Broadway Stars Shine For NYCLU

NEW YORK - The New York Civil Liberties Union announced a star-studded lineup of award-winning performers for Broadway Stands Up for Freedom!, its annual benefit show scheduled for Monday, July 26 at the NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts.

“We’re fortunate to have so many talented performers honor and celebrate the vital link between civil liberties and the arts,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “It will be a great evening of music and laughs.”

Dozens of Broadway’s finest will perform – including Nellie McKay (The Threepenny Opera), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent), Rebecca Luker (Mary Poppins), J. Robert Spencer (Next to Normal), Kate Baldwin (Finian's Rainbow), Erich Bergen (Jersey Boys), Dana Steingold (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), founding performer Liana Stampur with Clinton Curtis and members the casts of Hair and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Host and musical director will be Seth Rudetsky, and the show is directed by Jen Bender.

Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, a longtime NYCLU member, is the honorary chairman for the event. The Producer’s Circle includes Barbara Whitman (producer of Red, Next to Normal, 33 Variations, Mary Stuart), Michael David (producer of Jersey Boys, Farnsworth Invention), David Richenthal (producer of Finian’s Rainbow, I Am My Own Wife, Long Days Journey Into Night), Nina Lannan (general manager of Billy Elliot: The Musical, 9 to 5, Legally Blonde) and Dini von Mueffling.

Proceeds from the show benefit the NYCLU’s youth programs, including its work with LGBT teenagers; its Teen Health Initiative, which educates teenagers on their rights to access health care in New York City; and its work to stop overly aggressive policing and military recruiting in the city’s public schools.

More information about the show, including a complete list of performers is available at organization's website.