Anita Stewart News

Complications From A Fall begins previews Tuesday, October 24, opens Today, October 27, and runs through November 12 at Portland Stage.

Complications From A Fall begins previews Today, October 24, opens Friday, October 27, and runs through November 12 at Portland Stage.

Portland Stage announces the writers for the 21st Annual From Away Festival of International Writing.

Complications From A Fall begins previews Tuesday, October 24, opens Friday, October 27, and runs through November 12 at Portland Stage.

Portland Stage opens its 44th season with an intense production of Lanie Robertson's exploration of the tortured inner life of songstress Billie Holiday, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. Essentially a ninety-minute dramatic monologue, the play with music is a virtuoso vehicle for the singer-actress in the title role. Portland Stage's attractive, expressive production captures all the pathos of Holliday's life, as well as the incomparable beauty of her music making.

Portland Stage has announced the kick-off to its 2017-2018 Season with Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson, starring Tracey Conyer Lee. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel will join Anita Stewart, Portland Stage Executive Artistic Director, on the Mainstage for a discussion about her work on Monday, October 2, 2017 at 7 p.m.

Portland Stage has announced the kick-off to its 2017-2018 Season with Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson, starring Tracey Conyer Lee. 

The memories are in the music, and Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage's latest co-production struts, sizzles smiles, and sparkles with energy and latent emotion. Classy, funny, lively, touching, vocally and instrumentally beautiful, this tightly constructed revue, The All Night Strut, offers a journey to an era where the world was in turmoil, time moved more slowly, hearts were worn on sleeves, and swing was the thing. Performed in a stylish production with a quartet of stunning soloists and a trio of fine musicians, this soundtrack of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s tells its story in song and dance and offers theatre-goers a wholly satisfying and warmly memorable experience.

"The All Night Strut will transport you to a time when life was happier, and the fun was the music. This show will prove that it is still about the music. The audience will go nuts for the production; they will eat it alive and want more and more of it." Curt Dale Clark knows from whence he speaks. The actor, director, author, and Artistic Director of Maine State Music Theatre has had the benefit of performing this songbook of the1930s,1940s, and 1950s in four prior productions, and he is confident that Maine audiences are going to love the production. "It is similar to The Irish," he says of last year's award-winning, sold-out collaboration, Frank McCourt's play The Irish and How They Got That Way, "in that the footprint exists for the show. Different actors populate it each time, but the end result is always the same. It is a huge hit!"

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) in Brunswick and Portland Stage (PS) in Portland, Maine announce a second partnership and artistic collaboration that will continue to broaden the connection between the two communities and deepen the program offerings for both theatres' audiences.

Strong work at Portland Stage.

Portland Stage mounts the annual Little Festival of the Unexpected with new play workshops from May 10 through May 13, 2017. Little Festival is a week-long event dedicated to public readings of new American plays. Three playwrights are in residence at Portland Stage throughout the week developing their scripts with input from actors, directors, dramaturgs, and audience members.

Portland Stage's latest production is an engaging staging of Brenda Withers' new play, String Around My Finger, which had won the 2015 Clauder Competition and then been developed through the theatre's Little Festival of the Unexpected. The four-character play, set entirely in a hospital where a young couple finds themselves coping with the miscarriage of their child, resonates with a genuineness of dialogue, character and situation.

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) in Brunswick and Portland Stage (PS) in Portland announce a second partnership and artistic collaboration that will continue to broaden the connection between the two communities and deepen the program offerings for both theatres' audiences. 

Portland Stage has announced its 2017-18 Mainstage Season!

There was a buzz of excitement in theatres across the country on Wednesday, January 4, as Broadway World Regional Managing Editor Christina Mancuso announced each region's winners in the 2016 Broadway World Audience Choice Awards. Here in Maine within seconds of the postings, congratulations and comments poured in on social media and websites. Hoping to get a measure of the reaction, we contacted all the winners and took a sampling of responses to share with everyone.

When Portland Stage rang down the curtain on its last of the 2016 season performances of Dickens' A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve, the company was celebrating a long cherished tradition that has delighted generations of Maine theatre goers since 1996. Directed and designed by Anita Stewart, the production serves not only to bring holiday cheer to the company's audiences, but also to advance the theatre's commitment to theatre for children.

Having had the privilege to serve as Broadway World's Maine Editor for more than three years now, I can say with pride that the state, though remote as it may seem from the epicenter of the theatre world, Broadway, is blessed to be home to so many thriving theatre companies who produce exciting, vibrant seasons. As I compiled my list for 2016 with many familiar names, I was also struck by the extraordinary consistency of excellence these companies maintain. Here are my personal choices of the best in Maine, grouped by theatre and show.

Nilo Cruz's latest work, Sotto Voce (2014), is a delicate, haunting, poetic memory play that whispers and lulls its way into the hidden recesses of memory, as it slowly, gently, but heartrendingly reveals the characters' past lives, hopes, and dreams. Portland Stage's production directed by Liz Diamond is richly evocative and pitch perfect in tone and execution.