Melody Butiu News

Theater Now New York has announced the full lineup and cast for the first night of SOUND BITES Extra Bites, which will stream online Friday, May 21st at 7pm. 

Broadway Barkada today announced the release of a music video honoring essential workers and first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In conjunction, they have started up a GoFundMe page to help raise funds for one of their favorite small businesses, Jeepney, a Filipino restaurant in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Broadway might be dark, but that doesn't mean that theatre isn't happening everywhere! Below, check out where you can get your daily fix of Broadway this weekend, October 231-November 1, 2020.

Casting has been announced for SOUND BITES Streaming Live, a two-night streaming event premiering six new 10-minute musicals on November 13th and 20th at 8pm. Each evening will feature three new musicals and interviews with their creators, hosted by Thomas Morrissey and Colleen Harris.

Arena Stage's Right to be Forgotten celebrated opening night on October 24, 2019. Check out photos from the evening!

'Right to be Forgotten' is a thought-provoking, insightful play that addresses a key issue in our lives. Arena Stage's production is a smart, solid, and charming show with a strong cast and production team, and has the ability to elevate the debate in an honest and nuanced way.

Tonight marks the Broadway opening of David Byrne's American Utopia, so in honor of the occasion, we're looking back at Byrne's previous experience in the world of theatre: Here Lies Love! Check out the video to get a peek inside the show in the studio recording their cast recording with Ruthie Ann Miles, Jose Llana, and Conrad Ricamora and more!

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater presents Sharyn Rothstein's timely tale about one man's fierce battle to reclaim his right to privacy.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full company for the world premiere of Sharyn Rothstein's (By the Water, USA Network's “Suits”) timely tale about one man's fierce battle to reclaim his right to privacy. Filled with secrets, lies and political backstabbing, Right to be Forgotten centers around a young man's mistake that haunts him online a decade later. Desperate for a normal life, he goes to extraordinary lengths to cut himself off from his past. In a time when everyone has their own version of the truth and their own way of spreading it, who decides which truths get buried and which live forever online? Directed by Deputy Artistic Director Seema Sueko, Right to be Forgotten runs October 11 – November 10, 2019 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full company for the world premiere of Sharyn Rothstein's (By the Water, USA Network's a?oeSuitsa??) timely tale about one man's fierce battle to reclaim his right to privacy.

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival is now presenting a breathtaking and visually stunning production of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical South Pacific. The beautiful, relevant, and captivating love story sweeps the audience away to an island paradise under the creative direction of Scott Weinstein. This musical, that has garnered ten Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, can now add this brilliant production to its lists of accomplishments. The visual appeal, the creativity, the pertinent story, the music, and the cast are all phenomenal. Once again the magical stage at the Merry a?' Go -Round Playhouse has proven that they bring the Broadway-wow factor with a fresh take on this classic musical.

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival (FLMTF) opens its third production this season, Rodgers and Hammerstein's legendary musical, South Pacific. The show runs August 7 through August 28 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Emerson Park. 

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival (FLMTF) opens its third production this season, Rodgers and Hammerstein's legendary musical, South Pacific. The show runs August 7 through August 28 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Emerson Park.

Opening on August 7th at the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival (FLMTF) is Rodger's and Hammerstein's legendary musical, South Pacific. The show runs through August 28 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Emerson Park.

The heat is on because the national tour of Miss Saigon opened this week at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre!

To close out its 55th season, Orange County's Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory is mounting David Henry Hwang's intriguing and mysterious play M. BUTTERFLY, using the playwright's much more layered and riveting 2017 Broadway revival as its source material. Marked assuredly by powerful, gripping performances, this admirable OC staging---directed with clarifying precision by Desdemona Chiang that continues through June 8 in Costa Mesa---keeps you at the edge of your seat, as it unpacks a story filled with wobbly uncertainties and vague declarations. A beautifully complex production that echoes sentiments of gender conformity/fluidity crossed with geopolitical issues that still resonate in today's ever-changing world, M. BUTTERFLY---particularly with this strong new update instituted by the original playwright himself---is definitely worth seeing.

In playwright Kevin Artigue's riveting and thought-provoking new two-person play SHEEPDOG---which finishes up its World Premiere run at Orange County's South Coast Repertory through May 5, 2019 as part of the theater's annual Pacific Playwrights Festival---the ripped-from-the-headlines plot point that finds a young black man being fatally shot by a white police officer becomes an added layer of troubling complication to an already shaky relationship between two genuinely good, aspirational people who are deeply in love---who also happen to be an interracial couple both employed as police officers. A love story rattled by external forces, the play posits the question of whether it is even possible for two people---or at least these two specific people---to carry on a successful romantic relationship while having this specific kind of a job and also while each identifies with one of two separate communities with a long tragic history between them. SHEEPDOG tackles the subject with grace and open-mindedness and therefore makes it one of the most powerful and provocative new plays to come out this season.

David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, a tale of obsession, perception and the allure of fantasy, will conclude South Coast Repertory's 2018-19 season. Hwang's break-out hit-a Tony Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist-is about more than steamy seduction and fantasy; inspired by a true account, it's a compelling story of espionage, East-West relations and betrayal. Desdemona Chiang, in her SCR debut, directs the show on the Segerstrom Stage, May 11-June 8. Tickets are available online at www.scr.org.

From Mo Willems, the author of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale and the Elephant and Piggie books, comes a tale that transforms naked mole-rats into something cute and fun (and funny).

In some ways, history is all we have in terms of building a brighter future. At times, we either forget that history, or we never learn about such events that would lead us to make more informed decisions. Remembering historical events clearly isn't the most sought after activity to spend your time. Thus enters the world of theater, where people come to delve into stories and as an added bonus walk out after the show a little more educated than they were walking in. Such was the case for myself in taking in DCPA's production of Vietgone.