Avenue Q

It has been 14 years since the Tony Award nominators have filled the Best Musical category with four new works featuring completely original scores.

Playbill.com reached out to the 2011 Tony Award nominees on May 3, shortly after they learned that they were nominated for Broadway's biggest award. Here's what they had to say. We'll update this space throughout the day.

Cary Hoffman's My Sinatra, seen at the Triad Theater and as a PBS concert special, will receive a series of staged readings prior to an Off-Broadway run this summer.

Tony winners Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose announced the nominations for the 65th Annual Tony Awards May 3 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center.

Musical Theatre West's Reiner Reading Series will continue May 15 at 7 PM with Stephen Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle in the CSU Long Beach's University Theater.

The Araca Group, which has produced such new Broadway works as The Good Body, Enron and Urinetown, will offer a week-long play reading series beginning May 10.

Free staged readings of the new musical The Water Dream will be presented May 28-30 at 8 PM at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in Manhattan.

"American Idol" finalist Tamyra Gray will star in the Pasadena Playhouse production of Twist, a funky take on the classic Charles Dickens tale "Oliver Twist," which will begin performances June 14.

The Concert for a Healthy Birth, which will benefit Choices in Childbirth, a leading national advocacy organization for maternity care and women's health, will be presented May 9 at the Canal Room in Manhattan.

La MaMa E.T.C. has extended its world-premiere engagement of Project: Lohan, which is written by D'Arcy Drollinger and directed by Ben Rimalower. 

Tony Award-winning stage veteran Angela Lansbury, Tony winner Christine Ebersole, three-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara and more celebrated the legacy of late entertainer Bob Hope with the New York Pops May 2 at Carnegie Hall.

Stage and screen icon Julie Andrews and powerhouse entertainment agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) were honored at this year’s "Backstage at the Geffen" fundraiser May 2.

Larry Kramer, who recently saw his AIDS play The Normal Heart open on Broadway to positive reviews and several Tony Award nominations, told Playbill that he may in the future write a new play featuring Ned Weeks, the central figure in his 1985 work.

The complete list of the 2011 Tony Award nominees — announced on May 3 by Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose — follows.

The nominees of the 56th Annual Drama Desk Awards, honoring productions that opened on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off Off-Broadway during the 2010-2011 New York theatre season, received their official Nomination Certificates at a gala cocktail reception May 2 at Bombay Palace Restaurant.

The Syringa Tree, Pamela Gien's autobiographical solo-actress play about a white family in South Africa and its ties to the native people in a time of apartheid, gets a May 3-22 production by Portland Stage in Maine.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's new stage production of The Wizard of Oz, based on the story by L. Frank Baum as immortalized in the 1939 film musical featuring music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and EY Harburg and newly augmented by additional songs written by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, has put a further 350,000 tickets on sale and is now booking through January 2012.

Michael Esper, currently appearing in the New York premiere of Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, fills out Playbill.com's questionnaire with random facts, backstage trivia and pop-culture tidbits.

Radio veteran "Cousin Brucie" Morrow joins the cast of Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical Memphis beginning May 3 at the Shubert Theatre.

PS Classics has released a track listing and cover art, and announced an early web release date, for its upcoming recording of George and Ira Gershwin's 1930 Broadway musical Strike Up the Band. The satire of war concerns chocolate as the reason for a battle with Switzerland. In an earlier 1927 version of the show, Swiss cheese was the inciting food.