ABOUT THE PRESS ROOM

Veteran Broadway press agents Jim Byk and Shane Marshall Brown are the founders of THE PRESS ROOM, a theatrical and entertainment publicity office based in New York City and launched in 2018. They are joined by Diane Vadnal as Director of Operations, Gerilyn Shur as Press Agent, Louisa Pancoast as Press Associate, Maddie Greenberg and Christian Heino as Press Assistants, and Ryan Sherwin as Press Intern.

The Press Room brings a modern, collaborative style to entertainment publicity, with an emphasis on strategic storytelling and bespoke, thoughtful approaches to the various needs of a diverse client base. We believe in honesty, clarity, agility and the real joy of building relationships.  

Current clients include: Broadway: The Book of Mormon, Eureka Day, Hamilton, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. North American Tour: The Phantom of the Opera. Off-Broadway: Blue Man Group, Dakar 2000, DRAG: The Musical, Symphony of Rats, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, and We Had a World. Institutions: Barrington Stage Company, Drama Book Shop, Edgewood Entertainment, Hershey Felder Presents, Hugo Six, Hunter Theater Project, Manhattan Theatre Club, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, New York Classical Theatre, Out of the Box Theatrics, Rockefeller Productions, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Shakespeare’s Globe, Theatre Row, Vineyard Theatre, and The Wooster Group.

Future Broadway includes: American Prophet, Beat Street, Born for This, Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz, The Cowards: A Marvelously Queer New Comedy, Grace The Musical, The Harder They Come, Long Way Down, Regency Girls, Rutka, Shout Sister Shout!, Sidney, Sugar Daddy, and Working Girl The Musical.

Recent clients have included: Broadway: Farinelli and the King; Paradise Square; Patriots; Prima Facie; Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women; The Waverly Gallery. Off-Broadway: Beyond Babel; The Convent; Everything’s Fine; The Fears, Gloria: A Life; Hunter Theater Project’s Uncle Vanya, Link Link Circus and Mac Beth; HYPROV: Improv Under Hypnosis; JOB; Kafkaesque!, Mister Miss America; Manhattan Theatre Club’s Bad Kreyòl and Vladimir; National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Amid Falling Walls and Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish; New York Classical Theatre’s Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, The Importance of Being Earnest, Cymbeline, The Rewards of Being Frank, Richard III and Henry IV; Alison Leiby’s Oh God, A Play About Abortion; Out of the Box Theatrics’ Baby, Inspired by True Events, See What I Wanna See; Quince; Private Peaceful; Pay the Writer; Scarlett Dreams; Sesame Street The Musical; Shakespeare Globe’s The Merchant of Venice starring Jonathan Pryce; A Sign of the Times; Someone Spectacular, Stalker; 20 Seconds; Vineyard Theatre’s Is This A Room and Dana H.; The Wooster Group’s The B-Side, Early Shaker Spirituals, A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique), The Mother and Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me. Regional: May We All at Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville; Miami New Drama’s award-winning Seven Deadly Sins, A Wonderful World, When Monica Met Hillary. Special Attractions: the New York City premiere of Notre Dame de Paris at the Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center, SuperYou at Carnegie Hall. Streaming: All for One Theater’s Jack Was Kind; Art Lab and ShowTown Productions’ First Date and Adam Pascal…So Far; the award-winning web series Indoor Boys; Out of the Box Theatrics and Holmdel Theatre Company’s The Last Five Years, StreamingMusicals.com’s Estella Scrooge, Marry Harry, Pride & Prejudice; Swamp Motel’s Isklander Trilogy. Institutions: Southern California’s 3-D Theatricals, Playbill’s 2021 Pride Events, The Royal Opera House’s US Cinema Series, International: the Australian premiere of The Book of Mormon.

With previous offices, the team has represented over 100 Broadway and 150 Off-Broadway shows, including the Tony Award-winning productions of Death of a Salesman (2012); Red; La Cage aux Folles (2010); The Norman Conquests; The History Boys; Doubt; Avenue Q, and Proof. They have also represented Paula Vogel’s Indecent; Shuffle Along…; Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella; Betrayal with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz; Twelfth Night/Richard III with Mark Rylance; The River with Hugh Jackman; The Cripple of Inishmaan with Daniel Radcliffe; Lucky Guy with Tom Hanks; Jerusalem with Mark Rylance; Hamlet with Jude Law; Macbeth with Kenneth Branagh; Gypsy with Bernadette Peters; The Scottsboro Boys; The Seagull; Mary Stuart; Disney's Beauty and the Beast; and Urinetown, among others. 

The office has led their clients to 286 Tony Award nominations, and 83 wins.

Institutional clients have included The Australian Ballet, Guthrie Theater, Signature Theatre (NY and DC), Soulpepper Theatre Company and The Stuttgart Ballet.

Film work includes Broadway press outreach for Birdman, Doubt, Nine, Dreamgirls, Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges and Sweeney Todd.

With Keith Sherman, Byk represented The Tony Awards for CBS and Tony Award Productions from 1991-1996, and Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! for PBS.  

Byk and Brown are proud members of the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers (ATPAM). Byk is a member of ATPAM’s Board of Governors.