This May, Feinstein's/54 Below, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. Scroll down for the full lineup!
You can't understand a man, the proverb goes, until you've walked a mile in his shoes. But who, among us, has tasted the paranoia, dread and loss from gun violence that is, shockingly, common to urban high schoolers and their families? 'The Death of a Black Man (A Walk By)' by William Electric Black suggests the experience poetically, using using hip hop verse, chanting, songs and poetry. The audience walks through a variety of uniquely-designed theater spaces and environments suggesting the events before and after a shooting in an urban playground. It's like a day lived with urban gun violence, complete with a candle lit memorial service, police investigations, protests and the actual shootings. This is the third in a series of five plays by William Electric Black, collectively called 'GUNPLAYS,' that address inner city violence and guns. Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave (East Village), will present the work June 2 to 19, 2016 directed by the author. The piece was scheduled for June to support Gun Awareness Month.
West End and Broadway hit, END OF THE RAINBOW, the sensational musical play documenting Judy Garland's explosive 1960's London come-back visits the Lyceum Theatre from Thursday 12 - Saturday 14 May, starring Lisa Maxwell (The Bill, Loose Women) as Judy Garland, with Sam Attwater (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers) and Gary Wilmot (Oklahoma!).
Atlanta's nationally acclaimed Alliance Theatre and Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Susan V. Booth have announced the 2016/17 Season for the Alliance Stage, Hertz Stage, Theatre for Youth and Families, and the Kathy and Ken Bernhardt Theatre for the Very Young series. The 48th season includes seven world premieres, five musicals, five productions by Atlanta playwrights, and exceptional productions for youth and families. The 2016/17 season marks the Alliance's last in its current theater space before it undergoes a complete renovation, its first since it was built in 1968.
The cast, or tribe as they preferred to be called, of Schenectady Light Opera Company's production of Hair is certainly letting it all out to shine for us in this restaging of the 1968 Broadway game changer. The production is extremely timely considering the upcoming presidential election and protests that accompany it.
The Ridgefield Playhouse for Movies and the Performing Arts has announced its March 2016 and continuing spring 2016 lineup. Scroll down for details!
Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.
This summer marks another historic milestone for the annual Bard SummerScape festival. For the first time since its founding, this season's focus is on the music and culture of Italy, with seven weeks of music, opera,theater, dance, film, and cabaret keyed to the theme of the 27th Bard Music Festival, "Puccini and His World." This intensive examination of the life and times of Giacomo Puccini opens a window onto Italy's rich musical heritage from Palestrina to Menotti, by way of the most popular and successful - yet, paradoxically, frequently critically underrated - opera composer of all time. Complementing the music festival, some of the Tuscan master's most compelling compatriots provide other key SummerScape highlights. These include a rare, fully staged production of Iris, a forerunner of Madama Butterfly by Puccini's close contemporary Pietro Mascagni; the world premiere of Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed, four newly unearthed puppet plays from leading Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero, as reimagined by Dan Hurlin;the world premiere of Fantasque, a new ballet set to the music of Respighi and Rossini by John Heginbotham and Amy Trompetter; a film series on "Puccini and the Operatic Impulse in Cinema"; and the return of Bard's authentic and sensationally popularSpiegeltent,hosted by the inimitable Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. Taking place between July 1 and August 14 in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College's stunning Hudson River campus, SummerScape's 2016 offerings provide new opportunities to discover that, as Time Out New York puts it, "the experience of entering the Fisher Center and encountering something totally new is unforgettable and enriching." Tickets go on sale on Monday, February 15; click here for more information.
Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.
We go around our Broadway World to feature France as our newest International spotlight. Below, we round up the top 10 theatre companies in France. Check out the list below!
Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.
How often have you wondered what it would be like to go back in time and talk to an historical icon? Katori Hall's THE MOUNTAINTOP is a gripping and often humorous re-imagining of events the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that won London's 2010 Olivier Award for best new play. It's one of the best ways imaginable to honor Dr. King, Black History Month and the Black Lives Matter movement by experiencing its Los Angeles premiere at the Matrix Theatre, directed by Obie Award-winner Roger Guenveur Smith and starring Larry Bates and Danielle Truitt. I cannot imagine any two actors more suited to step into the shoes of these two characters, having worked together in a previous production of the play at San Diego Rep, also directed by Smith.
On the evening of April 3, 1968, after delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retired to his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. In this gripping re-imagination of events occurring in the hours before his assassination, playwright Katori Hall picks up with a fictional depiction of a mysterious stranger who arrives at the motel room with some surprising news, forcing Dr. King to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.
A hit in the West End and on Broadway, End of the Rainbow will embark on a UK tour this month, starring Lisa Maxwell as Judy Garland.
The Ridgefield Playhouse for Movies and the Performing Arts has announced its March 2016 and continuing spring 2016 lineup. Scroll down for details!
The Matrix Theatre Company honors Black History Month with the Los Angeles premiere of The Mountaintop, directed by Obie Award-winner Roger Guenveur Smith and starring Larry Bates and Danielle Mone Truitt. Recipient of London's 2010 Olivier Award, Katori Hall's gripping and often humorous re-imagining of events the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. takes on new meaning with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Mountaintop opens at the Matrix Theatre on February 6, with previews beginning January 28. (Scroll all the way down to view links to high resolution photos.)
The tea-guzzling Tiger pounces back into the West End in this truly magical Olivier Award nominated production of THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, opening at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue tonight 25 November 2015 and running throughout Christmas to Sunday 10 January 2016.
From the cobblestone streets of London and the islands off the Irish coast, to the halls of Harvard and clamor of the second Continental Congress, Artistic Director, Mark Abram-Copenhaver, is proud to announce the 2016 season at the South Bend Civic Theatre.
How wonderful is it that a song can usher in all sorts of memories - perhaps of your first kiss, driving in a car along a dusty country road, or of people once-loved, still-loved, who are no longer a part of your life - to flood your mind, fill your heart and to transport you, as if by magic, to some earlier time? I love that feeling, which we in the theater are subject to far more often than regular folk, thanks to the music that underscores our dramatic lives and which allows everyone onstage, offstage, backstage - in whatever stage of life - to indulge in the play of 'make believe.'
The tea-guzzling Tiger pounces back into the West End in this truly magical Olivier Award nominated production of THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, opening at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue on Wednesday 25 November 2015 and running throughout Christmas to Sunday 10 January 2016.
The first Broadway production of DAMES AT SEA opens at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theater (240 W 44th Street), tonight, October 22, 2015, at 6:30pm. Let's see what the critics had to say...
Since its Off-Broadway debut in 1967, HAIR has become a touchstone for musical theatre fans with a fondness for the decade's counter-culture revolution. Having won both a Tony and a Grammy, there is no doubt that this musical, which defies nearly every theatrical convention, has become as important a part of the genre's cannon as any of the Golden Age's classics. However, it is a show that I have just never 'got.' Perhaps I am too square to appreciate the flower-power sensibility, or too straight-laced to understand the era of psychedelic drugs and free love. Nonetheless, the score by Galt MacDermot (music) and James Rado and Gerome Ragni (lyrics) contains some of the theatre's best 'rock' songs with pop cross-overs 'Aquarius,' 'Good Morning Starshine,' and 'Let the Sunshine In.' Theatre UCF's production of 'The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,' which runs through October 25th, might not have been able to make me appreciate the show's trippy conceit, but it did confirm that the program has just as much talent as nearly any of Central Florida's professional theatres.
James Rocco and the Ordway's BROADWAY SONGBOOK® series have been seen in this space many times before. Usually, the shows are a virtual musical theatre master class with a local slate of triple threats. This time is no exception but THE 70s SONGBOOK is a slightly different show, just as the decade was a slightly different musical theatre experience. Cue the Disco beat. (Or maybe not!)
Promises, Promises, the Burt Bacharach/Hal David/Neil Simon musical was definitely a product of its time when it opened in 1968. And now, with the success of television's Mad Men, and the popularity of all things 'retro', the show is once again a timely piece. Stage Door Theatre will present this multi-award winning musical from September 25th through November 1st.
Artistic Director David J. Miller tackles another iconic play from the catalogue of 20th century gay dramatic literature with Mart Crowley's groundbreaking THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Opening in 1968, one year before the Stonewall riots, these boys were at the head of the parade for the Gay Pride movement. Miller has gathered a roster of nine estimable actors who provide the heart and soul to bring Crowley's types realistically to life at the intimate Plaza Black Box Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts.
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