Breon Arzell News

Two-time Tony Award-winning Goodspeed Musicals has announced the music, choreographer and director teams for its 2023 season productions at the Goodspeed Opera House.

The Muny announced has announced the directors, choreographers and music director/conductors for The Muny’s 2023 Premier Season. See details about The Muny's season, and see how to purchase tickets.

Congo Square Theatre Company will present the World Premiere of How Blood Go by Cleveland-based playwright Lisa Langford, a provocative – and wholly topical – story of two family members who are subject to medical experiments without their consent, 50 years apart.

As the director says, this is a 'Black play that speaks to Black people and talks about Black shit.' But it allows larger audiences a chance to listen in to the conversation and laugh, if more gently, at the jokes. While not everything in the show is funny, much of it is irresistibly so.

Fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for turbulence. Baltimore Center Stage (BCS), in a co-production with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, presents the regional premiere of AIN’T NO MO’ written by Jordan E. Cooper and directed by Lili-Anne Brown now through November 20, 2022. See photos from the production.

Fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for turbulence. Baltimore Center Stage, in a co-production with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, will present the regional premiere of AIN'T NO MO' written by Jordan E. Cooper and directed by Lili-Anne Brown from October 27 through November 20, 2022.

What did our critic think of AIN'T NO MO' at Woolly Mammoth?Thanks to Barack Obama's presidency but, alas, because of Rachel Dolezal's wannabe caper, American drama requires some updated, Black-originated satire; Jordan E. Cooper obliges with Ain't No Mo', his 100 minute whupping of white privilege, supremacy, and presumptive cultural majority at Woolly Mammoth through October 9. Cooper follows the late Douglas Turner Ward and George C. Wolfe whose Day of Absence (1965) and The Colored Museum (1986) lampooned white dominance with comedy both uproarious and bitter, and so does this show. It's good to have the real, live, three-dimensional exchange that only theatre provides. No disrespect, Dear White People, Get Out, Sorry to Bother You, and the canon of Spike Lee.

Fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for turbulence. In a co-production with Baltimore Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company will present the regional premiere of AIN’T NO MO’, written by Jordan E. Cooper.   

The Muny is presenting Legally Blonde! Tune into our Instagram Story as Hayley Podschun takes you behind the scenes of her day at Legally Blonde at The Muny.

Get a first look at The Muny's production of The Color Purple, which began performances August 3rd and runs through August 9th, 2022.

This Muny production of THE COLOR PURPLE is too beautiful for words. It is a stunning love letter to Alice Walker and her epistolary novel of redemption. Director Lili-Anne Browne’s vison brings to the stage a concert-like version of this production similar to the 2016 Tony Award Winning Broadway revival. Her leadership, coupled with Breon Arzell's spirited choreography, help this epic 40-year story come to life with theatrical sophistication. Music Director Jermaine Hill’s perfectly balanced orchestrations were almost unnoticeable while supporting the beautiful score sung by this incomparable company of actors.

Get a first look at The Muny's production of The Color Purple, which began performances August 3rd and runs through August 9th, 2022.

Go inside rehearsals for The Muny's production of The Color Purple, which begins performances tonight and runs through August 9th, 2022.

The Muny announced its full cast, design and production teams for the Muny Premiere of The Color Purple, August 3 – 9, 2022.   Joining the previously announced principal cast of Tracee Beazer (Shug Avery), Nasia Thomas (Nettie), Evan Tyrone Martin (Mister), Gilbert Domally (Harpo) and Nicole Michelle Haskins (Sofia) is Anastacia McCleskey (Celie).

The Muny announced today that Brittney Mack, Nasia Thomas, Evan Tyrone Martin, Tracee Beazer, Gilbert Domally and Nicole Michelle Haskins will star in the moving and affirming tale,The Color Purple, August 12-18, 2022. The Muny and Regional Premiere is directed by Lili-Anne Brown, choreographed by Breon Arzell, with music direction by Jermaine Hill.

The imminent start of the 2022 Oregon Shakespeare Festival season—Artistic Director Nataki Garrett’s first full season—marks a celebratory return to repertory producing. The 2022 lineup features eight on-stage plays and musicals, from classic Shakespeare to works by some of today’s most exciting playwrights.

The Muny announced today the directors, choreographers and music directors for The Muny’s 2022 season, which opens on June 13 with the celebrated return of the 2021 hit that audiences went “Whoopee!” for, the Tony Award-winning Chicago.

Victory Gardens Theater presents the Ignite Chicago reading of exercise your demons: a play on the trauma of a gay male body written by Gage Tarlton and directed by Ryan Dobrin, with movement direction by Breon Arzell. exercise your demons: a play on the trauma of a gay male body will be presented on Saturday, February 19 at 3pm at Hardware Strength and Conditioning, 1834 W. Balmoral Ave, Chicago.

Acoustic Rooster's Barnyard Boogie: Starring Indigo Blume

Kwame Alexander's 2010 picture book for the age 5-8 set, Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band, secretly serves as Jazz 101 for children the way Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Britten's Young People's Guide to the Orchestra introduce them to musical instruments. Alexander's book, with characters such as Mules Davis and Duck Ellington, not only brims with puns, it explicates jazz and packs its own gem of a glossary. His 2011 title, Indigo Blume and the Garden City, introduces his spunky 9 year old heroine who teaches an urban neighborhood to go green and make our garden grow. In 2020, Alexander blended some of the characters from both books to help children realize that the show must go on even when you're a little scared of getting up in front of groups and also that your parents love you. No. Matter. What The books are joys, but Alexander's and Mary Rand Hess' 2021 mashup of them into this 70 minute musical production, in the Family Theater of the Kennedy Center through November 28, has flaws. Let's get them over with so that the good news can follow.