Gloria Gifford

Jamaica Moon Productions presents three short plays by two great 20th Century American playwrights. All three plays are love stories, and one is a comedy.

Here is my interview with Gloria Gifford about presenting LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS live-streamed online as well as her Gloria Gifford Conservatory and how she is managing to keep her students active during the past year.

Lovers and Other Strangers is an evening of five untitled comedic one-acts adding up to less than eighty minutes of brilliant comedy writing and wonderful relatable people seduced by love, arguing about love, marrying with love, cheating with love and confused by love. The play was turned into a hit movie starring Diane Keaton, Gig Young, Richard Castellano and Bea Arthur.

In these crazy, safe-distancing times; I reached out earlier this week to various heads of Los Angeles theatres to see how they and their theatre families are holding up. The replies were amazing in their quickness, numbers and uniform positivity.

Art, as a rule, is subjective. It can be appreciated or not, liked or not. At opening weekend's Sunday performance, playwright Tina Howe's THE ART OF DINING had its own built-in laugh gallery, who loved this ART, as this one large portion of the house frequently led all others in laughter. Set in a home-converted restaurant - The Golden Carrousel - at the Jersey Shore in the late 70s, ART covers one evening of this newly opened, two-man operation fraughtly run by husband Cal and chef Ellen. Gloria Gifford directs her enthusiastic cast through slapstick, overprojecting and over-the-top acting in lightning-fast dialogue, often overlapping, often two separate monologues simultaneously.

Juicy. Delicious. Salivate your way through The Art of Dining, a hilarious exploration of tantalizing appetites and desires. Then eat with the cast. Gourmet meals at every show (for V.I.P. ticket holders).

Once again, the NAACP Beverly Hills/Hollywood Branch's Theatre Viewing Committee has spoken, and the nominations are in for the 28th Annual NAACP Theatre Awards. This year's pedigreed list of nominees collectively represents a rich, extensive dossier of legacies and accolades for both stage and screen. These nominees include members of a legendary 'gospel royal family' as well as a Legend whose part of an elite group of artists in the EGOT winners circle. These, along with all their fellow nominees, will be honored for their excellence on the small and large stages during our annual awards dinner, slated to be held on Monday, June 17, 2019, 6:00 p.m.at the prestigious Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Gloria Gifford is a stage-trained actress from New York City, giving her the necessary background to understand the intricacies of people caught up in a place where the traffic is loud and people live in close proximity to each other, yet still think it's necessary to always be screaming at one another to get the upper hand. Such is the case with the five characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis' 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning THE MOTHF**CKER WITH THE HAT, an urban comedy now being presented as the inaugural production at the Gloria Gifford Conservatory for the Performing Arts new location on Theater Row in Hollywood.

Thanks to director Gloria Gifford, who retains Shakespeare's text while augmenting the proceedings with a contemporary and very soulful song score in the current production at Grey Studios in NoHo, the overall addition of the much-needed modern sensibility through music makes the complicated plot easily understood, even while adding in moments of sheer levity. Just imagine Anthony and his troops starting off the show by lining up and singing Super Freak by Rick James, as their way to describe Cleopatra and you get the idea.

Comprised of 10 short plays in 2 acts about the follies and foibles of love and lovers, LOVE ALLWAYS addresses the subjects of love and romance which have long provided great source material for comedy, created from the pens of two proven masters of American comedy. With busy careers in film, television and Broadway, Taylor and Bologna have defied the Hollywood odds with a marriage that's lasted 51 years (so far). And no doubt, many of the relationship stories shared must be of a very personal nature to them, or perhaps some of their closest friends!

This production of Shakespeare's popular romantic comedy is enhanced by a rock-and-roll score. Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, Sicily. Beatrice, niece of the local governor Leonato, and Benedick, a gentleman and friend of the powerful Prince of Aragon Don Pedro, are seeming adversaries, engaging in much verbal jousting and argument. The antagonistic remarks fool neither the men nor the women in Don Pedro's court; Beatrice and Benedick are obviously meant for each other, even if their love isn't instantly apparent. Their friends conspire to trick them into confessing their love for each other.

Director Gloria Gifford takes her job of inspiring upcoming stars in proper stage presentation, and above all, I must commend her for making sure each actor in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at TU Studios understood exactly what they were saying so audience members could not only understand the words but also what was being said in terms of the dialogue's meaning. It is the first production of the play in which I could get the meaning of each line, even though the words as written were foreign to modern English. Some of the actors shared with me that Gloria demanded their line presentation and stage movements make perfect sense, and the actors responded with great care.

TEATRO DE LA O and OCTAVIO CARLIN FASHION HOUSE proudly presents HOLLYWOULD, a new comedy by fashion designer Octavio Carlin. Don't miss this hilarious fashionable farce set in the heyday of the golden age of cinema and silver screen intrigue. Hollywould opens on February 13, 2016 at THE HUDSON THEATRES.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE TEMPEST, the last of his romantic comedies, was written in 1610 and published in 1623. This great romantic comedy has it all: danger, intrigue, politics, revenge, a mighty sorcerer, and his beautiful daughter who falls deeply in love at first sight with the handsome prince who is so conveniently shipwrecked near her island home. THE TEMPEST still exerts an influence over popular culture four centuries later, ranging from "Forbidden Planet" to "Gilligan's Island" to "Lost."

In this day of instant communication, how do you feel when the person you love does not answer a text or email within an hour? Makes you wonder what that person is up to and with whom, doesn't it? So image how was it in the days when the only way to reach a loved one was by sending a letter, and then having to wait for weeks or months for a response. Certainly the most outrageous scenarios would play in your head as to what was really going on.

Popular site Hulu has added Old Dogs & New Tricks to its vast library of streaming TV programs, replacing YouTube as online 'network' for the hit web series.

Unlinear.tv announces Untitled Murder Project 2.0, a 49-episode interactive murder mystery available online starting today, 10/10/2013 from The Story of Luke writer/director Alonso Mayo and producer Nina Leidersdorff.