Chris Sams News

Summer is here, and that means an abundance of heat, sunshine, and creativity just waiting to be brought to life. While the global health crisis may still be keeping the doors to most theaters shut, theater companies around the country have risen to the challenge and created new doors to walk through- virtual ones!

BATS Improv, the Bay Area's premier improvisational performing and training company has announced their Virtual Summer School of Improv a?"  a variety of curriculum content taught online by BATS coaches, for beginners to advanced student improvisors ages 11 to 17, with additional classes for younger children aged 5-8.

Drury Lane Theatre presents Smokey Joe's Cafe, the musical revue celebrating the renowned musical duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Smokey Joe's Cafe is directed and choreographed by internationally-acclaimed director Marcia Milgrom Dodge and runs now through October 23, 2016 at Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace. The Press Opening is Thursday, September 8 at 8:00 p.m. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Drury Lane Theatre announces complete casting for its production of Smokey Joe's Cafe, the musical revue celebrating the renowned musical duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

BroadwayWorld has your inside look at Chicago's celebration for Andre De Shields' CONFESSIONS OF A P.I.M.P. at Victory Gardens! Check out photos below!

Drury Lane Theatre announces complete casting for its production of Smokey Joe's Cafe, the musical revue celebrating the renowned musical duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Pittsburgh, Sacramento, South Africa and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include SPRING AWAKENING in Pittsburgh, LEGALLY BLONDE at California Music Circus, and A VOICE I CANNOT SILENCE in South Africa, just to name a few.

The Washington DC area is truly lucky to get the last leg of the RAGTIME - THE MUSICAL National Tour this toasty weekend. Currently playing at the Wolf Trap Filene Center until Saturday, June 11, RAGTIME's director Marcia Milgrom Dodge has pieced together a powerful show full of emotion, beautiful imagery, and strong voices.

Walking into the Music Hall at Fair Park Tuesday night, I was extremely eager to enjoy Ahrens and Flaherty's lavish, Tony Award-winning score in the tour of RAGTIME. Together with Terrence McNally's dynamic script, RAGTIME is celebrated as perhaps one of the greatest book musicals of the past two decades. Unfortunately, in spite of all of its inherent strengths, technical troubles plagued the tour's opening night performance. I left the theatre completely disappointed.

The rich versus the working class. Immigrant crises. Police clashing with rioting African-Americans. Women discovering their independence. Celebrities in your face. Is it 2016 or 1916, and how do you know?

Rhode Island audiences, prepare to be dazzled. RAGTIME is - deservedly - one of the most highly acclaimed musicals of the last two decades and the touring production now playing the Providence Performing Arts Center does the show's rich legacy proud.

At the beginning of Act II of Ragtime, Terrence McNally's masterful musical adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel, journeyman pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., decimated by the murder of his beloved Sarah, sings, 'Say goodbye to music / Say goodbye to light.' This sums up my feelings about Theater League's production of Ragtime, which arrived for a brief four-day stay at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Thursday night. The original 1998 Broadway production won a Tony Award for Best Score, but many patrons who packed the Fred Kavli Theatre on opening night were dismayed to discover that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's sumptuous, moving songs were being played from pre-recorded synthesized music tracks. Despite superb performances from the entire cast, Theater League's Ragtime suffers greatly from this omission, which was apparently a decision of Phoenix Entertainment, the independent theatrical producing and management enterprise in charge of producing the show.

**Results of the 2015 BroadwayWorld Regional Awards are being audited and posted. Check out the winners that have been announced in New Jersey, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Connecticut, Minneapolis, Wichita, Long Island, Raleigh, Madison, Central PA, West Virginia, Columbus, Chicago, Birmingham, Houston, Delaware, Miami, Portland, Boston, Dallas, Charlotte, Vermont, Seattle, Louisville, Denver, Baltimore, Nashville, Orlando, Boise, Maine, Cleveland, Phoenix, Austin, Philippines, Detroit, and Atlanta.  Don't see your region yet?  Stay tuned... more to come soon!

RAGTIME National Tour at North Carolina Theatre

Director and Choreographer, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, brings a realism to RAGTIME that I have never seen before in musicals.

Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC) will host its first ever Broadway musical production when the national tour of "Ragtime" cakewalks into town for two shows onSunday, Dec. 13 and Monday, Dec. 14 in the new, student-funded Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater (VPAC), 7777 S. May Ave.

At the dawn of a new century, everything is changing...and anything is possible. RAGTIME returns to the road in an all-new touring production that Bloomberg News hails as 'explosive, thrilling and nothing short of a masterpiece.' North America will be swept away by this ravishing and relevant production, with performances starting Tuesday, October 27 at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas. BroadwayWorld has as first look at the cast in action below!

At the dawn of a new century, everything is changing…and anything is possible.  RAGTIME returns to the road in an all-new touring production that Bloomberg News hails as "explosive, thrilling and nothing short of a masterpiece." North America will be swept away by this ravishing and relevant production, with performances starting Tuesday, October 27 at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas.  BroadwayWorld has as first look at the cast in action below!

Time is ticking on your last chance to vote for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Birmingham Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 19th. Voting closes at the end of the year!