ARIANA DeBOSE TO LEAD “SWEET CHARITY” WORKSHOP THIS AUTUMN

by DKC/O&M, August 5, 2026

Press Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Marie Bshara
rick@omdkc.com / marie@omdkc.com
212 695 7400

FOR RELEASE ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2026

ACADEMY AWARD^®WINNER AND TONY AWARD^®NOMINEE
ARIANA DeBOSE
AND
DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS
JEFF AND RICK KUPERMAN
TO LEAD AUTUMN WORKSHOP OF
THE NEIL SIMON / CY COLEMAN & DOROTHY FIELDS MUSICAL
“SWEET CHARITY”

New York, NY (Wednesday, August 5) – Producers ATG Theatricals, Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson, Bee Carrozzini, Kevin Ryan, and Lamar Richardson have confirmed that an autumn workshop is planned for a new production of the classic Neil Simon / Cy Coleman & Dorothy Fields musical, Sweet Charity, starring Academy Award^® winner and Tony Award^® nominee Ariana DeBose, with all-new direction and choreography by Tony Award^® nominees Jeff and Rick Kuperman.

To download headshots, please click here.

Inspired by Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, Sweet Charity explores the turbulent love life of Charity Hope Valentine, a hopelessly romantic but chronically unlucky dance hall hostess in New York City. With a hilarious book by Neil Simon and a quintessentially mid-1960s score by Cy Coleman (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) that includes the songs “Big Spender,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “The Rhythm of Life,” and “Baby, Dream Your Dream,” Sweet Charity captures all the energy, humor, and heartbreak of life in the Big City for one of musical theater’s most enduring and iconic optimists.

Sweet Charity opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on January 29, 1966, in a production directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse and starring Gwen Verdon, John McMartin, Helen Gallagher, and Thelma Oliver. Bringing together several defining talents of the American theater—including Coleman, Fields, Simon, Fosse, and Verdon—the collaboration made the musical a landmark of mid-century Broadway. It ran for 608 performances and received nine Tony Award nominations. Charity Hope Valentine immediately entered the canon of great musical-theater heroines: funny, sexually candid, bruised but irrepressibly hopeful, and denied the conventional romantic ending audiences had come to expect from musical comedies.

In a statement, Jeff and Rick Kuperman said, “Sweet Charity asks a question that feels urgent today: how do you keep an open heart in a world set on breaking it? Ariana has the wit, fearlessness, vulnerability, and extraordinary physical command to make Charity entirely her own. We’re approaching the musical with deep respect for its history while creating a contemporary theatrical language in which dance drives the story and Charity’s hard-earned optimism remains at its core.”

Additional details will be announced at a later date.

# # # #

Every day is opening night.

ARIANA DeBOSE TO LEAD “SWEET CHARITY” WORKSHOP THIS AUTUMN