Theatre

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 01:45pm

I'm ensconced in the bowels of Georgetown University talking about diversity in new play development. The posts I'm writing about it are embargoed right now, but in the meantime, here's Adam "Mission Paradox" Thurman, Scott Walters and yours truly:   

Tags: Theater

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 01:19pm

Shock jock Howard Stern revealed on his radio program yesterday that he is a member of the nominating committee for the SAG Awards and he intends to reward celebrities who have appeared on his program or who have been kind to him in the past. How did this bizarre state of affairs come about? Every year 2,100 members of the Screen Actors Guild are randomly chosen to select the nominees for the orga[...]

Tags: Movies

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:53pm

Jonathan Moscone of the California Shakespeare Theater is the first recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award, which recognizes an outstanding director or choreographer who is "transforming the regional arts landscape through his singular creativity and artistry in theatre."

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:50pm

Whether your taste is more refined or you’re craving a smashing party, FRIGID has an event for you. FRIGID New York will hold two fundraisers this weekend to support future programming, each with food, drink, and performances a plenty. The Holiday Benefit and Art Auction will take place Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. and the Monday Night Drafts Party will begin Dec. 7 at 7 p.m., both at Under St. Marks.&a[...]

Tags: New York Theater

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:33pm

Albert M. Tapper's musical Sessions, which currently features "Guiding Light" Star Robert Newman, will end its run at Off-Broadway's Algonquin Theater Jan. 3, 2010, following the 3 PM matinee.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:40am

No doubt about it. Times remain tough on Broadway. And if you don't have a ticket-selling star in your cast, well, good luck to you.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:23am

The worldwide stock and amateur rights to In the Heights, the Tony Award-winning musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, has been acquired by Imagem Music.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:13am

Tickets for the Broadway run of Million Dollar Quartet, which begins previews at the Nederlander Theatre March 13, 2010, go on sale Dec. 4.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:56am

The long-running Off-Broadway musical comedy Altar Boyz will end its run at New World Stages in January 2010.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:20am

Carson McCullers's novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, now adapted by Rebecca Gilman, is as quietly observant as its main character, John Singer, a deaf-mute. Through his eyes, we follow four of his Georgian neighbors (c. 1939): a labor agitator named Jake Blount; Dr. Copeland, a doctor who enjoys Spinoza and Marx; the socially eccentric but well-intentioned Biff Brannon, who runs the local [...]

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:11am

Avery Brooks, the stage and screen star best known for his work on TV's "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Spenser: For Hire," has joined the cast of Baltimore Centerstage's production of Kwame Kwei-Armah's Let There Be Love.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 09:47am

Broadway in South Africa's second annual holiday party will be presented Dec. 14 at the Minskoff Theatre, currently the home of The Lion King.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 09:32am

Hollywood's The Magic Castle and Cabaret at the Castle will present Holiday Magic: A Cabaret Benefiting Toys for Tots Dec. 13.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 09:16am

Australian musical theatre star Caroline O'Connor, who made her Broadway debut in Kander and Ebb's Chicago, will return to Manhattan in 2010 for a one-night-only engagement at Birdland.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 06:32am

PianoFight (the rotten-vegetable-throwing company from San Francisco you may remember from our discussion of how to get the youngins to go to the the theatre) has a video up promoting their December shows... aaaand... here it is:One Shot from rand courtney on Vimeo. Whaddya think? 

Tags: Theater

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 02:08am

How many times have you heard "Messiah" sung? I reckon I have sung it at least 50 times, and maybe 5 of those were dramatic in any direct way. Why is this? Several reasons. The choruses are fun to sing. Any amount of imprecision is condoned in a kind of Yuletide lassitude. It is familiar. Are the tunes really all that good, or do we just know them well? It fits into almost any kind of Ch[...]

Tags: A Singer&#039, s Notes by Keith Kibler, George Frideric Handel, Charlotte Hellekant, Messiah

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 01:34am

For over twenty years, the American Shakespeare Center (formerly the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express) has been pursuing a distinctive style of production, marked by speed and intimacy. The troupe attempts to recreate the conditions of Shakespeare’s theater, including universal lighting, minimal sets, and on-stage seating (to recapture some of the effects of the thrust stage, unavailable at th[...]

Tags: Theatre, William Shakespeare, American Shakespeare Center, Romeo and Juliet

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:59am

The Met program notes are not alone in making much of the quotation from Dostoevsky's original, which Janáček inscribed above his score: "In every creature, a spark of God." Holiday commitments kept me from beginning this review for a few days, and, as I approached it, I found a glowing curtain in my memory which gave every indication that what I had experienced a few nights[...]

Tags: Opera, Jan&aacute, ček, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Metropolitan Opera, Patrice Ch&eacute, reau, Peter Mattei

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

Loretta Devine, who was part of the original Broadway cast of Dreamgirls, debuts a new solo show Dec. 4-6 at the Upright Cabaret in California.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

The Accidental Pervert, billed as a "shockingly hilarious tour-de-force of honesty," begins Off-Broadway Dec. 4 at The Players Theatre. Written by and starring Andrew Goffman, the production will officially open Jan. 23, 2010.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

The Pearl Theatre Company presents a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance beginning Dec. 4 Off-Broadway at City Center Stage II.

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

1860 Birthday of Lillian Russell (1860-1922), who became the epitome of Gilded Age female sex appeal and stage presence starting in vaudeville at Tony Pastor's Theatre and graduating to a series of frothy musical comedy vehicles including Whirl-i-gig, Fiddle-dee-dee, Hoity-Toity, Twirly-Whirly, Whoop-Dee-Doo and Lady Teazle. She also appeared in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and, later in[...]

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:00am

Megan Hilty and Steve Kazee are featured in Rated RSO, an evening of songs by composer Ryan Scott Oliver, Dec. 4-5 at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:56pm

News from BroadwayWorld.com: JERSEY BOYS Original Broadway Cast Recording topped Billboard’s Top Cast Album chart for the week ending December 5, 2009. This marks the 203rd straight week that the Grammy Award-winning recording has remained on the chart. In addition to the Number One ranking on the Top Cast Album chart, the JERSEY BOYS OBCR has [...]

Tags: Jersey Boys

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 09:55pm

Persephone stands in the underworld, "living" with a vicarious childishness through Eurydice, who follows her compulsion to write until the glass walls are bleeding with the chalk of Greek characters. "One isn't disappointed when it ends," she says of Eurydice's writing. "One isn't surprised when it begins. Like a list, you accept its terms and let it run un[...]

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 06:06pm

Rooms cast member Celina Carvajal will perform I Am A Ham, an evening of music by songwriter Paul Scott Goodman, Dec. 7 at Sweet Caroline's Piano Bar.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 01:01am

The small late-1930s Southern town that is the setting of Rebecca Gilman's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (adapted from Carson McCullers's 1940 novel) is a place of many hardships, evoked as the background rather than the foreground of the story here: the shadow of the Great Depression, lost jobs, crippling injuries and life-threatening illnesses, a vague yet uneasy awareness of the rise o[...]

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 01:01am

Go see Fela! You've never seen a Broadway musical that's anything like it. Its first act contains the most exciting dancing to reach Broadway since Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out—not really a surprise considering that its creator is renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones. Its second act contains an extended musical sequence that is thrillingly imaginative, solemn, and utterl[...]

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 09:04pm

There's real meat to She Like Girls--as there should be, considering it's based on the life of Sakia Gunn, a fifteen-year-old inner-city girl struggling to come to terms with her own sexual identity. But Chisa Hutchinson, the thirty-year-old playwright, isn't quite grown up enough to handle it. She nails the youthful parts, like the faux-tough and grown-up language of the schoolyard[...]