David Gaines comes to Baltimore with his extraordinary solo show 7 (x1) Samurai, for two performances only December 21st & 22nd at Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201.
The Hylton Performing Arts Center officially opened the Education and Rehearsal Wing with a ribbon cutting celebration December 3, 2019. The $13.5 million expansion on George Mason University's Science and Technology Campus, added 17,000 square feet and includes two rehearsal halls, six practice rooms, two classrooms, and two additional lobby spaces, allowing the community to utilize the Hylton Center in an expanded way to educate, rehearse, perform, and collaborate.
The Center for the Arts at George Mason University continues the 2019/20 Great Performances at Mason season this January and February with innovative dance programsa?"including a world premiere co-commission, stirring classical music, and the return of Virginia Opera, in addition to signature events from Mason's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Calling all musical adventurists! The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's new CSO Proof series offers a novel way to experience performances at Music Hall. Imagine artists and audience members sharing the stage in casual, intermission-less concerts with elements of music, theater, lighting and dance. During the 2019/2020 season, three CSO Proof performances will help celebrate the Orchestra's 125th anniversary by presenting artists collaborating with different curators who craft themes connecting orchestral music to listeners in adventurous ways.
Buglisi Dance Theatre celebrates its 26th Anniversary Season with a program of works by artistic director Jacqulyn Buglisi, company principal dancer Virginie Mécène, Kristine Bendul and Abdiel Jacobsen, and Meagan King. The program will feature two world premieres by Ms. Buglisi, and a NYC premiere by Ms. Mécène, presented with a commissioning award from the New York State Council on the Arts, and performed by the brilliant of company dancers known for their power and passion. The Tuesday December 10 performance, an early Performance of Premieres running one hour, will begin at 6 PM and consist of The Moss Anthology: Variation#5, UNUM, In the name of the fire, and the flame, and grace, and Sand. The full program will be performed Wednesday and Thursday, with curtain time at 7:30 PM.
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation's premier member organization of independent storytellers, announced today the nominees for the 29th Annual IFP Gotham Awards. Ten competitive awards will be presented to independent features and series. In addition to the competitive awards, Gotham Tributes will be given to actors Laura Dern and Sam Rockwell, director Ava DuVernay, and the Gotham Industry Tribute to Glen Basner.
The Center for the Arts at George Mason University continues the 2019/20 season this November and December with an array of dance, theater, opera, and music from around the world through programs from Great Performances at Mason, the Family Series, as well as signature events from Mason's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, Fairview, currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, is a show that desperately calls for conversation. It's no wonder, then, that each performance is immediately followed by community discussions led by Build With, a DC-based anti-racist training, facilitation, and consulting practice focused on people, power, and partnership. While I wasn't able to stay for this event following Saturday night's performance, it is an important step in ensuring this work's complicated themes are digested in a clear way. Fairview is one of the most conceptual shows in recent memory. Not every idea can be fully explored in this production, which has a tight 100-minute run time that director Stevie Walker-Webb keeps clipping at a good pace. Nevertheless, Fairview is a necessary piece for anyone looking to dive deeper into discussions of race and identity in America.
The College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) at George Mason University presents its 14th ARTS by George! benefit Saturday, September 28, 2019. The philanthropic event headlined by Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award winner Audra McDonald raises support for student scholarships in visual arts, dance, music, theater, computer game design, film, arts management, as well as for the Mason Community Arts Academy, the Green Machine Ensembles, and the Great Performances at Mason series. Information and ticket/sponsorship packages are available at artsbygeorge.gmu.edu.
Few characters become so embedded in the fabric of pop culture that merely the mention of a color can elicit their memory. Such is the case, however, for Elle Woods, the golden-haired Malibu native at the center of Legally Blonde. Talk about the color pink for too long and someone in your circle is guaranteed to quote one of the now-iconic lines made immortal by Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 film. The 2007 Broadway musical burdened its star, Laura Bell Bundy, with the responsibility of carrying on Ms. Witherspoon's legacy while appearing in almost every scene and belting her lungs out. This hot pink explosion of female empowerment and sisterhood is a deceptively demanding production with a non-stop score by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin. While the DC premiere at The Keegan Theatre is a fun evening, the overly-choreographed production feels like Elle Woods' first day at Harvard: its trying a little too hard.
George Mason University's School of Theater and School of Music will collaborate this fall to present the newest adaptation of the American musical Rags, a heart-warming story of loss and hope surrounding a group of Jewish immigrants as they arrive to start a new life in America at the turn of the 20th century. The D.C.-area premiere of the new version of Rags will run October 31 to November 3, 2019 in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall (4373 Mason Pond Dr., Fairfax, VA).
Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces select cast members for upcoming productions as part of the company's 2019/20 Season in advance of single tickets going on sale July 30, 2019.
Manoa Valley Theatre completes its momentous 50th anniversary play season with the hilarious musical comedy sci-fi fantasy by Richard O'Brien playing July 18th - August 4th. One fateful night, Brad Majors and his fiancee, Janet Weiss - a wholesome and utterly normal young couple in love - innocently set out to visit an old professor. Unfortunately for them, this night out is destined to be one they will never forget. A thunderstorm and a flat-tire force them to seek help at the castle of Dr. Frank 'N' Furter, an alien, transvestite scientist with a manic genius and insatiable libido. Brad, Janet, and Frank 'N' Furter's cohorts are swept up into the scientist's latest experiment. The night's misadventures will cause Brad and Janet to question everything they've known about themselves, each other, love, and lust. A loving homage to the classic B sci-fi film and horror genres with an irresistible rock'n'roll score, The Rocky Horror Show is a hilarious, wild ride that no audience will soon forget.
Luis Salgado is quickly becoming known as an acclaimed director and choreographer. He has just returned from Germany where he served as Associate DirectorChoreographer for Cirque du Solieil's PARAMOUR. Two years ago he directed and choreographed the Helen Hayes winning musical IN THE HEIGHTS at the GALA Hispanic Theatre. He is now returning to GALA with his own version of FAME, The Musical.
The cast of The Gala Hispanic Theatre's bilingual production of Fame -- The Musical takes this marathon show at a dead sprint, bucking Broadway bluster to deliver on the idea fame is an illusion, and hard work is what we seek.
I've never been disappointed by a show at Signature Theatre. Even their ongoing Grand Hotel, which is working with some less-than-stellar source material, is elevated by the wonderful craftsmanship and talented artists this theater welcomes. The same can unfortunately not be said of the disappointing Spunk, which opened in Signature's more intimate ARK theater on Friday. Zora Neale Hurston's masterful prose falls flat in a production that feels like it opened too soon, resulting in an evening lacking in the gumption this show tries to champion.
Award-winning artists' collective Rogue Artists Ensemble is thrilled to announce the Inaugural Rogue Lab Readings Series, a four-day event that includes readings of seven new works written, directed, and designed by emerging LA artists, as well as post-show discussions and receptions. The reading series will feature new plays by 2018-2019 Rogue Lab playwrights Lisa Sanaye Dring, Eric Fagundes, John Guerra, Mildred Inez Lewis, Chelsea Sutton, and Jennie Webb, and a special new play presentation by writing team Taylor Coffman and Z. Lupetin.
At the 35th annual Helen Hayes Awards on Monday, May 13 at The Anthem, actress, director, playwright, leader, and professor Jennifer L. Nelson will receive the 2019 Helen Hayes Tribute. Nelson has dedicated her artistic life to increasing access and inclusion of traditionally marginalized theatre artists largely in the Washington area region, and was a Helen Hayes Award recipient for her original play Torn from the Headlines, which received the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 1997.
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