Jay Smith News

The Del Shores Foundation presents its second weekend-long Del Shores Foundation Writers Festival February 23-25, 2024 at Out Front Theatre Company in Atlanta. Learn more about the festival here!

Experience a monumental performance of Beethoven 9: An Ode To Joy, Hope & Community as Santa Barbara Symphony opens their 2023/24 season with choral collaborations. Don't miss this celebration of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 on October 14 & 15.

 The Santa Barbara Symphony has announced its 2023-24 season, continuing a musical legacy focused on the transformative power of music. Music & Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti, now in his 18th season with the Santa Barbara Symphony, has curated an expansive eight-month-long musical journey that spotlights local, national, and international talent, as well as community, collaboration, and classical traditions.  

The Del Shores Foundation has revealed the winners of the second Del Shores Foundation Writers Search from the unproduced plays, screenplays and shorts/web series scripts of LGBTQ+ Southern writers.

Next in BroadStage's blackbox series is multi-genre artists Mento Buru in the East Wing on Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:00pm. The blackbox series was curated by The Reverend Shawn Amos.  

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, is thrilled to announce the winner of the 2022 Smith Prize for Political Theater: writer, performer, director, comedian, and dramaturg, David Davila.

The Toronto Biennial of Art (the Biennial/TBA) announced on March 25, during the opening celebration for its second edition, that Camille Turner is the recipient of its Artist Prize, recognizing an artist’s outstanding contribution to the Biennial, and Aycoobo / Wilson Rodríguez is the recipient of the Emerging Artist Prize acknowledging a promising, early-career Biennial artist.

The Santa Barbara Symphony presents “Beethoven in Bloom” on Saturday, February 19 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, February 20 at 3:00 pm at the Granada Theatre. This first-of-its-kind concert is presented in partnership with Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and will spotlight a piece by EMMYⓇ Award-winning composer Jeff Beal, written in response to the Thomas Fire and Montecito mudslides.

National New Play Network has announced the winner of the 2021 Smith Prize for Political Theater: Bernardo Cubría. His play The Giant Void in my Soul was nominated for Best Playwright at the 2018 Ovation Awards, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, and The Stage Raw Awards.

Actor-writer-lawyer Mark McGoldrick is someone with an unusually compelling life story. A self-described former “f**kup” whose youth was largely spent in a haze of drug use and delinquency, McGoldrick was involved in a horrifying accident that could have cost him his life and did leave him paralyzed. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, McGoldrick used this tragedy as an opportunity to reset his life. He went to Harvard Law School and became a public defender for Alameda County, representing people, mostly of color, charged with the same offenses of his earlier days. A number of years ago, he felt the compulsion to start putting his riveting stories onstage by writing and performing solo shows. McGoldrick is now chronicling his story over four monthly episodes in Countercoup, The Marsh’s first broadcast series. Countercoup will be presented the first weekend of each month, May 1 – August 8, 2021 with a new installment performed each weekend at 7:30pm (PDT), Saturdays and 5:00pm (PDT), Sundays. BroadwayWorld recently spoke with McGoldrick while he was on a break from his day job as a public defender in downtown Oakland. We discussed how he was able to recover from personal tragedy and to harness his innate mouthiness to use it for the greater good, how his stage work can affect his loved ones, ongoing issues with our justice system, and some unanticipated benefits from the Covid pandemic for folks with disabilities. As expected, he was fascinating to talk to – keenly intelligent and brutally honest with a sly sense of humor, but also deeply thoughtful, considerate and ultimately quite hopeful. He has a propensity to speak in long, complex sentences that manifest his experience as a public defender.

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces the winner of the 2020 Smith Prize for Political Theater: Vickie Ramirez.

In alignment with A Noise Within's (ANW) season theme of Spirits Rising, Noise Now will further expand its reach for fall 2020 by partnering with ten Los Angeles cultural arts organizations for ten events beginning in late August through the beginning of January. The fall season was announced last week via Facebook Live by ANW Director of Cultural Programming Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx. Launched in February 2019 and now in its second year, Noise Now is a cultural initiative by A Noise Within aimed at sharing artistic resources and producing events that are radically accessible to all audiences, including underrepresented groups, communities of color, young people, and anyone who may not be equitably represented in theatre.

The New Jersey City University Center for the Arts presents the 7th Annual NJCU Alumni Jazz Big Band Concert on Friday, September 6 at 6 p.m. on the J. Owen Grundy Pier, Exchange Place, in Jersey City. Conducted by Professor Emeritus Richard Lowenthal, this free concert features trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and vocalists Allan Harris and Antoinette Montague.

The New Jersey City University Center for the Arts presents the 7th Annual NJCU Alumni Jazz Big Band Concert on Friday, September 6 at 6 p.m. on the J. Owen Grundy Pier, Exchange Place, in Jersey City. Conducted by Professor Emeritus Richard Lowenthal, this free concert features trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and vocalists Allan Harris and Antoinette Montague.

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces its 2019-20 grant recipients, including the 2019 Smith Prize for Political Theatre, seven Producer Residencies, and eight Collaboration Fund awards that will support partnerships between multiple Member Theaters, playwrights, and other theater makers in various projects.

Karen Kain, Artistic Director of The National Ballet of Canada, and Executive Director Barry Hughson today announced that MAD HOT BALLET: Desert Dream raised over $1.2 million. The annual fundraising gala took place on June 12 in Toronto at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. #MADHOTBALLET

The Santa Barbara Symphony welcomes Kathryn R Martin and Carrie West to the Board of Directors. The Symphony's Board works to support the organization's mission to enrich the community by creating powerful musical experiences performed with passion and excellence, and by providing indispensable music education and community engagement.

Talent. Where does it come from? Is it something passed down from generation to generation? Or is it something more?

Talent. Where does it come from? Is it something passed down from generation to generation? Or is it something more?

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces its 2018-19 grant recipients, including the 2018 Smith Prize for Political Theatre, six Producer Residencies, and five Collaboration Fund awards that will support partnerships between multiple Member Theaters, playwrights, and other theater makers in various projects.