Playbill - The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, begins July 7, offering four new American plays, including three world premieres.

Playbill - The Spirit of Broadway Theater in Norwich, CT, has opened its arms to Little Women, Kim Oler, Alison Hubbard and Sean Hartley's musical take on the Louisa May Alcott novel.

Playbill - The award-winning Adam Guettel-Craig Lucas musical The Light in the Piazza, which became a surprise popular hit soon after opening in spring 2005, will end its lengthy run at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre on July 2.

Reuters - Lloyd Richards, the Tony Award-winning director and educator who brought August Wilson's works to the stage and directed the famed 1959 Broadway production of "A Raisin in the Sun," has died in New York.

Playbill - Lloyd Richards, the groundbreaking Tony Award-winning American director who worked on Broadway, in regional theatre and in the academic community, shepherding the work of August Wilson and other new playwrights, has died, according to The O'Neill Theater Center.

Playbill - The Public Theater generated most of the notable news this week, beginning with its June 28 opening of Macbeth in Central Park, starring the nonprofit's Shakespeare poster boy, Liev Schreiber as the Scottish usurper, and Jennifer Ehle, as his never-satisfied wife. The critics, as always, loved Schreiber, but were less enamored with director Moises Kaufman's stately, pictorial production.

Playbill - The national tour of the musical hit, Annie, will play The Theater at Madison Square Garden Dec. 6-30, delivering a dose of optimism for the holidays.

Playbill - Kevin Kline, who recently took part in a workshop of King Lear at the Public Theater, will play that role in a full run at the nonprofit this fall, a Public spokesperson confirmed.

Reuters - Writer Greg Kotis and director John Rando -- part of the team that brought us the Tony-winning musical "Urinetown" -- are serving up a satirical farce called "Pig Farm" off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater.

Reuters - Writer Greg Kotis and director John Rando -- part of the team that brought us the Tony-winning musical "Urinetown" -- are serving up a satirical farce called "Pig Farm" off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater. The sound of grunting pigs welcomes the audience as it walks into the theater, and a play that opens amusingly but then wallows in confusion greets the audience once it sits down.

Playbill - PLAYBILL.COM: Have you performed the role of Macbeth before? LS: No. I played Banquo in George Wolfe's production in 1998 with Alec Baldwin as Macbeth. PLAYBILL.COM: What makes Macbeth the right role for you to perform now? LS: For the Public Theater, it's a wartime play. It's something that is topical to people. I don't know if I respond to things in an openly political way. I just think they're planted in your subconscious. For me, what's fascinating about the character is the war that he wages in his mind-the interior battle of morality and conscience. It's good stuff. PLAYBILL. ...

Playbill - The Clean House, which has become one of the most produced plays in the U.S., has dates for its New York City bow at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Reuters - Just before the curtain went up, a young woman in from the 'burbs, sitting in the row in front of me, turned to her companion and, after looking up in wonder at the Pantages Theatre's florid interior, said, "This theater rocks."

Playbill - When you've committed yourself to produced 365 new plays over 365 days, what's your first order of business? Get some help.

Reuters - A play about an American human rights activist who died in the Gaza Strip will open in New York in October, six months after it was pulled from the schedule at another theater amid charges of censorship.

Playbill - Billy Crudup, Richard Easton, Jennifer Ehle, Josh Hamilton, David Harbour, Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton and the previously reported Br'an F. O'Byrne will star in the fall 2006 U.S. debut of Tom Stoppard's ambitious three-part play known as The Coast of Utopia, Lincoln Center Theater confirmed.

Reuters - "The House in Town," Richard Greenberg's intensely moving new drama being produced by Lincoln Center Theater, reveals once again that this Tony-winning playwright ("Take Me Out") possesses a theatrical sensibility matched by few American dramatists.

Reuters - In his big and brash new play "Market Boy" at the National Theater, playwright David Eldridge attempts to distill Britain's cruel and greedy Thatcher years using the life and times of a London street market, but the result is messy and unconvincing.

Reuters - In his big and brash new play "Market Boy" at the National Theater, playwright David Eldridge attempts to distill Britain's cruel and greedy Thatcher years using the life and times of a London street market, but the result is messy and unconvincing.

Playbill - Composer Duncan Sheik's throbbing, evocative alternative pop music accompanies the hormonal rhythms of the adolescent heart in the new musical, Spring Awakening, opening Off-Broadway June 15.