Laura Lee News

OPERA America has announced the three pairs of protégés and  mentors selected for the organization's Mentorship Program for Women Administrators, now in its fourth year.

The company  helps these leading creators expand their reach to all major podcast platforms and connects them with over 200 premium advertising partners. Over the past year, the Studio71 podcast network has seen incredible growth with streams increasing by nearly 100% year over year.

This new initiative allows Professional Company Members to receive up to $10,000 to subsidize as much as 50 percent of the fee of a woman stage director or conductor who is contracted for the first time by the company.

A lifelong Westerner and recent Los Angeles transplant, Knowler spent his childhood in Yuma, Arizona and Houston, Texas, where much of his learning was self-directed: riding dirt bikes in the desert, writing poetry, or visiting antique stores with his mother, who sold vintage glass beads.

Coney Island USA has announced its Spring 2021 fundraiser, in partnership with musician Jesse Malin and his East Village club The Bowery Electric.

21c Museum Hotels, a multi-venue contemporary art museum and award-winning hospitality company, and Artadia, a nonprofit grantmaker and nationwide community of visual artists, curators, and patrons, have announced their collaboration on the inaugural 21c Artadia Award. 

OPERA America will host the fifth annual Backstage Brunch, a virtual salon  and fundraiser in support of its Mentorship Program for Women Administrators, on Saturday, April 17,  12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT.

OPERA America has announced the launch of the Opera Grants  for Female Stage Directors and Conductors program, a new initiative developed to advance gender parity  in the field by incentivizing opera companies to hire women for key artistic leadership roles. The grants are  generously funded by the Marineau Family Foundation. 

As the world has moved almost entirely online, I have had the pleasure of virtually “meeting” cool people from around the globe, people with whom I otherwise would have never crossed paths.

Crosscut has reported on the various ways that Seattle theaters are looking ahead, seeing how their venues can adapt to present performances amid the new health standards brought on by the pandemic.

OPERA America is pleased to announce the three pairs of protégés and mentors selected for the organization's Mentorship Program for Women, now in its third year. The Mentorship Program for Women provides a unique opportunity for promising opera company administrators to be paired with established industry leaders who can help them identify barriers to advancement and develop plans for professional growth. 

Three veterans of Woodstock Fringe, Bette Carlson Siler, Ric Siler and Wallace Norman will be performing three one-act solo plays on Friday, January 31 at 7pm at the Hudson Valley Performing Arts Laboratory in Poughkeepsie. This event is hosted by The Dramatist Guild Footlights Series in The Hudson Valley. 

The Dramatists Guild Opera Committee's Librettist Initiative premieres the short film a?oeCredit the Librettist: Conversations with Today's Opera Makersa?? at Opera America's New Works Forum on Thursday, January 16 at 10am at the National Opera Center, 330 7th Avenue, 7th Floor, New York.

It may surprise you to learn that Stephen King didn't write 'The Shining' and Sister Helen Prejean didn't write 'Dead Man Walking.' Even more, you may be startled to learn that Herman Melville didn't write 'Moby Dick' and Louisa May Alcott didn't have a hand in 'Little Women.' Well, of course they did--except when it came to turning the works into operas. Then, respectively, Mark Campbell and Terrence McNally took over, as did Gene Scheer and Mark Adamo.

OPERA America is pleased to announce the 15 participants from the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America who have been selected for its 2020 Leadership Intensive program. These future industry leaders were chosen from a pool of 44 candidates through a competitive selection process focusing on candidates' potential to make significant contributions to the opera field. The program was generously established with the continued support of the American Express Foundation. 

Based on the true story of a legendary brothel that operated from the 1840s to 1973, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a rollicking hootenanny of a musical. Miss Mona's cozy bordello, The Chicken Ranch, is the heart and soul of this small Texas town -also one of its worst-kept secrets.

This April, Opera Memphis' seventh annual Midtown Opera Festival will be anchored by premiere performances of The Falling and the Rising, a new American opera written by Memphis playwright Jerre Dye and composed by Opera Memphis favorite Zach Redler.

I keep finding that theatre, even revivals of classic plays, is more often than not, about the moment. Whatever side of the aisle you find yourself, we all seem to agree that America is as divided as it has ever been, and each side has taken to viewing the other with collective disbelief. 'How can they THINK that?' has become a daily reaction.

In an updated chamber version never before seen on the West Coast, ArtsWest will next stage John Caird & Paul Gordon's Tony-nominated musical JANE EYRE, adapted from Charlotte Bronte's classic story of passion, self-discovery, and freedom. Performances will run Thursday through Sunday until December 23.

Nineteenth-century mansions always put me in a good mood on a cool September night. If there is a good story to go along with said mansion, all the better. Actors Theatre of Louisville kicks off the fall and its New Play Project with A. Rey Pamatmat's The Electric Harvest, a site-specific one-act set in the Conrad Caldwell House in Saint James Court (the bartender gave us the low down on its haunted history), but this isn't a traditional haunting story or really anything you would expect from the setting. The actors inhabiting the mansion, we discover, are caught in a continuous death loop, killed and brought back to life by a flock creepy bird-like demons.