In advance of Classic Stage Company's rare production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's 1947 musical Allegro, CSC's artistic director Brian Kulick and Tony Award-winning director John Doyle lead a conversation on the legendary team's most personal, groundbreaking and little-known work. The discussion also includes Ted Chapin, president and executive director of Rodgers & Hammerstein: An Imagem Company, and cast members George Abud, Claybourne Elder, and Jane Pfitsch.
Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, today announced plans for its 2014/2015 Season. The upcoming season for the esteemed off-Broadway company begins in October with Rodgers & Hammerstein's ALLEGRO, directed by Tony Award-winner and CSC Associate Director John Doyle. ALLEGRO marks the second installment of CSC's Musical Theater Initiative, which launched last year with the company's hugely-successful production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, directed by Doyle. Considered one of Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's most personal and groundbreaking works, ALLEGRO was their third collaboration and first premiered on Broadway in 1947.
Artistic Director Molly Smith tackles a unique, in-the-round staging of Bertolt Brecht's powerhouse anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Children at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Iconic stage and screen actress and Academy Award nominee Kathleen Turner returns to Arena Stage following her sold-out run of Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins to make her professional singing debut as the tough-as-nails matriarch Mother Courage-a single mother determined to keep her family alive and her business afloat during war. Using the David Hare translation, the show fuses politics and satire to paint an unforgettable and provocative portrait of war, incorporating more than 10 pieces of original music composed in a rollicking, gypsy-punk style and performed by cast members doubling as musicians. Mother Courage and Her Children runs January 31-March 9, 2014 in the Fichandler Stage.
Ian McDiarmid stars in Mark Ravenhill's new translation of Bertolt Brecht's A Life of Galileo, which opened at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on January 31, 2013, and is running through March 30.
As 2012 comes to a close, many Austin theater companies are putting together their 2013-2014 season. Given the incredible talent in this town and the large number of daring, courageous theater groups in the Austin area, here are my picks for 13 plays that I'd love to see produced in the 2013-2014 season.
Stage and screen actor Warren Stevens has passed away, according to published reports.
Shortly into Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, the 17th Century Italian scientist shows his young companion a model of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, a gyroscope-looking creation depicting the sun and planets and other celestial bodies revolving on golden bands of orbits around the earth. And if you choose that moment to take a look around you at Classic Stage Company's inviting new production, you'll notice how cleverly the environment created by set designer Adrianne Lobel replicates the look of the model, with large celestial globes suspended above the Earthlike playing area and hints of their golden orbits.
The Ohio State University Arts and Humanities and University Libraries' Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute has announced that it will present the prestigious 2011 Margo Jones Award to Lincoln Center Theater dramaturg Anne Cattaneo. The award, which will be presented to Ms. Cattaneo in a ceremony in the Vivian Beaumont Theater lobby on Monday, July 11 beginning at 5:30, is given annually to a 'citizen-of-the-theatre who has demonstrated a significant impact, understanding and affirmation of the craft of playwriting, with a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the living theatre everywhere.'
Three-time Tony Award-winning scenic designer ROBIN WAGNER and esteemed costume designer LEWIS BROWN are among the 2011 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards recipients. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, April 8 at 6:30pm at the Hudson Theatre (145 West 44th Street). Mr. Brown was selected to receive the 2011 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award for costume design, and Tony Award-winning scenic designer Robin Wagner will receive the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design. Sadly, Mr. Brown passed away in January of 2011. His award will be accepted by his long-time colleague and friend, Albert Wolsky, who was the recipient of the 2010 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award
Three-time Tony Award-winning scenic designer ROBIN WAGNER and esteemed costume designer LEWIS BROWN are among the 2011 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards recipients. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, April 8 at 6:30pm at the Hudson Theatre (145 West 44th Street). Mr. Brown was selected to receive the 2011 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award for costume design, and Tony Award-winning scenic designer Robin Wagner will receive the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design. Sadly, Mr. Brown passed away in January of 2011. His award will be accepted by his long-time colleague and friend, Albert Wolsky, who was the recipient of the 2010 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award
Goodman Theatre is proud to announce the Krapp's Last Tape Artists Talk as part of the new 2010 Series connecting theater audiences with the artists who bring productions to life at the Goodman.
Playwrights 6 is proud to present a staged reading series of the finalists in its 2010 Play Contest, featuring three new pieces by Los Angeles playwrights.
Goodman Theatre is proud to announce the Krapp's Last Tape Artists Talk as part of the new 2010 Series connecting theater audiences with the artists who bring productions to life at the Goodman.
Filled with colorful criminals, biting social satire and a brilliant score, The Threepenny Opera opens International City Theatre's 2009 Season at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Jules Aaron directs Michael Feingold's translation of the trailblazing musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that became one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century. Darryl Archibald is musical director and Kay Cole choreographs the five-week run February 20 through March 22; low-priced previews begin February 17.
First performed in 1928, Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera was a revolutionary musical theater masterpiece that mocked the bourgeois political movement of pre-Hitler Germany. Brecht's brittle, sardonic tale of beggars, thieves and prostitutes, adapted from the 1728 play The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, was a fierce social and political critique, and Weill's innovative score that fused American jazz with German cabaret captured the ironic tone of the lyrics. Part acid social criticism, part bittersweet romance, the now eighty-year old saga of 'Mack the Knife' and his entourage of criminals and whores has never lost its theatrical punch.
'It's a satire on capitalism and corruption told from the viewpoint of the 'little people',' notes Aaron. 'If there was ever time to revive this show, it's now. Michael [Feingold]'s translation is earthy, gritty and very funny. I think it's going to strike a chord with audiences.'
Filled with colorful criminals, biting social satire and a brilliant score, The Threepenny Opera opens International City Theatre's 2009 Season at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Jules Aaron directs Michael Feingold's translation of the trailblazing musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that became one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century. Darryl Archibald is musical director and Kay Cole choreographs the five-week run February 20 through March 22; low-priced previews begin February 17.
First performed in 1928, Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera was a revolutionary musical theater masterpiece that mocked the bourgeois political movement of pre-Hitler Germany. Brecht's brittle, sardonic tale of beggars, thieves and prostitutes, adapted from the 1728 play The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, was a fierce social and political critique, and Weill's innovative score that fused American jazz with German cabaret captured the ironic tone of the lyrics. Part acid social criticism, part bittersweet romance, the now eighty-year old saga of 'Mack the Knife' and his entourage of criminals and whores has never lost its theatrical punch.
'It's a satire on capitalism and corruption told from the viewpoint of the 'little people',' notes Aaron. 'If there was ever time to revive this show, it's now. Michael [Feingold]'s translation is earthy, gritty and very funny. I think it's going to strike a chord with audiences.'
1947 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1967 | Broadway |
Broadway |
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