tl;dr for January 3rd

• ​Show Announcements: due to an injury sustained by actor Isaac Cole Powell, "West Side Story" will now open on February 20th; "To Kill a Mockingbird" will play a special free performance at Madison Square Garden on February 26th for 18,000 students

• News: after tackling "Oklahoma!", director Daniel Fish will premiere a new production of Frank Loesser's 1956 musical "The Most Happy Fella" at the Bard SummerScape Festival this summer; Eden Espinosa, Alex Newell, and Jessica Vosk will share the role of Narrator in the "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" concert at Lincoln Center in February; and a new study shows that people who engage with the arts live longer! 

• Business: Lee Seymour reports that 2019 Broadway grosses were 3.7% below the record set in 2018, but attendance reached a record 90.51%

• Development: Greta Gerwig, who will be seen on stage in "Three Sisters" at NYTW this spring, is writing a new musical that will feature tap dance

• Lists: check out the top ten highest grossing Broadway shows of the decade, the top selling 43 cast albums of all time, and the ultimate list of year-end top plays and musicals lists

• Read: this incredible oral history from original cast members of "Cats", and this excellent piece by critic Christian Lewis about the emergence of "young adult theatre"  

• RIP: hit songwriter Allee Willis, composer of "The Color Purple", is dead at 72; playwright Pamela Payton-Wright is dead at 78; legendary Broadway composer Jerry Herman is dead at 88; Tony Award-winning production designer Peter Larkin is dead at 93; and here is a year-end round up of all the theatre legends lost in 2019