Mark Hardwick News

Artisan Center Theater has announced auditions for SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN, conceived by Alan Bailey, featuring book by Connie Ray, with musical arrangements by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick.

Ocala Civic Theatre presents Pump Boys and Dinettes beginning tonight!

Since outdoor performance permits are not being given at this time, Theater for the New City has adapted its 2020 Street Theater tour to the virtual space. 

Ancram Opera House will stream its newest program, LOCAL CHARACTERS, featuring AOH director Paul Ricciardi conducting lively, free-wheeling interviews with local residents to learn what makes them tick, online July 25 at 8PM.

Summer Street Theater is one of the delights of the season and has been central to Theater for the New City's mission since the organization's first such production in 1976.

'Smoke on the Mountain' is a entertaining and uplifting show about a 1938 traveling family roadshow bringing gospel music, bluegrass and more. South City Theatre brings this touring performance from church to church for just a few weeks. Even if you are not a religious person, you will find this show to be fun and delightful in character work and music.

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company will open its 43rd annual tour August 3 with 'No Brainer or the Solution to Parasites,' a rip-roaring musical which portrays our road to national madness as a bad trip to Hades. Free performances will tour parks, playgrounds and closed-off streets throughout the five boroughs through September 15. Book, lyrics and direction are by Crystal Field; the musical score is composed and arranged by Joseph Vernon Banks. (Schedule follows at bottom of this document.)

PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES is a Tony nominated 1981 musical written by the performance group of the same name. The group, Pump Boys and Dinettes, consisted of John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann. The members also jointly directed and starred in the original Broadway production. The show is basically a series of standalone songs rather than a conventional story tied together with music. The book for this musical is very thin and really only exists to get to the next song. Each song represents some element of small-town life: the sacredness of fishing, the fun of owning a pair of "Drinkin Shoes," and other assorted blue collar tales including growing up with with their grandma, whom they called Mamaw. The company tosses off 21 short-form songs with performances that harken back to simpler, more straight forward times with good natured knee-slapping, song, dance and humor. They shatter the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience and eventually coming right out into it and the end result is a refreshing blast from the past.

The Winter Park Playhouse continues to delight audiences with its new 2019-20 Series of professional Mainstage musicals.

One thing's for sure - country musicals are an awful lot of fun. There aren't very many of them and, if you can name one at all, it's most likely THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS or THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM. But there is another rarely produced gem that is just as enjoyable - PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES - the fun-loving retro revue written by its original cast (John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel, and Jim Wann).

PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES was my first Broadway musical, so it not only holds a special place in my heart, but I still remember most of the lyrics. Running for 577 performances in 1982-83 and earning a Tony nomination for Best Musical, PUMP BOYS was 'the little show that could' with just six cast members and a small set. But the characters and songs captured many fans who came out to relive the experience at Feinstein's/54 Below July 22.

Next week, FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club & Private Event Destination, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz, and beyond.

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company will open its 42nd annual tour August 4 with 'SHAME! Or The Doomsday Machine,' a rip-roaring musical in which the Theory of Relativity explains modern politics. Free performances will tour closed-off streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs until September 16. Book, lyrics and direction are by Crystal Field; the musical score is composed and arranged by Joseph Vernon Banks. (Schedule follows at bottom of this document.)

Next month, FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club & Private Event Destination, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz, and beyond.

FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents Pump Boys And Dinettes: Reunion Concert featuring original cast/creators Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, Jim Wann,John Foley, and John Schimmel, with Bob Stillman. Pump Boys And Dinettes ran for 577 performances on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony for Best Musical in 1982. It was the first Broadway hit written and performed by Actor-Musicians and is considered a pioneering work in that regard. The London/West End production was nominated for an Olivier for Best Musical, 1985, and the Toronto version won Canada's Dora Award for Best Musical shortly after. Since then it has been produced across the country and around the world, became Chicago's longest-running musical for decades and remains a perennial favorite. This concert version will feature the entire score and is directed by JoAnn M. Hunter.

Birmingham musician and storyteller Norton Dill, of local favorite The Dill Pickers, headlines TNT's next offering, 'Pump Boys and Dinettes.' The musical is the fifth production of the theatre's 32nd season and runs April 19 through May 4.

Birmingham musician and storyteller Norton Dill, of local favorite The Dill Pickers, headlines TNT's next offering, "Pump Boys and Dinettes." The musical is the fifth production of the theatre's 32nd season and runs April 19 through May 4.

PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES is an amazing country musical with comedy and a talented cast who play their own instruments, telling the story, mostly through song. The Connecticut Cabaret Theatre, in Berlin, CT, has once again put together a first rate cast. For a night of great music and entertainment, I highly recommend PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES.

Artistic Director Carol Piersol and 5th Wall Theatre in partnership with The American Theatre in Hampton, Virginia are thrilled to announce their co-production of Pump Boys and Dinettes, a musical that brought the warmth and heartfelt storytelling of country music to Off-Broadway, Broadway, and West End audiences for years.  Directed by Richard M. Parison, Jr., this show features a talented cast from Virginia and beyond that includes locals Mike Bamford, Rachel Marrs, and Desiree Roots along with New York performers Mike Cefalo and John Mervini as well as North Carolina performer Sean Powell with music direction by Storm Burks and choreography by Karen Getz.  Pump Boys and Dinettes is set on a lonely stretch of Highway 57, where the Pump Boys -- Jackson, Jim, Eddie, and L.M. -- fill the gas tanks of weary travelers while the Cupp sisters, Rhetta and Prudie, serve up comfort food and slices of their famous homemade pie in the Double Cupp Diner next door.  Together, they fashion an evening of down home country music delight with tales of both hilarity and heartbreak played on everything from guitars and pianos to kitchen utensils.

Theater's power to transform and transport is astonishing and the capability of artists to create a sense of time and place, with words and music and theatrical wizardry to lend a tangible feeling to the experience can leave you breathless. Who'd have ever thought that such thrilling artistry, the very magic of make believe, could be so vividly expressed, so awesomely felt in two hours spent in a backwoods Southern church on a Saturday night in 1938? But that's exactly what happens in Smoke on the Mountain, Connie Ray and Alan Bailey's evocative, down-home musical that lovingly takes its audiences back home again in ways not even Thomas Wolfe may ever have imagined.