Basil Twist News

Tickets to the spectacular new musical Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will go on sale on Friday 4 May at 4pm, with pre-sales beginning today. Fans can purchase tickets for performances from 8 January to 3 February 2019.

La Jolla Playhouse announces that married playwrights Mike Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza have been named the Playhouse's newest Artists-in-Residence beginning in April, 2018. During their residency, they plan to continue work on their Playhouse-commissioned trilogy: The Colonialism Project, as well as a new musical, Bhangin' It.

This week, the Maxamoo theatre podcast discusses a number of productions occurring around New York City. 

Abingdon Theatre Company (Tony Speciale, Artistic Director; Denise Dickens, Producing Director) has announced casting for the first production of its 25th Anniversary main stage season, The Gentleman Caller, a new play by Philip Dawkins (Charm, Le Switch, The Homosexuals).

Michigan Opera Theatre CEO and President Wayne S. Brown and Principal Conductor Stephen Lord today announced the company's 2018-19 opera season.  MOT's 48th opera season will be the second under Lord's artistic leadership and celebrates masterworks of literature turned opera, with "Eugene Onegin" (Pyotr Tchaikovsky), "Candide" (Leonard Bernstein) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (Ricky Ian Gordon/Michael Korie). The season also includes a staple of the opera repertoire, "The Barber of Seville" (Gioachino Rossini) and a fairytale opera, "Hansel and Gretel" (Engelbert Humperdinck). The season begins Sept. 29 with a gala concert featuring opera superstar Renee Fleming.  

As a centerpiece of its 25th anniversary season, HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director, and Kim Whitener, Executive Director) is proud to present the world premiere of Assembled Identity, a new theatrical work by Kristin Marting created in collaboration with Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard. Running April 24 - May 19, Assembled Identity is set to open on May 1 and features performances by Newhard and Lipica Shah, who play multiple characters and speak several languages. Assembled Identity is the 29th hybrid work by Marting, who co-founded HERE in 1993. Her multi-disciplinary work has been noted for its "striking unity of sound and meaning" (New York Times) and for being a "a true treat for the adventurous." (Time Out New York).

Damon Runyon and Andy Gaukel are unlikely collaborators. The 20th-century writer of short stories is best known for capturing a colorful Prohibition-era Broadway. Gaukel is a modern-day artist who tells poignant narratives through puppetry.

10 Hairy Legs, the all male repertory dance company, dèbuts at Baryshnikov Arts Center for its sixth consecutive New York Season for four performances June 7 -10. The program features World Premieres by Bessie Award Nominee and company member Nicholas Sciscione, and Yin Yue. Works by Al Blackstone, Raja Feather Kelly and Christopher Williams complete the program.

Roald Dahl's treasured tale is now Australia's Golden Ticket! It was announced today that theatre producers John Frost, Craig Donnell, Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, Langley Park Productions and Neal Street Productions will be bringing the spectacular new musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Sydney's Capitol Theatre in January 2019.

McCarter Theatre Center's Board of Trustees today announced the appointment of Michael S. Rosenberg as Managing Director. A nationally respected arts leader, Rosenberg will work together with McCarter's Artistic Director/Resident Playwright Emily Mann and Special Programming Director William W. Lockwood in leading Princeton's Tony Award winning arts institution. Rosenberg, currently the Managing Director at La Jolla Playhouse in California, will assume his new role of Managing Director at McCarter Theatre Center this spring.

Symphonie Fantastique - the singular creation by designer, director, master puppeteer, and MacArthur "Genius" Basil Twist - returns to its original home at HERE in a 20th anniversary production for 12 weeks only, March 29-June 17. Set to Hector Berlioz's revolutionary 1830 score, Symphonie Fantastique, for the first time in New York, features live piano accompaniment by Christopher O'Riley. Hailed as a creative masterpiece when it debuted in 1998, the production is set to open on April 4 and a presentation from HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program and a centerpiece of HERE's 25th anniversary season.

What if, instead of drowning, Shakespeare's Ophelia had splashed through the brook water and found a parallel universe on the other side?

Ashley Wheater, Artistic Director of The Joffrey Ballet, proudly announces an impressive 2018-19 season featuring the world premiere of Yuri Possokhov's historic reimagining of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel, Anna Karenina, presented as part of a first-time collaboration between The Joffrey Ballet and the renowned Australian Ballet, along with a world premiere by rising urban dance star Andrea Walker, the Chicago Premiere of Wayne McGregor's Kairos and the return of two popular works by Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE - the singular creation by designer, director, performer and master puppeteer Basil Twist and set to the revolutionary 1830 score by composer Hector Berlioz - returns to New York City for a 20th anniversary production, running 12 weeks only from March 29-July 15, 2018

Jim Caruso, host of Jim Caruso's Cast Party has been throwing a party at Birdland every Monday night for the past fifteen years, and needless to say, the soirée has fallen on his birthday a handful of times. Like this Monday, February 5. Cast Party became his party, and dozens of showbiz pals came to serenade him.

Pink Martini, a McCallum favorite returns for eight great shows Friday, February 9, through Thursday, February 15. In 1994 in his hometown of Portland, Thomas Lauderdale was working in politics, with the intention of eventually running for office. Like other eager politicians-in-training, he went to every political fundraiser under the sun, but was dismayed to find the music at these events underwhelming, lackluster, loud and un-neighborly. Drawing inspiration from music from all over the world, crossing genres of classical, jazz and old-fashioned pop, and hoping to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike, he founded the "little orchestra" Pink Martini in 1994 to provide beautiful and inclusive musical for political fundraisers for progressive causes such as civil rights, the environment and affordable housing.

La MaMa in association with LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts presents Jane Comfort and Company Celebrating 40 Years of Making Dance with an Anniversary Retrospective

What if, instead of drowning, Shakespeare's Ophelia had splashed through the brook water and found a parallel universe on the other side? In playwright Caridad Svich's lyrical deconstruction of Hamlet, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself through a neo-Elizabethan Appalachia. In this world, Hamlet is known as Rude Boy, Gertrude is a brothel madam, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are her androgynous helpers.

The Hollywood Pantages, a Nederlander Theatre, is proud to announce the 2018-19 Season, consisting of seven productions including a Tony®-Winning Best Musical Revival, direct-from-Broadway L.A. Premieres, and highly-anticipated returns of long-running Broadway Blockbusters.

85 Artists Awarded MacDowell Fellowships