Birth Place: Y Rhondda, WALES
Artistic Director Daniel Evans and Executive Director Kathy Bourne today announce a live, socially distanced season of drama, music, comedy and cabaret at Chichester Festival Theatre, running from late October to early January.
Next up on our local artists segment is (drum roll please)... The Good Room. They are a Queensland-based performance collective who use the experiences of ordinary people to create extraordinary theatre works, as part of a process that blurs the line between 'audience' and 'maker' to explore theatrical collective authorship. Theirs is an investigation of empathy, connectedness, stakes and sacrifice. Mirrorballs, rose petals, panda suits and party dresses stud our theatrical universe but totems of party, play and celebration are often subverted; this is richly affirmative, highly contemporary, and widely accessible theatre - underpinned by rigour, ethics, and deep consideration.
As theatres remain closed, The Far Away Plays have been holding weekly Zoom play readings of contemporary Welsh plays and organising free online workshops for actors and theatre creatives in Wales.
Chichester Festival Theatre will present a day of outdoor performances alongside a Drive-In Cinema, working in partnership with Chichester Cinema at New Park, over the August Bank Holiday weekend (28 a?" 31 August).
In this episode of In The (Home) Office, Donna Lynn will check in with Nick Butcher, Tom Ling and Joe White who developed their new musical at Goodspeed's 2020 Johnny Mercer Colony. Tune in to learn more about their project and hear song or two.
Due to the Coronavirus crisis, plans for the annual Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year (#SSSSPOTY) were sadly cancelled. The week that lockdown was announced, 70 students from colleges nationwide had been due to travel to London, in order to select 12 finalists to compete for Student Performer of the Year 2020 in June.
West Sussex County Times has reported that the Chichester Festival Theatre, which has had to pull the shows from its summer season due to the health crisis, remains hopeful that they will be able to bring performances to the stage this year.
Chichester Festival Theatre announces today that due to the unpredictable ongoing nature of Covid-19, it has made the very difficult decision to cancel all scheduled Festival 2020 productions. The Theatre had been due to reopen in July with South Pacific and The Unfriend, both of which they intend to reschedule to 2021.
For the first time, Chichester Festival Theatre is to stream a selection of its archive productions online, beginning with the musical Flowers for Mrs Harris from Thursday 9 April for the Easter weekend.
'We then travel to the exciting opening night of Disney's musical, The Little Mermaid and I asked an exuberant Sierra Boggess, who was making her Broadway debut as Ariel, what that magical day meant to her. 'Did it really happen tonight? Are we sure that that just happened! Before I went on stage tonight, I felt my heart pounding because I was just so excited and there was such anticipation and I realized all I had to do tonight was share Ariel.''
Stephen Sondheim is today celebrating his 90th birthday - all best wishes from BroadwayWorld! You can mark this special day by watching the BBC Prom dedicated to the great man's 80th birthday, which will be repeated tonight on BBC Four.
Chichester Festival Theatre has released the following statement regarding upcoming performances:
The Donmar Warehouse announces casting for Ellen McDougall's new production of Suzan-Lori Parks' play In the Blood. Nikki Amuka-Bird will return to the Donmar in the role of Hester alongside April Koyejo-Audiger, Paul Bazely, Ginny Holder, Martins Imhangbe, Sinead Matthews and Sule Rimi.
Queensland Performing Arts Centre and acclaimed Brisbane Theatre Collective MYTHS MADE HERE will present a modern take on the ancient Greek tragedy MEDEA.
The Donmar Warehouse has announced that Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell will curate a series of intimate evenings of music and song performed in the iconic setting of the Donmar auditorium. Each cabaret evening will feature the best of musical theatre, with a programme of songs by Stephen Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, Noël Coward and Lin-Manuel Miranda. From its early days as a rehearsal studio for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to the hugely successful Divas at the Donmar series in the early 2000s, the Donmar has presented outstanding musical talent over many years, and is delighted to continue this tradition with Donmar Lates.
Chichester Festival Theatre's Festival 2020 has today been unveiled by Artistic Director Daniel Evans and Executive Director Kathy Bourne.
James Graham's critically acclaimed smash hit comedy, Quiz, will embark on a 20-week UK and Ireland tour from August 2020.
In what has become an annual ritual, a total of 40 established and emerging composers, lyricists, and librettists will converge on the Goodspeed campus from mid-January through mid-February 2020 to participate in the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals. The writing teams, representing 15 new musicals, will populate the campus, creating a truly exciting environment for discovery and inspiration.
Lyric Opera's special holiday engagement of Adam Guettel's THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, one of the few contemporary musicals written in a style that harkens back to the Golden Age, is beautifully sung with the composer's complicated and melodious score performed by a superb orchestra. The musical focuses on Margaret Johnson and her daughter Clara, who take a vacation to Florence, Italy in the summer of 1953a?'and find their lives forever changed after Clara has a chance encounter with Fabrizio Nacarelli, a young Italian man. It should come as little surprise that Renèe Fleming has a radiant turn as Margaret. Vocally, Fleming's take on the role is pristine, but she also plays out the tension between Margaret's fiercely protective instincts when it comes to her child and her yearning to empower Clara to lead her own life as a young adult. While I wish to avoid spoilers, it's key to share that the musical has a twist that includes a revelation about Clara that shines light on precisely why Margaret feels so compelled to keep watch over her daughter.
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