love (The Color Purple; Beetlejuice); Leenya Rideout (Cabaret; Company); Kevin R. Free (The Fantasticks; Taking A Chance on Love); and Trista Dollison (Charlie & The Chocolate Factory; Oklahoma - 2019 Revival). Musical Direction and Accompaniment by Composer George Luton (More Than This World; Move Meant).
Additionally, the cast will be joined by Rob Schiffmann (Broadway’s Next Hit Musical), who will improvise a song for the audience member who pledges the highest donation! Arielle Legere is the Production Stage Manager.
Tickets are $150 and are now available online at www.MileSquareTheatre.org. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the theater a half hour before the performance. Party begins at 7:00pm and the show begins at 8:00pm. Running Time: 85 minutes.
Mile Square Theatre is located at 1400 Clinton Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. The company was founded in 2003 as a non-profit professional theatre. MST’s mission is to enrich and engage the region through the production of professional theatre and innovative arts education. MST produces professional theatre year round, including shows for young audiences and our annual festival of plays about baseball, 7th Inning Stretch.
BIOGRAPHIES
DREW GEHLING Broadway: Almost Famous; Waitress; On a Clear Day…; Jersey Boys. Regional: Almost Famous; Dave (Hayes Nom); Roman Holiday; The Scarlet Pimpernel in Concert, Waitress, Johnny Baseball (A.R.T.); Billy & Ray (Vineyard Theatre); A Minister’s Wife (LCT); Anne of Green Gables (Off-Broadway). Tons of development. TV/Film: “The Blacklist,” “Chicago PD,” “Blue Bloods,” “Instinct,” “The Code,” “Dietland,” “The Good Fight,” “Succession,” “Kimmy Schmidt,” “Elementary,” “30 Rock,” “Smash,” Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight (HBO), “Indoor Boys,” “Stomach People,” “Unconformity,” many others. Academically, he co-authored a paper on Singers with faculty members at the NYU Voice Center. He is an alumnus of both Carnegie Mellon and Columbia Universities.
NIRVAAN PAL Nirvaan, 16, is very excited to be part of Mile Square Theatre’s Broadway Night. Credits include: School of Rock Broadway, NBC’s New Amsterdam, a lead of a new Nickelodeon animated series, Nick Jr’s “Bubble Guppies,” a singer in “13 the Musical” on Netflix, and many other productions with various production companies in and around the NYC area. Nirvaan studies voice, piano, guitar, ukulele, and at Mile Square Theatre, one of his favorites, tap dance. He loves writing music at his piano, loves writing and drawing in his freetime, and is a Hoboken local straight off of First and Grand. He attends Xavier in Chelsea, New York City, which means he obviously loves to enjoy living his life like he is a character in Gossip Girl. Nirvaan would like to thank his parents, friends, and family for always encouraging him, his amazing vocal and acting.
KENNEDY KANAGAWA Broadway: Into the Woods (Drama Desk nomination). Other credits: Into the Woods (national tour); Tiananmen (Phoenix Theatre Co); Gold Mountain (Utah Shakespeare Festival); Saturday Night (2nd Stage); The Good Swimmer (BAM); Lolita, My Love (York Theatre Company); Dinner with Georgette (NYTW Next Door); Last Ship to Proxima Centauri (Portland Stage); Eastbound (Village Theater).
ZONYA LOVE Zonya is a performer who has a passion for influencing the next generation of storytellers. Zonya has performed on Broadway in Beetlejuice & The Color Purple, toured in Avenue Q, and performed various musicals regionally. Some of her favorites include Sister Act and The Wiz at Broadway Sacramento, The Parchman Hour at the Guthrie, The Devil’s Music at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and Lights Out Nat King Cole at The Geffen and People’s Light. Zonya is grateful for the opportunity to perform and feels most in alignment when she’s performing her own work, “Spiritual Uprising.”
LEENYA RIDEOUT Broadway: War Horse; Cyrano de Bergerac; Company; Cabaret. Off-Broadway: Wild Abandon, Irish Rep.; Before We’re Gone, 13th St. Rep.; Fire and Air & As You Like It, Classic Stage; Taming of the Shrew, Public Theater; and Cowgirls, Minetta Lane Theatre. Regional: Wild Horses, Merrimack Rep.; Into the Woods, HVSF; August Rush, Paramount; That Face, Baltimore Center Stage; Camelot & Secret Garden, Capital Rep; Fairfield, Cleveland Playhouse; Man of La Mancha, Milwaukee Rep; On Golden Pond, Casa Manana; Ring of Fire, Deutsches Theatre; Woody Sez, Theaterworks; Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Hangar Theater; Holidays with the Chalks, Alliance Theatre; Merrily We Roll Along, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Cardenio, ART; The Canterbury Tales, Guthrie Theater; and Avenue X, Merrimack Rep. International Tour: My Fair Lady. Film: Love, Repeat; Mona Lisa Smile; Loser; Bittersweet. Television: Law & Order, SVU (NBC); Bull (CBS); Company (PBS); Nashville Star (USA Network), Jerry Lewis Telethon. Radio: Selected Shorts, NPR. Original Cast album of Wild Abandon available online. Love to Ted…
TRISTA DOLLISON Broadway: Oklahoma (Revival); Charlie and The Chocolate Factory; A Bronx Tale; Avenue Q; The Lion King. Regional: DAVE; My Very Own British Invasion
ROB SCHIFFMANN is a singer-songwriter and a professional improviser. Rob is the director, co-producer of, and a performer with Broadway's Next Hit Musical, a nationally touring musical improvisation comedy awards show, which has been touring nationally to 30-50 cities a year for the past 12 years. Rob also has written two albums of his original songs with his band, The Hillary Step. Rob has been hired by multiple organizations to write music for and / or to emcee their events, using his musical improvisational skills. Rob has performed in all 50 states and in 5 different continents.
KEVIN R. FREE is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as an actor, writer, director, and producer has been showcased and developed in many places, including The Moth Radio Hour; Project Y Theater; Flux Theater Ensemble; NPR; the Queerly Festival; The New York Neo-Futurists; and The Fire This Time Festival, where he served as Producing Artistic Director for 5 years, winning an Obie for his work in 2015. He is now the Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, NJ, where he directed Pipeline; Berta, Berta; and The Burdens. His full-length plays include Face Value; The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual; or TRIPLE-CONSCIOUSNESS; Night of The Living N-Word; and A Hill on Which To Drown, which he is now developing with The Historic Apollo’s New Works Lab for Andre De Shields. He is also the co-writer and co-producer of the award-winning web series “The Reparations Show” (Frigid New York, 2020-21); Gemma & The Bear! and the upcoming Beckys Through History (MyCarl Productions). Other favorite Directing Credits include Last Ship to Proxima Centauri by Greg Lam (Portland Stage) and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Nevada Conservatory Theatre). As an actor, along with performing in over 100 professional productions (including the world premiere production of WINK by Jen Silverman at Marin Theater Company), he became the first African-American to play the role of Bellomy in The Fantasticks Off-Broadway. An accomplished voice actor, as well, Kevin has narrated over 500 audiobooks in the past 23 years, including The Known World by Edward P. Jones; Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage; The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raine\s; A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson and all the books in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.
GEORGE LUTON (he/they) is a versatile and highly sought-after musical theatre composer, conductor, and pianist. His Off-Broadway credits include the recent premiere of his new musical (More Than This World) at The York Theatre and his music directorship at Prospect Theatre Company (Move Meant) while elsewhere in New York City he has launched a multitude of productions featuring his original scores, including a new operetta (Alice) and a variety show (Of Sleepless Nights) at The Tank NYC, as well as short-form musicals at the New York Public Library’s Across A Crowded Room Festival (Face to Face) and the Balance Arts Center (PreScripted). George has worked as a composer-in-residence, crafting commissions for Moonlight Productions (Nottingham: The Legend of Robin Hood), Stage 284 (Earhart, Stiltskin), Music for Autism International (The Scales of Time), Boston Children’s Theatre (Apple and the Bear, Apple Plus), InVivo Productions (The Conditions of Readiness, Face Work), ACT MV (Boots, The Untold Story of Treasure Island, The Snow Queen), and the Experimental Theatre of Vassar College (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Northern Skies) where he was twice honored with the Jean-Slater Edson Prize in Composition as well as Molly Thatcher-Kazan Memorial Prize for Distinction in Theatrical Arts for his contributions as a conductor (A Little Night Music). As a music director, George has served not only New York’s own 54 Below (Grace and the Ghost), Columbia University School of the Arts (The Trojan Women), Powerhouse Theatre (The Spitfire Grill, Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical), Susan Stein-Shiva Theatre (The Rocky Horror Show, Formerly Known), Unbound (Grey Gardens), Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film (The Cherry Orchard, Machinal), Theatre On the Go! (Mean Girls), and Emerging Artist’s Theatre (Will Wilson Saves the World), but also the Massachusetts regional theatre circuit, where he has worked with companies such as Gloucester Stage (Paradise Blue), Island Theatre Workshop (Mary Poppins, Once Upon a Mattress), Purple Summer Productions (Hair, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Spring Awakening) and Punctuate 4 (The Abolitionist’s Refrain), to bring new and old theatrical scores to life. George works as a music director and accompanist for the improvised comedy show Broadway’s Next Hit Musical is an alumnus of the Illinois Wesleyan University Composition Institute and a member of BMI's Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
