Gina Francesca News

The Jeff Awards announced today a total of 115 nominations in 19 categories for the 45th Annual Non-Equity Jeff Awards.

Porchlight Music Theatre and Artistic Director Michael Weber are proud to announce the final production in its 2017 - 2018 season of Chicago's hit musical revue series, New Faces Sing Broadway. New Faces Sing Broadway 1975, hosted by Donica Lynn with direction by Christopher Pazdernik and music direction by David Fiorello, is Tuesday, June 5 at The Skokie Theatre, 7924 Lincoln Ave., Skokie at 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday, June 6 at The Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario Street, at 6:30 p.m. (The Arts Club presentation also includes a pre-show reception at 6:30 p.m. with performance at 7:30 p.m.). In tribute to the original New Faces series that ran on Broadway and on film from 1934 - 1968, Porchlight Music Theatre created the Chicago musical revue series, New Faces Sing Broadway as a showcase for the best emerging music talent now performing on Chicago stages. Each edition is a "time-machine" journey from the start to the finish of an entire musical season from the classic days of Broadway, peppered with photos and films of the era in an exciting multimedia presentation with a favorite Chicago theatre veteran like Donica Lynn hosting and introducing the next generation of music theatre artists while acting as your guide through a vintage year on the Great White Way. General admission tickets at Skokie Theatre are $22 and at The Arts Club of Chicago are $35 and are available at porchlightmusictheatre.org or at the Porchlight Music Theatre box office, 773.777.9884.

Refuge Theatre Project, the three-year-old company that staged HIGH FIDELITY: THE MUSICAL twice in makeshift record stores, BARE: A POP OPERA in a church sanctuary and LYSISTRATA JONES in a gymnasium; will continue its practice of performing in found spaces with THE SPITFIRE GRILL, opening on March 25.

LYSISTRATA JONES a musical comedy by five-time Tony Award nominee Douglas Carter Beane, with songs by Lewis Flinn takes the premise of the Greek comedy LYSISTRATA, in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands and lovers until the long-lasting Peloponnesian War is finally ended and updates it to the present day at an American college.

Refuge Theatre Project, the three-year-old company that stunned some observers when their HIGH FIDELITY: THE MUSICAL won the 2017 Non-Equity Jeff Awards for Best Musical Production, Best Direction of a Musical and Best Scenic Design, has announced that their next production - the professional Chicago premiere of LYSISTRATA JONES.

This winter, fun will be spelled U-A-C as Up and Coming Theatre Company brings 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' to Phoenix Bar & Night Club.

Refuge Theatre Project will again perform in a non-traditional space for their production of bare: a pop opera, which will complete the company's second season with a five-week run from October 7 through November 6, 2016. The sanctuary of Epworth United Methodist Church at 5253 N. Kenmore will be the stage for this sung-through musical, set in a private co-educational Roman Catholic boarding school. bare, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2000 and was mounted off-Broadway in New York in 2004, follows gay and straight teenage characters who are dealing with their emerging sexuality. The pastoral guidance they receive from their teachers is not always affirming.