Jason Babinsky News

Pittsburgh CLO brings Lerner and Loewe's BRIGADOON from the Scottish Highlands to the Benedum Center stage July 17 - 22. As part of its ongoing mission to celebrate musical theater, Pittsburgh CLO often revives classics, thus introducing new audiences to the masterpieces of Broadway's golden age.

Pittsburgh CLO is proud to bring Lerner and Loewe's BRIGADOON from the Scottish Highlands to the Benedum Center stage July 17 - 22. As part of its ongoing mission to celebrate musical theater, Pittsburgh CLO often revives classics, thus introducing new audiences to the masterpieces of Broadway's golden age.

Pittsburgh CLO has amassed an impressive lineup of Broadway stars and Pittsburgh CLO veterans to bring the 2018 Summer Season to life June-August. The organization's core mission to produce shows locally helps to employ artists each year from Pittsburgh and across the country.

POWDER BURNS, the Western audio drama that takes place solely from the perspective of a blind sheriff, took home the award for Outstanding Storytelling / Best Performance at the 2017 Voice Arts Awards at Lincoln Center Sunday night.

Gregory Boyd, Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Alley Theatre announces the cast and creative team for the world premiere of Rajiv Joseph's Describe the Night. Commissioned by the Alley, Describe the Night premieres September 15 and runs through October 15 in the Neuhaus Theatre.

A dark comedy about unexpected choices and familial prejudices, Byhalia Mississippi is a phenomenal evening of entertainment directed by Marc Masterson and wonderfully written by Evan Linder.

A beautiful story of redemption and forgiveness within a family, Everything is Wonderful truly is a wonderful show at CATF this summer. While still handling a dark subject matter, the tone and eventual outcome of the show is much more light-hearted than one would expect walking in and Ed Herendeen's direction of the family tale of love and loss is astounding.

I do not read Marcantel as indicting religion as such; she shows us how much groundedness and understanding faith gives. Every faith needs, and has, its own 'Ordnung,' but in order to live fully and well, Marcantel seems to be saying, believers will always need to transcend it. And then, as the play hints, believers will also need to return to it. Every faith journey will thus be a work in progress, forever.

The virtue of Byhalia, Mississippi lies precisely in its modesty. It prescribes no rules, apart from loving one another and telling the truth, for getting through a marital and race-inflected social crisis in a small town; it simply shows how one not-overwhelmingly admirable couple does it. And at that, the true secret here may just be the jokes. Those, and the blackout line at the very end of the play, which just may bring a lump to the throat.

The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University announces their 130-member company for the 2017 season.

The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University announces their 130-member company for the 2017 season.

A cozy, celebratory dinner party in a cosmopolitan New York penthouse ignites irreversible damage between friends in Ayad Ahktar's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced now on stage at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's Quadracci Powerhouse. Eventually, each character in the no intermission production will somehow be disgraced-sometimes by their personal identity, religion or culture and determined through their own specific actions or reactions to another person. The Rep becomes the third theater company to mount Disgraced in a co-production with Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater and New Jersey's McCarter Theatre in what has become the most produced play in 2016. One only needs to attend to understand why this potent combination of contemporary dilemmas facing Americans personally and politically drew the country's theatrical attention.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater  presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, written by one of the most in-demand playwrights of today Rep Associate Artist Ayad Akhtar in the Quadracci Powerhouse beginning January 17 through February 12.  According to American Theater Magazine, Disgraced was the most produced play around the country in the 2015/16 Season, and now for the first time it makes a homecoming to Milwaukee, the hometown of playwright Ayad Akhtar.  

As part of the Dramatists Guild Fund's Traveling Masters Program, Playwright Chisa Hutchinson (Dead and Breathing, Dirt Rich, She Like Girls, This Is Not the Play, Sex on Sunday) led writing workshops and a public Q&A at the Frank Center during the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University. Scroll down for photos!

At its basic essence, a play tells a story. But when the audience has difficulty understanding the story and the language, the message, no matter how poignant or powerful, is lost. The Wedding Gift, a world premiere play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, is a visual feast for audience members, but due to the storytelling method, many audience members are unable to understand the imaginative story.

We watch as Doug takes stock of his situation, recognizes the failure of vision on the part of his captors, their inability to see him as a fellow-human, and recognizes what this means in terms of his power and his lack of power. It is a humbling lesson, but one he needs to learn to survive.

Perhaps most important, 20th Century Blues (notwithstanding its title) addresses, from the inside and the outside, the universal experience of aging, an experience common to all times and places.

A show about older women celebrating and commiserating aging has been done countless times in entertainment, from Steel Magnolias on stage to The Golden Girls on television. However, 20th Century Blues, a world premiere play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival written by Susan Miller and directed by Ed Herendeen, breaks the mold when it comes to the female ensemble dramedy.

Simply put, FIVE MILE LAKE is five-mile deep. Rachel Bonds's well-written script reinforces the importance that people need the courage to look inward at themselves and their relationships and be humble enough to accept what they might see.

Hottest Articles on BroadwayWorld.com from this weekend Sunday, April 19, 2015 - Sunday, April 19, 2015.