Today is Harvey Milk Day, and the White House is even holding a special event to celebrate and unveil the U.S. postage stamp with the politician and LGBT civil rights leader's face. It's also been announced today that I Am Harvey Milk, which had its premiere last year in San Francisco, will have its New York premiere on October 6 at Lincoln Center.
Last summer, composer Andrew Lippa created an oratorio (commissioned by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus) as part of the Harvey Milk 2013, a 35th anniversary concert. It was performed to sold out audiences. This new production will feature Lippa as Harvey Milk and Tony and Emmy Award winner Kristin Chenoweth as the Soprano soloist. I Am Harvey Milk will also feature the Orchestra of St Luke's and introduce the 120-member All Star Broadway Men's Chorus.
"It's not a biography, it's a series of snapshots, based on the idea of his time in office, and a prologue of what he might have felt like when he was a child," Lippa explained to Out last year. "I'm mostly concerned with how something feels; I'm concerned and interested in the emotional life of ideas, big ideas, not polemic, but in emotion."
Watch these actors--including Julianne Moore, Alan Cumming, Billy Porter, Jonathan Groff, Dustin Lance Black--recite Milk's moving lines in the promo video below:
