NEWS FOR THE DAY 17-05-06

Tony Noms for Potter People

The Tony Award nominations were announced today, and once more, Harry Potter cast members have received nods. Here they are:

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play:
Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort), for Faith Healer
Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dursley) for The History Boys

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play:
Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime), for The History Boys
Zoe Wanamaker (Madam Hooch), for Awake and Sing!

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical:
Jim Dale (Narrator, U.S. Harry Potter audiobooks), for The Threepenny Opera

The Tony Award winners will be announced at a gala held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 11 at 8:00 p.m. ET. The ceremony will be broadcast in the U.S. on CBS. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Press Conference with JKR in New York August 1

As part of the "Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp" event, author J.K.Rowling, along with Stephen King and John Irving, will hold a press conference Tuesday, August 1 at 10am at Radio City Music Hall. Later that night, the authors will hold their special charity reading. TLC will provide complete coverage of Jo's visit to New York, so stay tuned!

More Theater Honors for Potter Cast Members

It is Broadway Awards season, folks, and Harry Potter cast members are raking them in. We have already reported Drama League Nominations and Drama Desk Nominations. Today, the 55th Annual Outer Critics' Circle Awards were announced, and Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dursley) and Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime) were honored as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, and Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, respectively, for The History Boys (which also won Outstanding Broadway Play and Outstanding Direction of a Play (Nicholas Hytner)). Jim Dale (Narrator, U.S. Harry Potter audiobooks) won the award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (The Threepenny Opera). The award winners are chosen by a group of writers "covering New York theatre for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway."

The Outer Critics' Circle honors will be presented May 25 at Sardi's Restaurant.

J.K. Rowling Loves Libraries

Authors J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, and Philip Pullman are among those who are lending their support to the "Love Libraries" campaign. Part of an effort in the UK to help "galvanize support for public libraries and combat their growing image problem," the "Love Libraries" campaign has enlisted the help of 150 celebrities, including JKR. The Guardian reports:

"Rowling compared libraries to the World-Between-The-Worlds from CS Lewis's Narnia books, "where visitors could enter a thousand different worlds by jumping into different pools". "When I got my eldest daughter a library card I felt as though I had bought her citizenship of that same fabulous world," she said."

PotterCast #39: Horcri hears a Jo

PotterCast #39, Horcri hears a Jo, in which John pays the piper for his famous misnomer, is live:

In this show:

-Jo has put the smackdown on John's "Horcri," validating Melissa and Sue's last half-year of shouts of disapproval. And now John's having big trouble.
-Who else has made a horcrux? We discuss it in Canon Conundrums (John thinks it's Dumbledore)
-Next Canon Conundrum: What is Bellatrix's Lestrange's relation to Voldemort and the main story? Leave your voicemails now at the regular numbers!
-The relevance of green in the books
-Is Snape the real Dark Lord?
-We're just sayin'
-Flemland
-John and Sue's world's worst English accents
-Gaaaarp
-More on the second live NYC LeakyMug
-Modcast: Harry's training in the past couple of books
-Time to dust off Mr. Blood
-"If anyone deserves a happy ending, it's Voldemort" (ie, the modcasters are mad)
-Waste not, want not!
-How did Tom know to ask Slughorn about Horcruxes?
-Lynching Snape
-PotterCast 40: A Celebration! - on the way.
-Keep an eye on PotterCast.com

Running time: 1:21:04

If you are new to all this podcasting stuff, it's really easy: download and install iTunes, then click here to listen. Everything else is at PotterCast.com - you can also direct download it here, and discussion of the PotterCast is right here. Enjoy!