Chandra Wilson to Star in Broadway’s Chicago

I’ve just received most excellent news in my inbox. Chandra Wilson is headed back to Broadway!

This summer the Grey’s Anatomy star is going to be starring in CHICAGO as Matron Mama Morton. So if you missed her performance in Avenue Q or On the Town here’s your big chance to make up for it.

She’ll be on the Broadway stage from June 8-July 5 so run, don’t walk, to that ticket counter. The performance will take place at the Ambassador Theatre (219 W. 49th St.).

As a Broadway geek this made me really giddy, and I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s any way I can make it.

Any of you out there think you’ll be going? I might have to live vicariously through you.

Full press release (courtesy of CHICAGO the Musical) after the jump!

Broadway heats up this summer when three-time Emmy Award nominee and “Grey’s Anatomy” star Chandra Wilson steps into the celebrated role of Matron “Mama” Morton, the reigning cellblock diva of the smash hit musical CHICAGO, for a four-week limited engagement, Monday, June 8 through Sunday, July 5, 2009 at the Ambassador Theatre (219 W. 49th St.).

For her critically-acclaimed portrayal of Dr. Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Wilson has earned not only three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, but also a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series, a second Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Drama Series Ensemble and three NAACP Image Awards.

A Houston native, Wilson began performing in musicals at the age of five with Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS), where she appeared in more than ten of their major musical productions. She went on to earn her BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she spent four years training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.

Her greatest New York stage accomplishment thus far is her portrayal of Bonna Willis in the production of Lynda Barry’s The Good Times Are Killing Me, both at the Second Stage and Minetta Lane Theatres, for which she won a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. In 2004 she was selected by The New York Times as one of “Eight to Watch, Onstage and Behind the Scenes.”

This honor came in conjunction with the Broadway opening of Caroline, or Change, written by Tony Kushner, composed by Jeanine Tesori and directed by George C. Wolfe, in which she portrayed Dotty Moffett oppositeTonya Pinkins.

She also appeared in the Broadway productions of Avenue Q and On the Town. Her other stage credits includeCaroline, or Change at The Public Theatre, The Miracle Worker at Charlotte Repertory Theatre, Paper Moon: The Musical at The Paper Mill Playhouse and Theresa Rebeck’s The Family of Mann at Second Stage Theatre.

Wilson recently starred in “Accidental Friendship” for the Hallmark Channel, in which she played a homeless woman who is befriended by a Los Angeles police officer. Other television credits include series regular Claudia Hopper on ABC’s “Bob Patterson,” along with numerous guest appearances on “The Sopranos,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Sex and the City,” “Third Watch,” “100 Centre Street,” “Cosby” and “The Cosby Show.” She has also had recurring roles on “One Life to Live” and “Queens Supreme.”

On the big screen she’s had supporting roles in the films Lone Star, directed by John Sayles, and Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Demme.

Image: Newscom