Scott Sanders Productions and Broadway In Chicago have announced the complete cast for the world premiere Chicago production of the new comedy musical, Tootsie. Joining previously announced Tony Award nominee Santino Fontana as Michael Dorsey will be Lilli Cooper as Julie Nichols, Sarah Stiles as Sandy Lester, John Behlmann as Max Von Horn, Andy Grotelueschen as Jeff Slater, Julie Halston as Rita Mallory, Michael McGrath as Stan Fields, and Reg Rogers as Ron Carlisle.

The company will also include Sissy Bell, Barry Busby, Paula Leggett Chase, Britney Coleman, Leslie Donna Flesner, Jenifer Foote, John Arthur Greene, Drew King, Jeff Kready, Harris Milgrim, Adam Monley, Shina Ann Morris, James Moye, Katerina Papacostas, Diana Vaden, and Anthony Wayne.

Tootsie tells the story of a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until an audacious, desperate stunt lands him the role of a lifetime.

Tootsie will play a pre-Broadway engagement this fall at Broadway In Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre (151 West Randolph Street, Chicago, IL) from September 11 – October 14.  The production will come to Broadway in spring 2019.

Tootsie features an original score by Tony Award-winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), a book by Robert Horn (13; Dame Edna, Back with a Vengeance), choreography by Tony Award nominee Denis Jones (Holiday Inn, Honeymoon in Vegas), and musical direction by Andrea Grody (The Band’s Visit). Tootsie will be directed by seven-time Tony Award nominee and Olivier Award winner Scott Ellis (She Loves Me, On the Twentieth Century).

The design team for Tootsie includes scenic designer David Rockwell, costume designer William Ivey Long, lighting designer Donald Holder, sound designer Brian Ronan, hair and wig design by Paul Huntley, make-up design by Angelina Avallone. Casting is by Jim Carnahan C.S.A. Music supervision is by Andrea Grody & Dean Sharenow.

Tootsie is co-produced by James L. Nederlander and Sally Horchow.

Santino Fontana (Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels) is perhaps best known to national audiences for providing the voice to the villainous ‘Prince Hans’ in Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated feature, Frozen. He was also seen in Universal Studio’s Sisters, starring opposite Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. On television he’s starred on The CW’s critically acclaimed musical comedy series, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” as Greg. Simultaneously, Santino played David Saperstein, opposite Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta, in NBC’s drama series, “Shades of Blue.” On stage, Santino most recently starred in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and 1776, as part of the New York City Center’s Encores! series, for which he received rave reviews. Santino’s portrayal of Moss Hart in Lincoln Center’s production of Act One, which was filmed for PBS, also received critical praise. In 2013, Santino received a Tony Award nomination for his leading role as Prince Charming in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, and in 2012, he won Obie and Lucille Lortel awards for his acclaimed performance in Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet.  Santino’s other theatre credits include The Importance of Being Earnest (Clarence Derwent Award), A View From the Bridge, Brighton Beach Memoirs (Drama Desk Award), Billy Elliot, Zorba, and Sunday in the Park with George. As a vocalist, Santino has recently performed in jazz venues such as Lincoln Center’s Appel Room and Birdland. As an orchestra soloist, Santino has sung at Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and other top tier venues with symphonies, big bands, and smaller ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the New York Pops and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Santino has recently wrapped shooting “Singularity,” a pilot for FX from producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. His other television credits include guest stars on “The Good Wife,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Brain Dead,” and “Royal Pains.” He can also be seen in the popular web series, “Submissions Only.”  He has four independent film projects due to be released soon, including the romantic comedy, Off the Menu, the psychological thriller Impossible Monsters, the dramatic short Limit of Wooded Country, and the comedy Papercop.

Lilli Cooper (Julie Nichols). Broadway: SpongeBob SquarePants (Sandy Cheeks), Spring Awakening (OBC), Wicked (Elphaba). Theater favorites: Sundown, Yellow Moon (WP Theater), Natasha, Pierre…Great Comet (ART), The Wildness (Ars Nova), Noir (NYSF & NAMT), The Threepenny Opera (Atlantic Theater). TV: “Instinct,” “The Good Fight,” “Bull” & “Elementary” (CBS). Film: The Post, creator and star of the web-series: “It’s Not Okay, Cupid” (Glamour.com). LaGuardia Arts and Vassar alum. www.lillicooper.com

Sarah Stiles (Sandy Lester). Broadway: Jessica in Hand to God (Tony nomination), Muriel in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Kate/Lucy in Avenue Q, The 25^th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee. Sarah also appeared as Jessica in MCC’s production of Hand to God, for which she received a Lucille Lortel nomination for her performance. Additionally, she played Annelle in Judith Ivey’s production of Steel Magnolias at the Alliance Theatre. Shakespeare in the Park: Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods. Off-Broadway/original cast recordings: Joanne in Vanities (Second Stage), Nazirah in The Road to Qatar (York Theatre). She also toured in the first national companies of Spelling Bee and Tommy Tune’s Dr. Doolittle. Sarah is the voice of Spider in the recording of Pasek and Pauls’ James and the Giant Peach. She is also the lead vocalist in Gary Lucas’s Fleischerei project, which features music from Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons. @lulubellestiles. www.SarahStiles.net

John Behlmann (Max Von Horn) is appearing next in Michael Friedman’s Gone Missing at Encores! Broadway: Significant Other, Journey’s End (Tony for Best Revival). Off-Broadway: 1776 (Encores), Pretty Filthy (Civilians), Important Hats of the 20^th Century (MTC), The 39 Steps (New World Stages), Significant Other (Roundabout), Eager to Lose (Ars Nova), Wild Animals… (MCC), This Is Not J.A.W.S. (Dixon Place). Regional: Created the role of Nuke LaLoosh in the musical of Bull Durham (Alliance). Film: Wolf of Wall Street, Revolutionary Road, Above All Things, Block Island, and the upcoming Billy Crystal film, We Are Unsatisfied.  TV: Agent Adams in Season 2 of “Riverdale,” “Good Behavior,” “Instinct,” “Odd Mom Out,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Good Wife.” Training: Wesleyan University, Denver Center.

Andy Grotelueschen (Jeff Slater) has appeared Off-Broadway and around the world in Fiasco’s Into the Woods (Menier Chocolate Factory  (London), Roundabout Theatre Company, McCarter Theatre Center, Old Globe; Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival and nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical), Twelfth Night (CSC), The Two Gentleman of Verona (Theatre for a New Audience, St. Clair Bayfield Award), Cymbeline (Theatre for a New Audience/Barrow Street Theatre), Measure for Measure (The New Victory Theater, Long Wharf Theatre) and The Imaginary Invalid (Old Globe). He also appeared on Broadway in Cyrano de Bergerac. His other New York credits include Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (Theatre for a New Audience), the Cyclops in The Odyssey (Public Works at Delacorte Theater), and world premieres at 13P, The Exchange, and St. Ann’s Warehouse. Mr. Grotelueschen’s regional credits include Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theater, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Guthrie Theater, and all across the country with The Acting Company. He has appeared on television in “Elementary,” “The Good Wife,” “The Good Cop” and “The Knick.” His film credits include Still on the Road (PBS), Coin Heist (Netflix), Geezer, Land of Kings, and Tumorhead. He is a graduate of the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company M.F.A. Program in Acting.

Julie Halston (Rita Mallory) appeared on Broadway most recently in Scott Ellis’ revival of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You, earning the Actors Equity Richard Seff Award as well as Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations.  She has also been seen on Broadway in On the Town, Anything Goes, Hairspray, Gypsy, and On the Twentieth Century, for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination.  Halston is a founding member of Charles Busch’s legendary theatre company, Theatre in Limbo, and has co-starred with Mr. Busch in numerous productions including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Tribute Artist, and her Drama Desk Award nominated performances in The Divine Sister and Red Scare on Sunset.  She was last seen off-Broadway in Richard Greenberg’s The Babylon Line at Lincoln Center Theater.  Halston recently starred in both the McCarter Theater Center and Hartford Stage’s sold out productions of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.  Regionally, she has appeared in the Huntington Theatre Company’s adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces and the Kennedy Center production of The Guardsman.  She has appeared on television in a variety of series including “Difficult People,” Woody Allen’s “Crisis in Six Scenes,” and “Law & Order: SVU.”  She is best known to television audiences for her roles as Bitsy Von Muffling from “Sex and the City” and Tina Carmello from “The Class.”  She is a frequent co-host of the Emmy Award winning television series “Theater Talk.”  In addition to her many award winning solo comedy performances, including her off-Broadway hit, Julie Halston’s Lifetime of Comedy, Miss Halston was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Off-Broadway Alliance.

Michael McGrath  (Stan Fields). Broadway: The Front Page, She Loves Me, On the Twentieth Century, Nice Work If You Can Get It (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), Born Yesterday, Memphis, Is He Dead, Spamalot (Tony and Drama Desk noms.), Wonderful Town, Little Me, Swinging On A Star (Theatre World Award, Drama Desk nom.), The Goodbye Girl, My Favorite Year. City Center Encores: DuBarry Was A Lady, The Boys From Syracuse, and Follies. Off-Broadway: The Government Inspector, The Cocoanuts, Forbidden Broadway, The Butter and Egg Man. Television: “The Martin Short Show.” Film: Changing Lanes, The Interpreter, Ira and Abbey.

Reg Rogers (Ron Carlisle) was most recently seen in The Iceman Cometh, opposite Denzel Washington, and in the Broadway production of Noel Coward’s critically acclaimed Present Laughter, opposite Kevin Kline and Cobie Smulders. Off-Broadway, he starred in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of An Enemy of the People, for which he received a Connecticut Critic’s Circle Award. He was also seen in the Public Theater’s Privacy and in the Tony-nominated Broadway revival of You Can’t Take It With You, opposite James Earl Jones and Rose Byrne. He starred as Smiley Coy in Roundabout Theater Company’s The Big Knife, directed by Doug Hughes, and starred in the Lincoln Center Theater’s A Free Man of Color, directed by George C. Wolfe. Rogers was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance in The Royal Family at MTC. He was also nominated for the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his performance in Holiday at the Circle in the Square Theatre.  On television, Rogers portrayed James Strobridge in the final season of AMC’s “Hell on Wheels” and Freddy Bensimon on CBS’s “Bull.” Other television credits include Cinemax’s “The Knick” directed by Steven Soderbergh, FX’s critically-acclaimed “The Americans,” Starz’s Golden Globe-nominated “Flesh and Bone,” and HBO’s Golden Globe-winning “Boardwalk Empire.” Other notable New York stage credits include All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, both for Shakespeare in the Park; Bruce Norris’s The Pain & The Itch (Playwrights Horizons); Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle, for which he won an OBIE and a Lucille Lortel Award; Bach at Leipzig (NYTW); and as the title role in Cellini by John Patrick Shanley (Second Stage).

David Yazbek (Music & Lyrics) has become one of Broadway’s preeminent composer/lyricists. Three of his shows, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown have been nominated for Best Score Tony Awards. He is a Tony Award winner for his most recent musical, The Band’s Visit, which opened on Broadway to rave reviews and has been named to every Best of the Year list for 2017.  The show also received 10 Tony Awards, as well as the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical. He’s also received three Grammy nominations and a Drama Desk Award. Yazbek won an Outstanding Writing Emmy Award for his stint on Late Night with David Letterman.  He scored the last season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire,wrote the theme song to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and has written hundreds of songs, scripts, scores and jingles for adult and children’s TV.  As a recording artist, Yazbek is responsible for five albums—The Laughing Man, Tock, Damascus, Tape Recorder, and Evil Monkey Man.  He has written and/or produced for such acts as XTC, Ruben Blades, The Persuasions, Joe Jackson, Tito Puente and many others.  As a performer, he and his band are engaged in an ongoing series of monthly shows at NYC’s 54 Below club.

Robert Horn (Book) has written or co-written the books for Dame Edna, Back with a Vengeance; 13 with Jason Robert Brown; Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical, with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark; Lone Star Love with the Red Clay Ramblers; and Dandy with composer Andreas Carlsson.  Mr. Horn has also made contributions to numerous large-scale live events, such as Bette Midler’s 2016 Divine Intervention world tour.  He has written, created, or produced such television series as Designing Women, Living Single, High Society, The Jenny Rivera Show, Car Wash, and the Kelsey Grammar/Martin Lawrence series Partners, to name just a few.  Mr. Horn’s film and teleplay credits also include Teen Beach Movie (and its sequel), Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure, Wild Life, and Good Advice.

Scott Ellis (Director) Broadway credits include She Loves Me (2016 Tony Award nomination), On the Twentieth Century, You Can’t Take It With You (Tony nomination), The Elephant Man, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Tony nomination), Harvey, Curtains (Tony nomination), The Little Dog Laughed (Drama League Award nomination), Twelve Angry Men (Tony nomination), The Man Who Had All the Luck, The Rainmaker, 1776 (Drama Desk Award and Tony nominations), She Loves Me (Tony nomination, also in London where he received the Olivier Award for Best Revival and Best Director), Picnic (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), Company, A Month in the Country and Steel Pier (Tony nomination). Off-Broadway credits include Dada Woof Papa Hot; The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin; Gruesome Playground Injuries; Streamers; Good Boys and True; Entertaining Mr. Sloane; Flora, the Red Menace (Drama Desk nomination); And the World Goes ’Round (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards) and The Waverly Gallery. His television credits include “Dr. Ken” (pilot), “Undateable” (pilot), “Two Broke Girls,” “The Good Wife,” “The Closer,” “Weeds” (executive producer), “30 Rock” (Emmy Award nomination for Best Director), and “Modern Family.”

Denis Jones (Choreographer).  Recent credits include Holiday Inn, The New Irving Berlin Musical (Tony Award nomination); Honeymoon in Vegas (Broadway); Forum (Two River/ Williamstown Theatre Festival); Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical (Dallas Theater Center); The Tempest (New York Shakespeare Festival); and Paint Your Wagon (NY City Center Encores!).

Andrea Grody (Music Director) is currently the Music Director and Supervisor of the Broadway musical The Band’s Visit. Recent projects include the world premieres of Shaina Taub’s As You Like It (Public Works), The Band’s Visit (Atlantic Theater Company), Cake Off (Signature Theatre/Bucks County Playhouse), The Fortress of Solitude (Public Theater/Dallas Theater Center), Unknown Soldier (Williamstown Theatre Festival), and Love’s Labour’s Lost (Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park); and the regional premieres of The Great Immensity and Venice (Public Theater). Other favorites include Assassins (Yale Rep) and Robin Hood as Composer/Music Director (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Writing credits include the full-length musical Strange Faces and several songs for The Civilians’ Let Me Ascertain You serie

Tootsie is based on the story by Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart and the Columbia Pictures Motion Picture. For more information visit: TootsieMusical.com