Christopher Diamond

Nigel Lilley serves as Music Director, part of a team who have worked alongside Stephen Sondheim and Jonathan Tunick on this production. Taking us back to his early experiences of Sondheim, Nigel also shares what it means to work with him and Jonathan today.

A few years back, on one of my trips back to the Mothership (New York), I was going to see one of the many incarnations of "Forbidden Broadway", a series I've loved for years. I asked my travelling companion if he wanted to join me. And while he enjoys theater he's not what you would call a theater nerd and so he opted out feeling that many of the inside jokes would fly over his head. It turned out to be a good call. Village Theatre currently has their latest show brought up from the Village Originals Festival onto the Mainstage, "The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes" and while it has a few moments where the story drags or gets slightly mired down in its own joke, I found it to be super fun. But in retrospect, it's super fun to me and was super fun to the person I was with but we're both musical theater nerds. I think the inside jokey-ness of this one might be lost on your basic theatergoer.

Last night, Thursday October 1, Samuel French, the world's largest publisher and licensor of stage plays and musicals, in collaboration with HowlRound,  presented  Sing and Tell: A Benefit Concert for the Dramatists Guild Fund at Feinstein's/54 Below.

The main goal of Straight From New York Workshop and Concert Series is to offer "educational opportunities for performing arts students to work with top Broadway artists in cities around the country. In addition, the concert series features Broadway artists in performance for the public!" This October, Tony Award Nominee Jennifer Damiano and Broadway/TV Star Wesley Taylor are touring Texas to teach a series of Musical Theatre Audition Masterclasses.