Orson Welles News

Tony Award-nominated singer, actress and writer Melissa Errico, has starred on Broadway in Anna Karenina, My Fair Lady, High Society and many other stellar productions.

The acclaimed British and Ethiopian poet, playwright, broadcaster and speaker, Lemn Sissay MBE has been announced as the twelfth Brighton Festival Guest Director, following in the footsteps of Rokia Traoré (2019), David Shrigley (2018), Kate Tempest (2017) and Laurie Anderson (2016) amongst others.

interACT Theatre Productions will present WAR OF THE WORLDS, the Orson Welles radio play, for one night only on Saturday, Nov. 30 at the Burgdorff Center, 10 Durand Road in Maplewood, NJ.

New Mexico Actors Lab founder Robert Benedetti announced today that co-Artistic Director Nicholas Ballas has been named the group's sole Artistic Director, and that Benedetti will now serve as Managing Director in concert with Mr. Ballas.

In two recent reviews of The Magic Flute and Fences, I have bemoaned Boston theatres' lack of accommodation made for the marginalized communities they attempt to serve. In sharp contrast,Tempest Reconfigured, a project produced by Fort Point Theatre Channel, takes the storyline of Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest and centers the perspectives of richly disparate voices from Boston's artistic communities. Producer Marc S. Miller explains that the idea behind the project was to invite community-based arts groups to respond to, reinterpret, reinvent, subvert, and analyze the themes from Shakespeare's text. The result is a communal evening, part performance, part ritual, that transforms Boston Public Library's stoically academic Rabb Hall into a place of wonder, beauty, anguish, and catharsis, not unlike the fictional island which Prospero and his daughter Miranda inhabit in the play. 

The Lake Worth Playhouse, the award winning multifaceted theatre in Downtown Lake Worth has added a new programming treat to its already robust and diverse season of live entertainment. On November 2nd and 3rd, the Playhouse will present its first in a series of radio dramas on their historic stage with Bram Stoker's Dracula. The production is based on the Orson Welles 1938 Mercury Radio Theater production.

This weekend, Thespian Troupe 3131, under the direction of Heather Hooten, at Morrilton High School will recreate the dramatization of Orson Welles' reading of H.G. Wells' book THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Considered the first of its kind to imagine what the world would look like if aliens invaded Earth, this story supposedly terrified the radio listening public back in 1938 as they took it for actual news. WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE PANIC BROADCAST will take you through the reading and then show you the response from the people. Broadway World was on set to interview a few of the cast members about their experience with performing this radio play.

Following its acclaimed national tour, the acclaimed Truth To Power Café comes to London this autumn as part of The Bloomsbury Festival. With more dates added the new leg of the tour will play at Conway Hall on October 20th as well as hitting more cities across the country.

Zoe Kazan's latest play, After the Blast, is set to take the Black Box Stage as part of the new Firestone Theatre season.

The finest radio dramas of the late 1930's were presented by The Mercury Theater On The Air, founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. Together, they presented many classic pieces of literature, and shook the country with it's terrifying staging of a?oeWar of the Worlds.a?? Main Street Theatre Works (MSTW) is re-creating one of these literary classic radio plays, A Tale of Two Cities, complete with live sound effects. This limited-engagement fundraiser will have only two performances ~ Saturday, November 2nd at 8:00pm, and Sunday, November 3rd at 2pm. Performances will be at our new location, The Historic Sutter Creek Grammar School, 110 Broad Street, Sutter Creek. Tickets are $25 and include a dessert bar, coffee or tea, and the show. A no-host wine bar will be available on a donation basis.

Rogue Prince is an original adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, based on the script Chimes at Midnight by Orson Welles. Our story will focus on the young Prince Hal and his relationship with his friend and father figure, the rogue Falstaff. Hal is caught between a father he respects but does not love, and a father-figure he loves but can't respect. As the world changes around them both, each one realizes they must sacrifice who they are for who they will become - whether they want to or not. 

Casting announced for the European premiere of the hit Off-Broadway play The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, opening at the Finborough Theatre for a strictly limited four-week season on Tuesday, 1 October 2019.

Broadcasting legend Sir Michael Parkinson is to embark on a 7 date live tour across the North of England, with tickets on sale now, available at www.faneproductions.com/Parkinson-north-tour. Beginning on Saturday 8th February 2020 at Derby Theatre, and concluding at Bolton's Albert Halls on Saturday 15th February 2020, An Evening with Sir Michael Parkinson will celebrate the life and career of a man who has interviewed over 2,000 of the most important cultural figures of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sir Michael Parkinson is to embark on a 7 date tour across the north of England including an evening at Darlington Hippodrome on Sunday 9 February, 2020.

The Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation announces the winner of this year's The Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award, the highest honor at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Chosen by Carol Tambor and members of her Foundation, along with The Scotsman Newspaper's Arts Writers Joyce McMillian, Jackie McGlone and Mark Fisher, Mouthpiece was announced as the winner at the Scotsman Award Ceremony during the closing ceremonies of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Friday, August 23.

William Shakespeare's rollicking and ever-popular comedy of mistaken identity, TWELFTH NIGHT, brings its magical combination of mischief, madness and romance into the outdoor amphitheater at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum this summer where it plays in rep through September 28. Written in 1601 and first seen in the Inns of Court shortly after Christmas (hence, the title), the holiday was celebrated as a festival during which everything was made delightfully topsy-turvy, much like the world of the play's Illyria. And you could not ask for a more ideal cast of characters to bring The Bard's non-stop, high energy hijinks to life.

Back for their 35th season at the Fringe with more than 270 shows, the Pleasance launches this year's impressive programme in grand style. The Pleasance offers some of the biggest names in entertainment, much-loved returning acts and exciting newcomers. This year also marks a number of big anniversaries with the dedicated children's programme at the Kidzone celebrating its 10th anniversary and the 15th anniversary of the highly renowned Comedy Reserve, part of the Pleasance's Charlie Hartill Special Reserve. At this morning's opening gala, nine fantastic acts come together to combine technical skill with infinite artistry and offer a taste of the talent and excellence available at the Pleasance this August.

Alice in Canning Town is a brand-new, contemporary, urban adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland', reconfigured for the East End, and performed site-specific in Arc in the Park, an inclusive adventure playground in Canning Town. Alice is the fourth in a quartet of East End-based plays by James Kenworth, all dealing with revolution and social change, and all performed in appropriate locations.

Director of Design Stephen Brimson-Lewis has over twenty years of experience designing for the RSC. Stephen takes us through the collaborative process of designing Measure for Measure.

Theatre West is inaugurating a new series, The Art of Storytelling. Each evening in the series will be comprised of storytelling around a central theme. The theme for the first evening in the series is It Happened in L.A.