On Sunday, Dec 12, 2021, Broadway producers Tom and Michael D’Angora were honored by Senator Brad Hoylman with a State Senate Proclamation naming it Tom and Michael D’Angora Appreciation Day in New York State’s 27th Senate District, in recognition of the couple’s charitable work in producing benefits to save theater and music venues in NYC at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The date was selected to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the launch of their first fundraiser for the West Bank Café/Laurie Beechman Theatre on West 42nd Street, which culminated in a ten-hour Christmas Day telethon, co-produced with Tim Guinee and Joe Iconis. The event, featuring a star-studded cast of hundreds, including Pete Townshend, Nathan Lane, Debra Messing, Sean Penn, Martha Plimpton, and André De Shields, raised more than $300,000 and prevented the venue, where they held many of their own opening-night parties, from permanently closing.
Following the success of their Save West Bank Café initiative, the D’Angoras created fundraising campaigns and produced streaming shows for the legendary Birdland Jazz Club (with appearances by Sting, Whoopi Goldberg, Audra McDonald, Wynton Marsallis, Norm Lewis, and Catherine Russell), The LABrynth Theatre, The York Theatre, and The Stonewall Inn, which raised over $1.5 million in total. Their work also included several productions for The Theatre World Awards.
Known for producing such long-running Off-Broadway favorites as NEWSical The Musical, Naked Boys Singing, and Marvelous Wonderettes, as well as serving as co-producers of the current Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change, the D’Angoras are bringing back their Off-Broadway hit A Musical About Star Wars for a limited engagement of fifteen performances this holiday season at The American Theatre of Actors.
They have also launched a new fundraising campaign to benefit The Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), an organization that is fighting to protect more than 100,000 LGBTQIA+ students who are currently struggling to gain acceptance and to receive basic civil rights protections at universities around the nation.
Congratulations to the D’Angoras for the well-deserved recognition and thanks to them for all their important work.
A Musical About Star Wars plays Friday, December 17, 2021-Sunday, January 2, 2022, at The American Theatre of Actors, 314 West 54th Street, NYC. For tickets, priced at $38-90, go online. For information on current COVID-19 protocol, call the theater at (212) 581-3044.
