Martin Luther King, Jr. News

Heritage Theatre Festival will wrap up its 2018 season with The Mountaintop, an Olivier Award-winning play by Katori Hall. The Mountaintop is built around a fantastical imagining of the final night of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life, and a chance encounter with a motel maid that offers a rare window into the human side of the American icon and presents a compelling bridge from this world to the next.

THE QUEEN BEES is a different type of jukebox musical, one that focuses on the rise to stardom of a fictional 'girl group' trio of the 1960s, one whose story holds similarities to that of the Shangri-Las. Excellent singing and acting by a talented cast of three make this show a highly recommendable experience, at the Connecticut Cabaret Theatre, in Berlin.

America's largest and longest running grassroots theatre project, THE ONE-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL (#1MPF) is beginning a dynamic partnership with Kitchen Theatre Company and creating The First Ithaca One-Minute Play Festival.

Emmy award-winning journalist Kelly Wright, former anchor and reporter for Fox News Channel, performs a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence to kick off Historic Richmond Town's Pinwheel Parade, led by fife and drum, as New York City's living history village Celebrates the Centennial!

A diverse cast; a score packed with many musical genres, including rap; and a sung-through treatment of an important period of American history... No, it's not Hamilton, but a superb concert presentation of the late Martin Smith's King The Musical by Hackney Empire and London Musical Theatre Orchestra about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Strap in, folks…things are about to get wild over at Heritage Theatre Festival with the classic Marx Brothers musical The Cocoanuts - coming to the Culbreth Theatre from July 20-29.

The York Symphony Orchestra is proud to announce the 2018-2019 season, HEROES!, featuring performances inspired by musical heroes, national heroes, heroes from olden times, sports heroes and even superheroes. HEROES! will offer audiences twelve performances, including six Classical Series concerts, four Pops Series concerts and the annual Young Person's Concert.

MOTOWN is not just a company. It is an icon. This was the soundtrack of decades of change in America and still serves as the inspiration for current innovators in music. So it only seems inevitable that someone would see that this needed to be adapted for the musical theatre stage.

Project1VOICE One Play One Day 2018 is set with national staged readings of Pearl Cleage's Flyin' West on Sunday, June 17, and Monday, June 18. Theater companies, museums, colleges and universities around the country unite for this eighth annual theater celebration that revives and re-introduces forgotten classic plays in the American theater. Check your local listings for exact dates and times in your area.

Freddie Tapner is the founder and Principal Conductor of London Musical Theatre Orchestra (LMTO). As well as conducting LMTO at their professional engagements, he performs in and around London and sits on the Developmental Board for the National Youth Music Theatre.

History called it heroism. They called it high school. Rebel Theatrical Management, LLC (Harvey Butler, producer), The Steward Family, in association with The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, present the New York premiere of the new play Little Rock, written and directed by Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, now in performance for a limited engagement through September 8, 2018 at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture. Opening Night is June 14, 2018 at 7:00PM. Check out photos from the production below!

Each season at the Stratford Festival, there is a production that is geared to children or youth and is put on by Schulich Children's/Youth Plays. This season, that production is TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Based on the novel by Harper Lee and dramatized by Christopher Sergel, this play is likely advertised as being geared towards youth and adults because the book is so commonly read at the high school level, and also because it explores the perspective of children. The material and the issues dealt with are hard ones--for both young people and adults. this is what made the novel so important when it was published, and what makes this play important today. The powerful story is matched by powerful performances by all involved. This is a play that will linger in your mind long past the final bows.

Further details of the Bristol Old Vic's productions taking the theatre up to Jan 2019 were revealed today.

Project1VOICE One Play One Day 2018 is set with national staged readings of Pearl Cleage's Flyin' West on Sunday, June 17, and Monday, June 18. Theater companies, museums, colleges and universities around the country unite for this eighth annual theater celebration that revives and re-introduces forgotten classic plays in the American theater. Check your local listings for exact dates and times in your area.

Mei-Ann Chen, Music Director of Chicago Sinfonietta and Jim Hirsch, CEO of Chicago Sinfonietta, have announced the orchestra's programming for 2018-19---Chicago Sinfonietta's 31st season and Chen's eighth year on the podium.

Nationally-recognized as one of the nation's leading producers of new works of theatre for young people and their families, The Coterie Theatre announces its 40th Anniversary Season will entertain, engage, and serve as memorable experiences that all generations of the family can share. Highlighted in the season of two plays and four musicals, selected by Producing Artistic Director, Jeff Church, will be the world premiere of a new play about a teenaged Martin Luther King Jr., by noted local screenwriter and playwright, Kevin Willmott, and a new musical inspired by music made famous by The Beatles.

Established in 2009 with a special focus on collaboration and service, Classical Movements' extraordinary Ihlombe! South African Choral Festival features a true diversity of international choirs performing for effusive audiences in every venue imaginable, making for what the Cape Times calls "singing that nourishes the body and soul." Over the past decade, Ihlombe! has featured nearly 90 choirs from some 10 countries throughout the entirety of South Africa.

Richard Allen and Taran Gray have released a song from their new musical, BAYARD, based on the life of Bayard Rustin, the activist and Civil Rights leader credited with organizing and conceiving the iconic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The musical will follow Bayard during his organization of the March for Jobs and Freedom and the obstacles he personally encountered being an openly gay black man.

Civic Acts: New Plays Toward The Beloved Community is Civic Ensemble's new play festival in Ithaca featuring new political plays by nationally and internationally renowned playwrights whose work centers on women and people of color. These plays deal with the challenges our communities face in moving society toward what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called The Beloved Community. Civic Acts is one of the rare new play festivals in the United States devoted to socially-engaged theatre. The Beloved Community, first articulated by early 20th-century philosophers Josiah Royce and Randolph Bourne, is a vision where people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, sexual orientation backgrounds/identities seek to realize justice within the community and in the broader world.

In 1968, two great American leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were felled by assassins' bullets. On Christmas Eve of the same year, three American astronauts became the first human beings to orbit the moon, demonstrating that the dream of President John F. Kennedy was near realization, even after his untimely death. Now, the American people are called upon to abandon the last half century of degradation and war, and choose the optimistic path, identified as 'the future Spirit of Humanity.' In that spirit, the genius Ludwig van Beethoven once said that if his music were properly understood, 'warfare in and among nations would become an impossibility.' This performance is dedicated to that principle, and will be performed at the scientific tuning of C=256Hz.