If you are one of the many people who’ve been eagerly anticipating the Broadway debut of Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker in the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie, you’ll have to wait just a couple of days longer. The production was originally slated to begin previews on February 5; previews will now begin on February 8. Despite, the slight delay, opening is still scheduled for February 25 at the Booth Theatre.

Whitaker will star alongside stage veteran and Tony Award winner Frank Wood in the short two-character play set in the lobby of a small hotel on a West Side street in midtown New York during the summer of 1928. The play is what’s known as a two-hander — essentially a monologue — about the recently deceased night clerk of a grim hotel on Manhattan’s West Side who’s still mourned by “Erie Smith,” a drunk hustler keen on impressing Hughie’s replacement, “Charlie Hughes,” with reminiscences of past hijinks and adventures.

Whitaker will star as “Erie Smith and Wood will take on the role of “Charlie Hughes.” Tony winner Michael Grandage will direct the play.

Whitaker has built an impressive resume in films such as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” “Bird,” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” In 2007, he won an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 2006’s “The Last King of Scotland.” He also is a noted director who helmed the iconic girlfriend film “Waiting To Exhale” starring Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine, and Angela Bassett.

Wood won a Tony Award in 1999 for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Side Man. He also played “Bill” in the Broadway production of August: Osage County.

Hughie was last seen on Broadway in 1996 at the Circle in the Square Theatre in a production directed by and starring Al Pacino.

For more information about Hughie and to purchase tickets, visit here.

Over the last 10 years, the theater industry has experienced a significant artistic boost with performers flocking to New York and L.A. by the thousands every year. On the flip side, performing arts was also recently listed in Forbes as one of the lowest starting salaries for graduating students. Artists have now realized that if they want a gig, they may have to create it themselves. With mediums like YouTube, Instagram and Vine and networking platforms like The New York Musical Theater Festival and The Fringe Festival, artists are capitalizing on the opportunity to create and premiere their own work, and they’re using ProductionPro to do it.

ProductionPro, founded by theater graduate Alex Libby, is “a mobile service that allows users to mock up visuals by assembling all the concepts and designs on one platform and sharing the most up to date version of each production at any given time.” Basically, you can see the show before the show.

Available on the App Store, with ProductionPro, users can:
-Create a new show
-Centrally access all shows – new and archived
-Create a customized visual breakdown of each scene or beat in a show
– Automatically break down a PDF of a script regardless of what format it’s written in.
– Connect ideas and designs to the breakdown of your Shows.
– Present images for each scene or beat.
– Quickly navigate to any moment in the Script simply by flipping the orientation of the iPad.
– Access an outline of the Show when a script is not yet available.
– Collaborate on a Show in real-time from anywhere.

Libby and his “team of highly-skilled software engineers and experienced Show People from film and theatre” are very familiar with what it takes to comprise a show. Libby himself is a former production assistant and stage manager for shows including Legally Blonde, Wicked and Billy Elliot.

The startup is currently celebrating earning top honors at the Made in NY Media Center Demo Day. Their success not only marks their position as an efficient, growing media service, but also proves, that sometimes, especially in a field as competitive as entertainment, you simply have to make your own way.

Find out more about this app and how it can be help your creative work by downloading it on your iPad and visiting the website.