Oh, Boy! 2003 - Articles Page 19

There are times I drag my reluctant husband to a show because if I didn't, I might not ever see him. And I'm pretty sure he would tell you he finds most shows uninspiring. However, as we left The Kennedy Theatre tonight following Theatre Raleigh's OH WHAT A HOLY NIGHT holiday show, he turned to me and said, 'That was a GFE, a good fun evening out.' I probably could end this write-up right there, because coming from him, that's saying a lot. But I will expound a bit more to say that this production is not only a 'GFE,' but also showcases for some of the Triangle's most talented singers, including Yolanda Rabun, Shayla LaGrange, L.E. Barone, Areon Mobasher, and Derek Robinson. They are joined by Dave Toole, who is not from Raleigh, but may be considered an honorary North Carolinian at this point since this is his third production here in as many months.

Manhattan Theatre Club is hosting the Broadway premiere of Choir Boy, by Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Trip Cullman. Get to know the cast below as they begin Broadway performances!

This is our annual production of the classic Charles Dickens story of Ebenezer Scrooge. In addition to a cash donation for admission, we will also accept donations of toys or canned goods and foods to benefit families in need in our area this holiday season. Please bring one or more of the following per person attending: cash donation ($5 or more suggested), a new, unwrapped toy, or canned food items (5 or more suggested). Performances December 7th & 8th at the Hilliard Civic and Cultural Arts Center, 5425 Center St, Hilliard, OH, 43026. For performance times and more information visit: http://www.hilliardartscouncil.org/a-christmas-carol/

Born in the wrong era, baby-faced Nicky Wood is making his mark while modeling his work after the eternal teenager himself, Dick Clark. This New Year's weekend Wood is putting his two 'day jobs' on the back burner to raise funds for his childhood theatre by paying tribute to his hero, Clark.

With songs such as 'Chantilly Lace,' Oh Boy,' 'That'll Be the Day,' 'Peggy Sue,' 'Everyday,' 'Ready Teddy,' 'Not Fade Away' and 'Rave On,' this is one toe-tapping show you'll not want to miss.

With songs such as 'Chantilly Lace,' Oh Boy,' 'That'll Be the Day,' 'Peggy Sue,' 'Everyday,' 'Ready Teddy,' 'Not Fade Away' and 'Rave On,' this is one toe-tapping show you'll not want to miss.

John Prine's Spotify Singles is premiering today—listen HERE. The session was produced by Dave Cobb at RCA Studio A and includes a new version of Prine's “I Have Met My Love Today” as well as a rendition of Stevie Wonder's “I Just Called To Say I Love You”—both featuring special guests The Secret Sisters.

John Prine won “Artist of the Year” at last night's Americana Music Honors & Awards. This is Prine's third time receiving the prestigious award following previous wins in 2017 and 2005.  

Spring Awakening alum, singer-songwriter, and actress, Emily Kinney, (The Walking Dead, Masters of Sex) has been hard at work on her new album, 'Oh, Jonathan" out this August. This soulful and authentic artist has poured life experiences relating to love, loss, and growth, into her music that takes listeners on an important journey.

Girls, grab your poodle skirts and boys, slick back your hair. Pretend it's 1958 with Lakewood Theatre Company! In Buddy Returns! A Buddy Holly Tribute, Lakewood Theatre Company stages a musical revue concert that tells the enduring tale of the musical icon's meteoric rise to fame and his final legendary performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. Together, with the Crickets, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, the multi-talented cast will perform three shows on August 16, 17 & 18, 2018 at 7:30 PM. The concert features music with over 20 of his greatest hits, including the timeless classics 'That'll Be The Day,' 'Peggy Sue' and 'Oh Boy."

What a night it was at The Muny for Jersey Boys, the 2006 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. And when I say what a night, I mean Oh. What. A. Night. of doo-wop megahits galore! The Muny's opening night audience of over 8,400 showed up ready to be rocked, swayed, grooved, and shook, and all of that and more was delivered.

'There is something so simple, so wholesome about the story and the characters. When Curly made his entrance on opening night at the St. James Theatre in 1943 and sang 'Oh, what a beautiful morning,' the whole audience took a huge sigh of relief. There in the midst of war was a breath of optimism and that beautiful music.' And, indeed, when the speaker, actor Stephen Mark Lukas makes the same entrance seventy-five years later on the stage of the Ogunquit Playhouse in the company's new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic Oklahoma, the entire audience reacts in exactly same way. With a smile as expansive as the territory and a voice as luminous as the bright morning about which he sings, Lukas establishes immediate affection and rapport for the character of Curly, as does his co-star, the lovely, radiant Taylor Quick.

Chester Theatre Company (CTC) presents the American Premiere of Mark Leiren-Young's Bar Mitzvah Boy in Town Hall Theatre, 15 Middlefield Road in Chester, MA from June 21 through July 1, 2018.  

Chester Theatre Company (CTC) presents the American Premiere of Mark Leiren-Young's Bar Mitzvah Boy in Town Hall Theatre, 15 Middlefield Road in Chester, MA from June 21 through July 1, 2018.  

Puppets and monsters and freaks, oh my. Shoreside has an abundance of them in WOOD BOY DOG FISH and they don't play well together at all. This fictional seaside town, home to the terrifying Dogfish Adventure Ride, is a miserable place. Populated with morally repugnant characters and a darkness that seeps into your very soul, it sets the stage for a somber night out at the usually sunny Garry Marshall Theatre.

The Muny announced today its full cast and design teams for the world regional premiere of Jersey Boys, July 9 - 16. This will be the first licensed production of Jersey Boys in the world. Jersey Boys is proudly sponsored by BMO Harris Bank.

Jesse McCartney is an singer, songwriter, and actor. He achieved fame in the late 1990s on the daytime drama All My Children as JR Chandler. He later joined boy band Dream Street, and eventually branched out into a solo musical career. Additionally, McCartney has appeared on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Summerland, and Greek. McCartney also is known for lending his voice as Theodore in Alvin and the Chipmunks and its sequels, as well as voicing Robin/Nightwing in Young Justice and Roxas and Ventus in the video game series Kingdom Hearts developed by Square Enix.

Rogue Artists Ensemble's 2015 world premiere of WOOD BOY DOG FISH, their unique retelling of The Adventures of Pinocchio, will be receiving a spiffy remounting at the Garry Marshall Theatre beginning May 12, 2018. We had the most opportune opportunity to talk some serious talk with the co-writer of both WOOD BOY DOG FISH editions - Chelsea Sutton, as she shared her histories with the Falcon Theatre, Rogue Artists Ensemble and the late Garry Marshall.

Sordid Lives, a dark comedy by Del Shores, is playing at Out Front Theatre Company this month. BroadwayWorld caught up with T.K. Habtemariam, an Atlanta-based actor who plays Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram in Out Front's upcoming production, to talk about the show. I haven't seen this show before, but I've done a little bit of reading. So, it's about a woman named Peggy who trips over her lover's wooden legs in a hotel room and dies. Yeah. Exactly. And it's funny that her name is Peggy, too. It is? Yeah. I mean, because the fact that she dies because of the wooden legs. Peg-gy. That's really funny. I'm interested to know how your character figures into this story. Brother Boy…Earl Ingram… probably was a little bit before his time, and at the age of 18, he was kicked out of his household for being one big old queer boy. And he was actually put into a mental institution for wanting to either impersonate women or for liking someone of the same sex. And, essentially, back when I was 18, I had a friend named Wardell, and he found out that I had a crush on hi, and he beat me up to a bloody pulp, and my mother, Peggy, who ends up tripping over her lover's wooden legs, put me in a mental institution because she believes the world is not ready for me and my place in this world. But Wardell, 20 years later, ends up busting me out of the mental institution. This is kind of interesting because when I read about the show online, it sounded like a straight silly comedy, but now it sort of sounds like it tackles some real issues. Oh, it's definitely a black comedy, and it definitely tackles a lot of issues. It's traditionally an all-white cast, and we color-flipped the main family, and we've kind of found ourselves in a new definition of the kind of topics that it tackles It was written in the 90s, and it kind of reflects the Southern mentality form the 90s, but now that we're putting it in the context of a black family, there are so many other social issues that are underlying that wouldn't have been beforehand. That was one of the questions that I was going to ask was how the story has changed because of this casting. This is the first all-African-American cast ever, right? Yes. It is. And it's such an honor for me to say I'm the first African-American Brother Boy because Leslie Jordan originated the role, and I remember seeing this movie in high-school and revisiting, I was like "Oh, my goodness. I actually did see this movie." And it is definitely a fantasy in the sense of what anyone of color could get away with. If there was anyone who was queer and of color in a mental institution for being gay, I don't know if that person would still be alive. And Wardell, who busts into the mental institution, comes in with a gun and busts me out, and we both tell this white lady to get the hell out of this place. If that were to happen in the 90s in South Texas, I promise you they wouldn't be alive. And, you know, it does bring in the idea of the interracial relationship, but that's kind of at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to all of the other issues that we cover. Even though I would like to say that Brother Boy has access to mental healthcare and someone who's queer and of color…that's kind of like the last group of people who get healthcare. And also there are moments where black women talk back to white men. There are moments when a black woman tells off a white man. There are moments, when it comes to social diversity back then… You know, we think of period pieces like To Kill a Mockingbird where we are so used to saying, "Okay. Well, at this time, black people were called niggers, so we're just going to have to expect it, you know?" But when it comes to things like I'm a black male in a mental institution for fantasizing about country queens like Tammy Wynette, and I do believe that my character would probably identify as a trans person but back then "trans" wasn't in our vocabulary, so there's the interesting discussion there to happen. So, it just kind of flares up a lot of things that couldn't have happened back then, but today we're using theatre as a way to tell a story that probably wouldn't have ever happened to bring up discussions today. We've had lots of conversations as a team about what these things mean to us today, and a lot of things have to be dug up. For instance, there's a line where a character calls somebody a mulatto. When we think of a white-trash family, we kind of accept the fact that they're going to poke fum at somebody being mixed, but how does it look when a white person says that to a black person? There have been some modifications, of course, with the generosity of Del Shores, where we've kind of said, "Can you rework this or find a way to make this…" And he was into that? He was willing to make those changes? Oh, yeah! He had to think about the script and rework it and rewrite some lines. There are some lines where - I am a black person, and we have to take into consideration that I wouldn't just idolize Tammy Wynette, you know? There are so many other queens at that time. We found moments where I can bring up Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner because that would be reflective of the culture and of the time. When you first auditioned for the role, what was it about the role that really resonated with you? I think that number one is my character type. You always have to think about what kind of roles you are peaked for, in all honesty. I'm usually someone who's taking someone down or who is being taken down. My character-type is the "betrayer" or the "betrayed." And Brother Boy is that kind of character. And then, I do drag as a little side passion project here in Atlanta, and I work with a predominantly queer POC group called Southern Fried Queer Pride, and I've had opportunities to perform in drag, write drag shows, and the play is kind of an amalgamation of both theatre and drag. And it's a cult classic role! Why wouldn't I want to be a part of it? And once I started meeting my castmates and we had rehearsals and what not, the bigger picture started panning out and I stated to see, "Oh, okay. This is what this is really all about." Do you have any projects coming up this summer that we need to know about? There's a passion project that I'm working on. It's kind of like the second installation of it. It's called Weavestock, and it's going to be through Country Fried Queer Pride. It's going to be hopefully happening sometime in August, and it's a project that I'm writing, directing, and being a part of. It's kind of like a play on Woodstock and Wigstock, a phenomenon that happened in New York in the late 80s and early 90s. Lots of drag icons used to perform at Wigstock. Weavestock is basically a celebration of all-black drag. It moves like a jukebox musical where there are written scenes with drag performances. A lot of times, you know, you have to create your own opportunities. Right now, I'm working on cultivating my writing skills and my directing skills and just hoping to create more opportunities for myself herein Atlanta. Sounds like you're on the right track! Looking forward to seeing the show.

Last night, GRAMMY Award winning Paramore appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert for their TV debut performance of recent single, “Rose-Colored Boy.” Paramore recently wrapped their third annual sold-out Parahoy! Deep Search cruise, during which they were presented with their Gold-certified plaques for single “Hard Times.” Paramore will soon be heading out for their summer amphitheater/arena “After Laughter Summer Tour (Tour 5)” with dates starting in June and featuring support from Foster The People and special guests Soccer Mommy and Jay Som.

John Prine's new song 'God Only Knows,' is premiering today. 

Grammy Award winning legends Boy George and Culture Club have revealed plans for a major 2018 U.S. headline tour with the multi-platinum selling band The B-52s. Announced today, The Life Tour: starring Boy George & Culture Club and The B-52s with special guest Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey, will visit 40+ cities across the U.S. with a stop in St. Louis at the Fabulous Fox Theatre on Thursday, September 6.

Theatre East is pleased to announce the five playwrights selected for the 2017-2018 5x5 Drama Series. BOB'S BIRTHDAY by Lowell Bartholomee, JUMPING UP AND DOWN HAPPY TOWN by Lori Fischer, OH, DANNY BOY by Edward Allan Baker, WE THREE by Julia Rae Maldonado, and FAINT TASTE OF CAT FOOD AND SOUR MILK by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich.

At the Table: A Play Reading Series has released its February play, Losing my Religion (in 140 characters or less) by Hannah C. Langley (USC - Dramatic Writing MFA Candidate). This podcast provides emerging playwrights a brand-new platform to present their work in an accessible, polished format featuring professional actors and immersive sound design and music. Previous episodes have included work by Chisa Hutchinson (Somebody's Daughter at Second Stage), Dustin Sullivan (Eugene O'Neill Award Finalist), and Diana Oh ({my lingerie play}).

Legendary singer, songwriter and performer John Prine will release his highly anticipated new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, April 13 on his own independent label, Oh Boy Records (pre-order now). Produced by Grammy Award-winning Dave Cobb, the album is Prine's first featuring new material in over 13 years. In advance of the release, the song “Summer's End” is premiering today. Listen/share HERE.