Simmons News

Good Morning Baltimore! We chat to the cast of Hairspray about iconic songs, the rehearsal process and returning to the West End.

Barn Players production of TITANIC (The Musical) opened this past weekend at the Arts Asylum to full and appreciative audiences. TITANIC is a huge (pardon the play on words) Community Theater undertaking in all ways you might imagine it could be. TITANIC (The Musical) was written by Maury Yeston and Peter Stone. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The BARN PLAYERS production directed by Kipp Simmons is similarly complex but in different ways.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh have released the first set of images from rehearsals for the brilliant original production of The Phantom of the Opera which comes to Birmingham Hippodrome from 29 July – 12 September 2020.

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance will return to NYC February 25 and 26, 2020 with the premiere of Tales of Hopper (2019), a new theater-dance work inspired by American realist painter Edward Hopper. Performances will take place at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W 37th St, New York, NY 10018 at 7:30pm. Tickets available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4418307.

The UK and Ireland tour of The Phantom of the Opera opens at Curve, Leicester on 22 February 2020. Get a first look inside rehearsals!

3-D Theatricals continues its 2019-2020 season with Kinky Boots, winner of six 2013 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The production, which will be directed by Tony Award nominee John Tartaglia (Broadway's Avenue Q and Shrek The Musical) and choreographed by Linda Love Simmons (3-D Theatricals' Once The Musical) with musical direction and conducting by Benet Braun (La Mirada Theatre's Grumpy Old Men: The Musical). Kinky Boots will play February 14-March 1 at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts (18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos, CA).

3-D Theatricals continues its 2019-2020 season with Kinky Boots, winner of six 2013 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The production, which will be directed by Tony Award nominee John Tartaglia (Broadway's Avenue Q and Shrek The Musical) and choreographed by Linda Love Simmons (3-D Theatricals' Once The Musical) with musical direction and conducting by Benet Braun (La Mirada Theatre's Grumpy Old Men: The Musical). Kinky Boots will play February 14-March 1 at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts (18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos, CA). Opening night is Saturday, February 15. 

If you imagine a new production of the classic musical Hair will be a cozy, nostalgic revel in hippie culture you are partly right. But Hair was created as a bold and provocative statement of the counter culture to the establishment, and director Frank Goodloe's take on the material is faithful to both the stylistic and intellectual aesthetic that lies at the heart of the show.

It doesn't much matter whether you happen to be Lutheran, Catholic, another flavor of Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim. All places of worship surely have CHURCH BASEMENT LADIES like these.

With great success, Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, including a notable alumna, Felicia Moore, as Susan B. Anthony, along with members of the New York Philharmonic under Daniela Candillari performed Louisa Proske's production of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson opera THE MOTHER OF US ALL. It took place in the Engelhardt Court of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of the MetLiveArts series.

Bay Area Musicals presents the 10-time Tony Award-nominee THE FULL MONTY.

Check out the details below for the next installment of Wild Things Comedy at Secret Loft. 

Legendary British rock' & roll icons, and 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame® inductees, Def Leppard, announce select 20/20 Vision fall tour dates with very special guests ZZ Top. Produced by Live Nation, this new leg of dates will immediately follow the group's massively successful summer stadium tour with Motley Crue, which has already sold 1.1 million tickets. The 20/20 Vision tour will kick off on September 21st at Times Union Center in Albany, NY. Please see full tour routing below.

Greg only met Ginny a month ago, but he knows they're meant for each other. When she announces that she's going to visit her parents, Greg decides this is the moment to ask her father for his daughter's hand. Discovering a scribbled address, he follows her to Buckinghamshire where he finds Philip and Sheila enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning breakfast in the garden, but the only thing is - they're not Ginny's parents.

Casting has been announced for the upcoming premiere of The Still Room, written by Sally Rogers (Hangmen, Cold Feet) which opens at Park Theatre from 29th April. Rising star Kate James leads the cast as Janice, alongside Chris Simmons (The Bill, Hollyoaks, All Or Nothing) as Kevin, Jane Slavin (Clocking Off, Moving On) as Bernice, Zoe Brough (The Nether, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child) as Diane, Larner Wallace-Taylor (How Love Is Spelt, An Inspector Calls) as Karen and Jack Colgrave Hirst (Romeo & Juliet, The Winter's Tale a?" The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company) as Dean. The Still Room is directed by Nigel Douglas and produced by Rogers Douglas Productions in association with Park Theatre, running from 29th April to 23rd May (previews on 29th and 30th April). Tickets are on sale now at www.parktheatre.co.uk and by calling the box office on 0207 870 6876. *

Bravo's 'Top Chef' jets to the City of Angels for Season 17 with All Stars LA, premiering with a supersized episode on Thursday, March 19 from 10 - 11:15 pm ET/PT. The Emmy and James Beard Award-winning series returns with 10 Finalists and 5 Front Runners, chasing the one thing that eluded them all -- the coveted title of 'Top Chef.' It has been nine seasons since the first All Stars competition, and these chefs aren't holding any punches as they battle it out for the largest cash prize in 'Top Chef' history. The chefs will compete across iconic locations in Los Angeles including the Griffith Observatory, The Getty Center, The Walt Disney Concert Hall, the LA Coliseum, and for the first time in show history, an epic finale in Italy. The series returns with host Padma Lakshmi, head judge Tom Colicchio, and judge Gail Simmons, along with some of the biggest names in the culinary world, as well as some of your favorite celebrity foodies.

Lights up. Enter the whirlwind. Blackfriars Theatre's production of NEXT TO NORMAL drops its audience smack in the middle of an emotional storm. The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning rock musical details a family's sixteen-year struggle with trauma, centering on bipolar disorder. Groundbreaking in style and scope, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's smash hit garnered eleven Tony nominations and won three. It has been celebrated for exploring hard-hitting subject matter without the dewy-eyed sentimentality that so often infects this theatrical genre. Fortunately, Blackfriars' production delivers with the power and grit of the original Broadway production.

Between The Bars , a new play by Lynn Clay Byrne , directed by Benjamin Viertel , will begin performances on March 23 in advance of its opening night on March 31 and will initially run through April 25 at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Avenue). Tickets are $44.50 - $59.50 and can be purchased by visiting www.BetweentheBarsPlay.com.

Granbury Theatre Company will continue its 2020 Broadway on the Brazos season with The Producers: A Mel Brooks Musical on February 21-March 22, 2020, at the historic Granbury Opera House in Downtown Granbury.

Serving as a bridge between tradition and innovation, history and progress - Indian Kathak and American Jazz Tap dance - continents and ages apart share parallel stories of struggle and perseverance in SPEAK.