Holly Sidell News

What happens when everything you're told makes you a woman is taken away? At just 38, that was the question writer and performer Holly Sidell was faced with when she had to endure a double mastectomy and chemotherapy to fight Stage 2 Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

With live theatre slowly returning to Los Angeles, Theatre Palisades veteran director Sherman Wayne is presenting 'When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet' by Charles George, which was safely recorded live on April 24th on the Theatre Palisades stage. The one-act 30-minute play is now streaming on the Broadway on Demand platform June 1 through June 5. And the group's Youth Theatre Program is presenting 'Disney's Aladdin Jr.' this summer.

After surviving Triple Negative Breast Cancer at the age of 38, Holly Sidell, a regular on the Theatre Palisades stage since her role as Suzette in 2014's Don't Dress For Dinner, felt a calling to turn her experience into a solo show with the wish that sharing her struggles and healing bring solace, hope, and some laughter, to anyone who may be suffering.

The Whitefire Theatre presents SOLOFEST 2020, the largest solo theater festival on the West Coast. Now in its 8th year, SOLOFEST 2020 brings 80 shows in 90 days celebrating solo artists from around the globe - each story-teller sharing their compelling and often unusual take on life. SOLOFEST 2020 runs January 4 - March 28.

Theatre Palisades is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Ken Ludwig's LEND ME A TENOR, presenting the hilarious comedy which won three Tony Awards and four Drama Desk Awards. An angry wife, a presumed death, crazy costumes designed by June Lissandrello, secret sex romps, loads of slamming doors and mistaken identities make for a delightful, farcical comedy. Director Sherman Wayne encourages you to attend with a willing suspension of disbelief, putting aside your rational faculties and sense of realism/logic for the sake of theatrical merriment and enjoyment, just as worldwide audiences have been doing for the past 30 years. It's an ideal way to laugh your troubles away for a few hours!

English playwright and screenwriter Frederick Knott, though a reluctant writer, is known for his ingeniously complex, crime-related plots even though he only completed three plays in his career. Two have become classics: the London-based stage thriller Dial M for Murder, which was later filmed in Hollywood by Alfred Hitchcock, and the chilling 1966 play Wait Until Dark, which also became a Hollywood film starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman terrorized by thugs in her basement apartment. His third play, WRITE ME A MURDER, has never achieved the same acclaim nor been performed nearly as much as his other two hit plays. See it now at Theatre Palisades, directed with attention-grabbing skill by Michael-Anthony Nozzi.

Noel Coward's plays epitomize the sophisticated wit of the era between the two world wars, and his comedy of manners "HAY FEVER" about a family whose theatrical excesses torment a group of unsuspecting visitors, epitomizes what makes Coward plays so well-loved by audiences worldwide. Considered by many to be cleverly constructed, wittily written, slightly cynical, and undeniably entertaining, the work contains all the elements that helped establish Coward's reputation as a award-winning playwright.

Theatre Palisades presents Noel Coward's hilarious comedy "HAY FEVER" opening Friday, January 15 through Sunday, February 21, 2016 with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. at the Pierson Playhouse, located at 941 Temescal Canyon Road in Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. Here's your first look at cast photos!

The brilliantly creative mind of Michael Keith Allen has worked wonders with a new re-telling of Shakespeare's MACBETH at the Art of Acting Studio by setting the tragedy in a postmodern Scotland where street thugs battle for leadership as well as territory, while cutting the run time to 90 minutes and allowing the actors to speak without heavy accents, making it easy to understand the dialogue and follow the plot and character development. It is definitely the best rendition of the classic I have ever seen.

When all the elements fall into place in perfect harmony, the resulting frivolity and laughter go far beyond the words on the page to reveal utter hysteria. Such is the case with Anglo-Franco Fusion Farce DON'T DRESS OF DINNER by Marc Camoletti, adapted by Robin Hawdon, now onstage at Theatre Palisades through May 11.