Ellen Jones News

Four exceptional troupers are breathing fire into Yasmina Reza's incisive tragicomedy about human nature, social class, and, more specifically, personkind's proclivity to violence. GOD OF CARNAGE, winner of the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play, is a no holds barred unmasking of the subterranean impulses and suppressed tensions of what otherwise appear to be very normal, nice, and balanced folks. And, it is riotously funny. Rarely produced, this wildly physical and explosive drama, directed with precision and sensitivity by Richard Hardt, is getting the royal treatment it deserves at Ghostlight Theatre. Runs through November 4th.

MTV today announced the first-ever "MTV EMA Generation Change Award" to elevate and empower the fearless, original young people who are changing the world.  Five changemakers from around the globe, all under the age of 26, are nominated for the award, which will be presented during the "2018 MTV EMA" red carpet pre-show in Bilbao, Spain on November 4th.

Look out, Atlanta! There's a new musical theatre hotspot in town! The City Springs Theatre Company opened its inaugural season in the Byers Theatre at City Springs Civic Center over the weekend with a razzle-dazzle production of the fluffy 1980 tuner 42nd Street, adapted from the Bradford Ropes novel and the subsequent 1933 film of the same name. The lavishly staged production, featuring Tony Award Winner Shuler Hensley, who also serves as the Associate Artistic Director for the new company, and Atlanta favorite Deborah Bowman at her best, is a bonafide triumph for director Brandt Blocker. It's well-acted. It's well-sung. And… those dancing feet. Oh, those dancing feet!

City Springs Theatre, Atlanta's newest professional theatre company presents Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley in '42nd Street,' the ultimate Broadway musical, playing at the brand-new Byers Theatre at The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center (1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs) September 14th through the 23rd. Tickets are $30-$62, with discounts for seniors, students, groups, and active and retired military personnel. Visit www.CitySpringsTheatre.com or call 404-477-4365 for more information.

City Springs Theatre, Atlanta's newest professional theatre company presents Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley in '42nd Street,' the ultimate Broadway musical, playing at the brand-new Byers Theatre at The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center (1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs) September 14th through the 23rd. Tickets are $30-$62, with discounts for seniors, students, groups, and active and retired military personnel.

City Springs Theatre, Atlanta's newest professional theatre company presents Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley in '42nd Street,' the ultimate Broadway musical, playing at the brand-new Byers Theatre at The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center (1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs) September 14th through the 23rd. Tickets are $30-$62, with discounts for seniors, students, groups, and active and retired military personnel.

On Monday, February 26, Birdland once again hosted Justin 'Squigs' Robertson as guest artist-in-residence at Jim Caruso's Cast Party.

Virginia Olivieri is putting another notch in her directorial and acting belt with a riveting production of Agatha Christie's VERDICT, running through March 4th at Desert Stages Theatre's new digs in Scottsdale. Dame Christie's VERDICT is a thinking person's drama, a morality play loaded with irony that puts a learned man and his unwavering adherence to principle in the dock. VERDICT is a smartly crafted and provocative script, intelligently directed, and skillfully performed.

Last week, Broadway Dreams hosted a star-studded musical theatre master class and summer intensive.  The annual weeklong intensive welcomed aspiring young performers from throughout New York to embark on a rigorous week of Broadway-caliber training -focusing on acting, vocal performance and dance - learning from the brightest and best industry professionals. 

Broadway Dreams Foundation alumni Sidney DuPont (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Rachael Washington, and current student Dylan Christopher Gibson join the previously announced cast of Broadway faculty, alumni, and students for the June 12th Concert at Green Room 42.

This week, Broadway Dreams will workshop and present a staged reading of the new musical Mary & Max at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA. Through an integrated partnership between the not-for-profit performing arts training program and the musical's creators, Broadway Dreams students and faculty will have the opportunity to be actively involved in the process of creating a new musical.

Broadway Dreams and writer Drew Fornarola (STRAIGHT, Claudio Quest) will team up to present an evening of songs from Fornarola's musicals at the beautiful new Green Room 42 on 42nd Street. The event will be held on June 12th at 8pm and will help kick off the Broadway Dreams New York City Musical Theatre Intensive. Tickets are $20.

The year, 1972. The place, New York City. The Bronx is burning, Vietnam drags on, Watergate is coming to light and the Munich, Olympic massacre has just transpired. David and Yossi Shapiro, owners of a landmark delicatessen in midtown Manhattan have fallen on hard financial times. Reinhardt's, a soon to open, German delicatessen is well under construction across the street. The Shapiro brothers' livelihood is immediately threatened by the impending competition, exacerbated by the new restaurateur, who is of German descent. Being orphans of the holocaust, the older Shapiro brother enlists the services of a Nazi hunter to investigate the German family's past as a possible means to discredit them. With the horrors of the Holocaust a daily reality and Shapiro's failing delicatessen fading fast, the stage is ripe for conflict.

Seth Stewart, an original cast member of Broadway's HAMILTON, currently playing Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, has been added to the stellar lineup of participants at the 2017 United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT) Annual Conference & Stage Expo, March 8-11 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Artistic discrimination is the metaphor for racial discrimination in Thomas Gibbons' hard-hitting PERMANENT COLLECTION, the second work of his race trilogy, now on stage at iTheatre Collaborative. Charles St. Clair wields his directorial brush with an acute sense of the layers of meaning in Gibbons' script and the tempo required to draw out the colors and textures of each character's emotions. His actors follow suit with the requisite shades of mood and intensity.

Seth Stewart, an original cast member of Broadway's HAMILTON, currently playing Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, has been added to the stellar lineup of participants at the 2017 United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT) Annual Conference & Stage Expo, March 8-11 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Alayne Smith's novel, Ellen and the Three Predictions, has been acquired by Cactus Moon Publications. The historic fiction YA details the life of eighteen-year-old Ellen Jones and the predictions of Old Luella, a seer in the small town of Marshall, Alabama. Old Luella predicts Ellen will defend the beauty, foil a dictator, and find the soldier. When Ellen reads the predictions after her mother's unexpected death, this all seems quite far-fetched. Through the political and social changes of the early 1960s, Ellen, a budding journalist, comes to terms with her role in the world, as she encounters each of Old Luella's predictions. These encounters take her through the social taboos of Callendar Plantation, Alabama, to the promise of love and a career in Miami, and finally, to a daring rescue in Castro's Cuba. The novel also contains a special insert, 'Ellen's Notebook.' The notebook reflects Ellen's journalism education at the George W. Newman College of Journalism at the University of Columbus in Miami. A former advisor to CNN, Alayne Smith grew up in Alabama, lived in Denver and Tripoli, Libya, and settled in Atlanta, Georgia in 1969. She received masters and education specialist degrees in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. She served as a media specialist in Gwinnett County, Georgia for eleven years. In 1989, she moved to the high school level, initiating a high school program of broadcast journalism and video production where advanced students produced a monthly video magazine. With great honor, two of her top students were awarded an Emmy in 1999. For more about Ellen and the Three Predictions, visit the author's web site at www.alaynesmith.com. Alayne Smith is represented by Johnnie Bernhard, Literary Agent with Loiacono Literary Agency, www.LoiaconoLiteraryAgency.com .

IF/THEN co-stars Anthony Rapp joined Ryann Redmond in CRY ME A RIVER at 54 Below last month. Click below to watch them sing a mashup of 'Learn to Live Without' and 'Without You'!

Coming up this week, 54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.54Below.com or call (646) 476-3551.

Currently in Broadway's If/Then, Ryann Redmond brings her very first solo show, Ryann Redmond: Cry Me a River, to 54 Below! Ryann first broke onto the scene as Bridget in the Tony- nominated Bring It On the Musical, for which she received abundant critical acclaim. Stephen Brown of New York Magazine raved, 'As for show-stealers, well, it's a talent melee: Ryann Redmond slays us as Bridget, a nerdy, big-boned laugh-track of a cheer-wannabe who ends up with her own storyline.' David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter applauded Ryann's 'winning comic turns.'