By Matt Windman
26 Sep 2006

Broadway actor Darius de Haas will star in The Man in My Head, a new one-man rhythm-and-blues musical at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Sept. 26-30 at the 45th St. Theatre, 354 West 45th Street.

With songs by Michael Wartofsky and book by Thomas F. DeFrantz, the show is described as follows: "Drew Durango wants it all: a loving relationship with a rock-steady African-American man, solid friendships with Chelsea party boys and a way to share his world with his Granny in Indianapolis. But after seven years living in New York, he still hasn't quite figured it out, careening in and out of love and entanglements with a handsome but closeted attorney, a Zen-like children’s basketball coach, a sister on a mission to find a husband, a hard-partying Harlem Hospital nurse and his nephew from the Midwest."

Darius de Haas has appeared on Broadway in Marie Christine, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Carousel, Rent and The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm. He created the title role in Running Man for which he received an Obie Award, and his other theatrical credits include The Bacchae, Saturn Returns, Children of Eden, Once On This Island and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. De Haas was also part of the recent benefit Hair and Pippin concerts. His debut solo recording, on the PS Classics label, is titled "Day Dream: Variations on Strayhorn."

Michael Wartofsky is the composer of Friendship of the Sea, commissioned and produced by North Shore Music Theatre. He is currently at work on The Navigator, a second NSMT commission. Several of the songs from The Man in My Head are available for download at the NYMF website.

Thomas F. DeFrantz is the author of Can You Feel It: The House Music Project and Queer Theory: An Academic Travesty, which will be produced by the Theater Offensive in Boston and then tour New Hampshire.

(Playbill.com is a media partner of the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2006.)

For more information and to buy tickets, visit the
2006 New York Musical Theatre Festival website