Curt Dale Clark News

'It's a warhorse and has been a guaranteed sellout since 1950, but that doesn't mean a production doesn't need a little spark. DJ [Salisbury] did exactly what I asked him to do,' says Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark. 'I asked him not to reinvent the wheel, but to tweak the show with some new nuances.' Clark is talking about MSMT's new production of Guys and Dolls which opened last week to glowing reviews. Clark was part of the popular MSMT community series, PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN panel that also featured Guys and Dolls stars, James Beaman (Nathan Detroit), Kristen Hahn (Sarah Brown), and Stephen Mark Lukas (Sky Masterson), as well as Props Master Elizabeth Frino. Moderated by Broadway World's Maine editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, the participants at the capacity-crowd event discussed the making of this exciting new production in Midcoast Maine.

'There's this line in the show that I think is key to understanding Sky and Sarah's romance. 'Chemistry?' she asks, and he says, 'Yeah, chemistry.' The message is that when that connection between two people happens, it doesn't really matter what you've predicted for yourself. What's real is the chemistry, not the intellectual idea. Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown each have qualities the other is lacking, and together they fill in the gaps.' The speaker is the charismatic young actor, Stephen Mark Lukas, who will be making his Maine State Music Theatre debut in his first ever performances as the suave gambler Sky Masterson in Frank Loesser Guys and Dolls, which runs at the Pickard Theater from June 28-July 15.

'We wanted to go big and grand. We knew we had Christine [Mild] with her powerhouse performance and Charis [Leos] so we wanted to play it large and create an environment that would support them. The production concept we came up with turned out to be a wonderful envelope to wrap around the show and the entire staging fell into place.' Co-director/choreographer Marc Robin was talking about his and Curt Dale Clark's vision for their new staging of Always, Patsy Cline, which opened Maine State Music Theatre's 2017 season on June 7th. Robin was part of a panel that also featured Patsy star Christine Mild and stand-by Heidi Kettenring, MSMT Charge Scenic Artist Sean Cox, and MSMT Board Vice President Kristine Ganong. The discussion on June 14th, moderated by Broadway World Maine editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold was the first in the now four-year-old summer series of free public forums, A Peek Behind the Curtain, held at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. The series, designed to give theatre-goers insight into the creative processes of producing each of the summer main stage shows, featured a lively and far-reaching conversation about Patsy Cline, MSMT's Theatre for Young Audiences program, and the theatre's burgeoning role in the community.

MSMT opens its Theatre for Young Audiences with three performances of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's musical retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, in a striking visual production, performed with energy, conviction, and style by a company of young actors. The hour-long musical version puts a contemporary spin on the familiar story and subtly raises issues and values which seem remarkably current, despite the fact that the show was written more than twenty years ago.

About half way through the musical, Always, Patsy Cline, Louise says of the legendary singer, 'She blew the roof off that old honky tonk!' And much the same could be said for the electric atmosphere at the Brunswick's Pickard Theater, where MSMT opened its 59th season with a dazzling production of the musical that includes twenty-seven songs made famous by the singer, who remains to this day - fifty-four years after her untimely death - a towering presence in the world of country and pop music. With true betes de scene, Christine Mild as Patsy and Charis Leos as Louise, accompanied by a virtuoso band, performing an unforgettable songbook, this production delivers not only powerhouse vocal-dramatic values, but also offers the audience a vibrant and poignant journey to another time and place that magically come alive through in the charismatic story of its protagonists. The Ted Swindley musical which focuses on the last six years of Patsy Cline's life and on her friendship with a Texas divorcee and fan, Louise Seger, is so much more than a catalog of songs strung together by a chronological narrative. Indeed, the book is touching well-constructed - funny, sad, warm and human by turns - and the songs are integrated into the story with a seamlessness that lets the play move from reality to memory.

“The All Night Strut has a songbook to die for! It may not be as riotously funny as The Irish and How They Got Way was,” says Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, but I know from experience that the audience will leave the theatre exhilarated!” Clark, who will co-produce the show with Anita Stewart, Artistic Director of Portland Stage, describes the musical revue as “a collection of vignettes, each of which plays out before the next one begins. It is sort of like an evening of short stories that paints a colorful and poignant picture of 20th century America in the years of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war.”

Maine State Music Theatre hosted a special series of free FILM FRIDAYS events which previewed the summer shows, showed the original (or subsequent) movie and offered a talkback with Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, in interview with BWW's Maine Editor, Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold. Here is an sli8ghtly edited version of the talkback of May 17, 2017, which discussed the 1992 Kenny Ortega film version of NEWSIES and the 2012 Broadway staging, and gave some hints about what Midcoast Mine could expect this summer at MSMT! Have a look/ listen!

The rain was pouring down outside and the aroma of fresh hot popcorn wafted through the Morrell Meeting Room as a sizeable crowd gathered on this gloomy Friday evening at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick to enjoy a new public film series, created by MSMT, hosted by Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, and facilitated by Olivia Wenner, Group Sales and Outreach Manager. The project, part of MSMT's community outreach program, is entitled Film Fridays and offers free screenings in HD and surround sound of three movie musicals which will be produced in their stage versions this summer at MSMT. The movies are then followed by a talkback with Curt Dale Clark, moderated by Broadway World Maine Editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold and - to add a little levity and spice - by a special trivia contest with prize of two complimentary tickets to MSMT's stage show for the winner.

'At the end of last summer I told myself that we were not going to try to top the 2016 season. I was going to think of 2017 as a completely separate and unique adventure, but the end result is that we are already topping our previous metrics in terms of ticket sales.' The speaker, Curt Dale Clark, Maine State Music Theatre's energetic and charismatic Artistic Director, is reflecting on the sold out 2016 season which garnered the company lavish critical and audience acclaim and made an MSMT ticket one of the hottest items in the region.

The hallways are jammed with bright, expectant, luminous faces wearing their most eye-catching outfits, laden with dance bags, juggling binders with music and resumes, scanning their ever present iPhones, and searching for a place to sit or stretch or warm-up as they await the call. The energy is palpable and the spirits high. Many have come together in groups and chat excitedly, while others search for a quiet corner to gather their thoughts. Some 300 actors ranging in age from children to seasoned adults have checked into Maine State Music Theatre's offices and rehearsal studios at 22 Elm Street on February 25, 2017, to try their luck at the company's annual open call local auditions for the 2017 season which opens June 7.

“Are you ready for some fun and fairytales? We're going to need you to use your imaginations to help us.” The preschoolers in the front rows giggle and squeal in anticipation. Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director, Curt Dale Clark knows how to energize young audiences, and he clearly relishes the opportunity top perform for this morning crowd of over 160 ranging in age from several months to grandparents who have come to hear the special program of story and song, MAGIC TIME at Brunswick, Maine's Curtis Memorial Library. The two free forty-minute interactive programs, which featured readings, video, and live performances of the Robin and Clark musical versions of Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland, were created by MSMT in partnership with the Curtis Memorial Library with the help of a generous gift from the Maine Humanities Council and drew almost 300 people for both sessions. The idea, born of MSMT's desire to expand its outreach efforts, nurture young audiences, and draw a new diverse public to live theatre, began as a successful mini-grant proposal to Maine Humanities Council and by virtue of the enthusiasm of the MSMT and CML staffs and the community response mushroomed into something of a maxi event with lines cued up and out the library doors before the start of each show.

It's just about a week now since the Broadway World Audience Choice Awards were announced, and here in Maine, we are happy to report that all the certificates have been sent and the individual winners congratulated.  In Brunswick, the home of Maine State Music Theatre Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark and Managing Director Stephanie Dupal received a special plaque to congratulate the theatre for having swept the Audience Choice awards two years in a row, garnering 10 in 2015 and 11 in 2016 and for having been selected Critic's Choice for the past three seasons.  Among the other companies with multiple winners in 2016 were Portland Players and Portland Stage. A toast to 2016 and on to another great Maine theatre season in 2017!

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.

Following the first installment of my Theatre Miniature series - a profile of Curt Dale Clark - this second mini-video takes a look at the indefatigable Executive and Artistic Director of Portland's Good Theater, Brian P. Allen.

'New theatre work is important because it is more likely to reflect what is actually going on in the world; it can speak to global happenings and events and find ways to digest them and cope with them.' Artistic Director of Maine State Music Theatre Curt Dale Clark is talking about his recent visit to the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) Conference and Festival of New Musicals in New York on October 24-28, 2016. Clark, who has been a NAMT Board member for the past two years and currently co-chair of the membership committee, is proud that his theatre company, MSMT, has been a founding member of the organization since its inception thirty-six years ago, and praises 'our continued efforts on its behalf that help cement the relationship between the two not-for-profits.'

When the now embattled Wells Fargo recently ran a series of ads suggesting that young people grow up and 'out of careers in the arts' and into 'mature choices of professions like the sciences and business,' the implications of the spots seriously irritated and alarmed most of us in the theatre community. A dancer yesterday, an engineer today….what message is that sending to our young people, many of whom are already deprived of arts education in their schools? It was then that the idea occurred to me and our Broadway World editors that a series of short video profiles asking successful theatre people why they had chosen a life in performance and what the rewards have been for them might be just the antidote.

Take a magical musical journey under the sea at Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre when the Pyramid Players proudly present The Little Mermaid this fall. This collaboration by Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark, is a sweet stage adaptation of the classic Hans Christian Andersen. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

The young and young at heart were treated to a day of enchantment at Maine State Music Theatre today, when the company presented four performances of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's delightful musical retelling of Aladdin, directed and choreographed by Raymond Marc Dumont. Presented in a fully staged production, this timeless tale conjures up the magic of wish making, the power of love to transform, and the importance of believing in one's self. In the past few seasons, MSMT has made a concerted effort to expand and enhance their Young Audiences series by offering original musicals based on traditional children's literature and packaged in sophisticated productions with elaborate costumes, imaginative scenery and stagecraft. Moreover, these hour-long performances are entirely created by MSMT's young professional artists- interns, apprentices, and local actors – thereby offering these artists a chance to gain valuable experience.

'We are the storytellers; we are the musicmakers; we are the dreamers of dreams.' With these words the cast of Frank McCourt's The Irish and How They Got That Way brings to a close a spellbinding evening of story and song that has the audience clapping, foot-tapping, weeping, and laughing in one of the most vibrant theatrical experiences in recent memory. The co-production of Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt's 1997 play with music marks a stunningly successful collaboration between Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage and promises to be a major hit for its brief four-week engagement. McCourt's one-hundred-minute drama tells the story of several centuries of the Irish experience on both sides of the Atlantic. No mere history lesson, however, as much knowledge as the play does impart, rather The Irish is a poetic, saucy, irreverent, and exquisitely beautiful tapestry of music, language, narrative, peopled with colorful characters and showcased in compelling song and dance.

When Aladdin, directed and choreographed by Raymond Marc Dumont, opens on August 22, the four performances at Maine State Music Theatre will mark twenty-six years of collaboration and fifteen original shows created by the team of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark. These two highly respected artists – Robin, director, choreographer, Artistic Director of the Fulton Theatre and Clark, actor, director, Artistic Director of Maine State Music Theatre – have devoted a considerable portion of their indefatigable creative energy to composing, writing the books and lyrics for a series of musical fairytales designed to introduce new audiences to the magic, make believe and miracles that theatre can offer to the young and young at heart.