Samuel Beckett News

Performances begin in just five weeks for the third annual Next Up, continuing Steppenwolf Theatre Company's commitment to Chicago's next generation of theater artists. Next Up features three productions presented in rotating repertory, in collaboration with Northwestern University's MFA programs in Direction and Design. Next Up 2013 showcases the work of graduates of those programs with casts of professional Chicago actors-including nine alumni of the School at Steppenwolf: Fat Pig by Neil LaBute, directed by David Prete; The Drunken City by Adam Bock, directed by Johnny Michael DiResta; and The Internationalist by Anne Washburn, directed by Erin Murray.

A Noise Within, led by Producing Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, presents its third season of classic plays in its new Pasadena home, beginning September 7, 2013 with Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare, followed by The Guardsman by Ferenc Molnar, Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Tartuffe by Moliere, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and concluding with Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge.

Director Gary Smith puts Theatre of the Seventh Sister back on stage with a production of Sarah Ruhl's charming absurdist take on the Orpheus myth.

It's been a century since Igor Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring ushered in an age of radical musical transformation that changed the face of music. A succession of great twentieth century composers went on to create music that transcended tradition and moved the art form in a direction unlike anything the world had heard before. Now Sony Masterworks celebrates these musical visionaries and introduces their groundbreaking works to a new generation of listeners with a series of releases collectively titled 'Prophets of the New,' available now in digital download format and as manufacture-on-demand CDs.

TampaWorks is an evening of short plays set in Tampa Bay area locations. The first edition took place in June, 2012. It was a production of the Stagewrights playwriting group and its sponsoring organization, Stageworks Theatre.

The Brick Theater will play host to sound scape, A Festival of Theatrical Sound Design, June 7-29, 2013.

Lakeshore Records will release the Antiviral – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally today, May 21, 2013. Antiviral was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg and debuted at Cannes in 2012. E.C. Woodley (Rhinoceros Eyes, The Dark Hours) composed the original score.

Performances begin in just five weeks for the third annual Next Up, continuing Steppenwolf Theatre Company's commitment to Chicago's next generation of theater artists. Next Up features three productions presented in rotating repertory, in collaboration with Northwestern University's MFA programs in Direction and Design. Next Up 2013 showcases the work of graduates of those programs with casts of professional Chicago actors-including nine alumni of the School at Steppenwolf: Fat Pig by Neil LaBute, directed by David Prete; The Drunken City by Adam Bock, directed by Johnny Michael DiResta; and The Internationalist by Anne Washburn, directed by Erin Murray.

Robin Williams will return to network TV this fall with THE CRAZY ONES, a single-camera comedy from executive producer David E. Kelley and co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Berkshire Theatre Group will celebrate its 85th Summer Theatre Season this year, making it the third oldest regional theatre in the country.

A Noise Within (ANW), the acclaimed classical repertory theatre company, continues this season's 'Words Within' Wednesday night play reading series with four free, one-night-only readings this summer at its Pasadena theatre: THE HEIRESS by RUTH AND AUGUSTUS GOETZ, based on the 1880 Henry James novel Washington Square, on June 5, 2013, 7 pm; THE GHOST SONATA by AUGUST STRINDBERG, considered one of the world's greatest modern playwrights, on June 19, 7pm; GALILEO, a timeless classic by BERTOLD BRECHT on July 24, 7 pm; and LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT by EUGENE O'NEILL on August 14, 7 pm. The readings feature A Noise Within resident artists as well as artists from the theatre company's current repertory productions.

How long does the battle continue after a soldier returns home? Artists Repertory Theatre is honored to present Andrea Stolowitz's challenging new play, Ithaka, with extensive enrichment programming. Ithaka runs May 28 through June 30 on the Morrison Stage, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland, OR.

Playwrights Theatre has announced the winners of the 30th Annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest. From the 328 plays submitted by young writers throughout the state, a panel of theatre professionals has selected four High School plays, three Junior High School plays and three Elementary Schools plays. In each category, selection was blind; plays were selected without knowledge of playwrights' schools, grade or background. The 30th Annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest Festival will be held on May 20 and May 21, 2013 as part of a partnership between Playwrights Theatre and Premiere Stages at Kean University. Select plays from this festival will be reprised at Playwrights Theatre's nationally-recognized Forum Reading Series in December 2013. This reading series brings together writers from all over the United States.

In the modern theater, unsung artists called Sound Designers are quietly engaged to flesh out theatrical productions with recordings of crickets, doorbells and phone rings. They fill your Tempests with winds, your Streetcars with street noise and your Vanyas with gunshots. They mix your incidental music with your offstage voices and invisibly support the director's vision. If they're doing their job correctly, you won't even notice their contribution.

A groundbreaking artistic-journalistic collaboration, which seeks to artistically explore investigative reporting through performances developed in front of live audiences, by Tides Theatre (Jennifer Welch, Producing Artistic Director and Cary Cronholm Rose, Associate Artistic Director), an innovative artistic collective in San Francisco, and The Center for Investigative Reporting (Phil Bronstein, Executive Chair and Robert J. Rosenthal, Executive Director), which believes that journalism that moves people to action is an essential pillar of democracy.

Lakeshore Records will release the Antiviral – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on May 21, 2013. Antiviral was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg and debuted at Cannes in 2012. E.C. Woodley (Rhinoceros Eyes, The Dark Hours) composed the original score.

San Francisco's cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater proudly announces the lineup for its 15th season. The season opens in October with the World Premiere of SIDEWINDERS by Basil Kreimendahl, directed by M. Graham Smith, followed by Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI in January, directed by Yury Urnov, in a new translation by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose. RISK IS THIS…THE CUTTING BALL NEW EXPERIMENTAL PLAYS FESTIVAL returns in February with five new works, including two new plays from resident playwright Andrew Saito, in staged readings that push the boundaries of what theater can be. Rounding out the season in April is the American Premiere of Samuel Galett's COMMUNIQUE N°10 in a World Premiere translation, and directed, by Rob Melrose. In addition to the main stage season, Cutting Ball Theater continues its Hidden Classics Reading Series with six new installments. The entire 2013-14 season will be staged in San Francisco at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street at Ellis). Season memberships on sale May 13; single tickets on sale September 1. For tickets and information, the public may visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205.

Tony Award winners Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley will join Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the limited season repertoire of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, directed by Sean Mathias, on Broadway at the Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, this fall. Performances will begin Saturday, October 26 at 8pm. The official opening is Sunday, November 24, 2013. This limited season will run for 14 weeks only.