San Francisco Opera's 2014-15 Season opens September 5, 2014 with a dramatic new production of Vincenzo Bellini's bel canto masterpiece Norma, starring American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in one of opera's most dazzling and demanding roles. American mezzo-soprano Daveda Karanas is the young priestess Adalgisa; Italian tenor Marco Berti is Pollione; and American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn is Oroveso. Music Director Nicola Luisotti conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus and Director Kevin Newbury and set designer David Korins return to San Francisco Opera to premiere this vivid, large-scale new co-production with Toronto's Canadian Opera Company, Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Norma runs for seven performances through September 30.
Connecticut Free Shakespeare has brought a delightful version of As You Like It to the outdoor stage. As envisioned by director, Ellen Lieberman, this production of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, set in 1969, is a family friendly, drug free 'Be-in' of the theatrical kind.
Samuel French previously announced a talented roster of judges for the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (OOB Festival), the nation's premiere short play competition, running from today, August 5th-10th at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre.
A sweeping spectacle of bawdy buffoonery and bloody rebellion, director Jonathan Epstein's razor sharp and condensed adaptation of Henry IV delivers both parts in one dynamic evening of theatre at Shakespeare & Company. Performances run in the Tina Packer Playhouse today, August 2 - August 31. Press Opening is Friday, August 7, at 7:00pm. BroadwayWorld has a sneak peek at the cast in rehearsal below!
Denver's Wonderbound is gaining national attention this October as Artistic Director Garrett Ammon's "Serenade for Strings" premieres with San Francisco's Smuin Ballet. In addition, the work will be a part of Wonderbound's season opening production of "Enduring Grace" with musicians of the Colorado Symphony. "Enduring Grace" also features a world premiere work by Company Artist Sarah Tallman.
1969. Protests. Love-ins. Woodstock. The height of a counter-culture movement-and the perfect time in which to set a 400 year old play according to Ellen Lieberman, Artistic Director of CT Free Shakespeare. For its 15th season, the company will present As You Like It, one of William Shakespeare's greatest comedies--and some say his silliest. It is also Shakespeare's most musical play, and this adaptation features soul-stirring songs from the 60's.
A sweeping spectacle of bawdy buffoonery and bloody rebellion, director Jonathan Epstein's razor sharp and condensed adaptation of Henry IV delivers both parts in one dynamic evening of theatre at Shakespeare & Company. Performances run in the Tina Packer Playhouse August 2 - August 31. Press Opening is Friday, August 7, at 7:00pm. BroadwayWorld has a sneak peek at the cast in rehearsal below!
Five migrants from Somalia, Afghanistan and Turkey have paid an Agent to smuggle them across Europe and into England. Inside a shipping container parked behind the Theatre Centre, the Container Collective invites Toronto audiences to experience the claustrophobic, dark, and cramped conditions that that five refugees endure in order to start a new life. Extremely limited seating is available for shows August 7-17th as part of the SummerWorks Festival. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at www.summerworks.ca or by calling 416.907.0468.
Touchstone Theatre founder Bill George and Allentown Public Theatre artistic director Joshua Neth announce that they will be co-teaching a year-long program of actor training starting this fall. Entitled the Valley Actor's Lab (VAL), the program seeks to provide excellent and systematic training to seriously inclined actors in the Lehigh Valley.
George and Neth describe themselves as “two theatre artists who hold their love of actors and the work of the actor above all earthly things”; coming from different backgrounds and different theatre educations, they have joined teaching skills in this unique effort to advance the life of the actor in the Lehigh Valley. Their intention in creating VAL is to strengthen the work of the Valley theatre community by deepening the base of well-trained artists in the region and facilitating collaboration between producers and performers.
1969. Protests. Love-ins. Woodstock. The height of a counter-culture movement-and the perfect time in which to set a 400 year old play according to Ellen Lieberman, Artistic Director of CT Free Shakespeare. For its 15th season, the company will present As You Like It, one of William Shakespeare's greatest comedies--and some say his silliest. It is also Shakespeare's most musical play, and this adaptation features soul-stirring songs from the 60's.
Samuel French has announced a talented roster of judges for the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (OOB Festival), the nation's premiere short play competition, running from August 5th-10th at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre.
Perhaps the power of American Players Theatre can be determined by an audience's silence when exiting the Touchstone Theater after a Sunday evening performance, the haunting quiet almost reverent appreciation for what had transpired minutes before. In Spring Green, Sarah Day illuminates the stage in an approximately one hour forty five minute no intermission performance. APT's one woman play retells award winning author's Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a play she adapted in 2007 and based on her memoir from the year after her husband John Gregory Dunne died in 2003 A time when Didion simultaneously coped when her daughter Quintana suffered from septic shock, often lying n the hospital's ICU hovering between life and death.
Experience Pee-wee's Playhouse like never before! All 45 wacky episodes, plus the Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, have been meticulously remastered from the original film elements — and now you can see this ground-breaking series for the first time in beautiful high-definition!
Netflix Inc. and The Walt Disney Studios today announced a new multi-year licensing agreement that will make Netflix the exclusive Canadian subscription television service
MANCHESTER, N.H., July 15, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) In 2008 Ben Schwartz-a young New Hampshire English and special education teacher-decided it was time to get that first novel written. He entered Southern New Hampshire University's low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program, and wrote that novel-'The Drift of Things'-as his thesis.
Last month 'The Drift of Things' was named the Silver Medal Winner in the Piscataqua Press's 2014 Novel Contest, one of three manuscripts plucked from some 120 submissions. And as quickly as that-in a world that now includes print-on-demand publishing-Schwartz's novel is available from Piscataqua.
'We're all very happy for Ben,' said novelist/essayist Benjamin Nugent, the director of Southern New Hampshire's MFA program. 'And we're looking forward to books by other alumni coming out soon from presses like Viking and Da Capo.'
While at Southern New Hampshire, Schwartz worked primarily with novelists Katherine Towler ('Snow Island') and Merle Drown ('The Suburbs of Heaven') in crafting his story of a middle-aged man who has blamed himself for the drowning death of his best friend in high school, and who then returns for his mother's funeral to the town from which he has exiled himself.
'Funny, smart, unpredictable, and true, 'The Drift of Things' is that rare book in contemporary fiction, one with both heart and intelligence,' wrote Katherine Towler in her response to the finished work. 'Ben Schwartz has delivered a cast of characters so real you expect to find them watching TV in the living room. In a beautifully-crafted story about what remains broken and yet healed in all of us, Schwartz has established himself as a writer to watch.'
Schwartz's story marks the latest publishing success for an MFA program that was founded in 2006 by historical novelist Robert Begiebing and that has only recently reached its full complement of 65 students and 15 faculty members.
Begiebing's vision involved a two-year program-with 'Go Write Your Book' as its motto-in which students would immediately apply themselves to the completion of a publishable, professional-level manuscript, as Schwartz did.
Though the program's alumni community remains small, there were some immediate post-graduate successes: 'If I Told You So' by Timothy Woodward '08, a novel that came out from Kensington in 2012; and 'Lost and Found Hanoi,' a work of photojournalism co-authored by Elizabeth Rush '11, which came out from the Things Asian Press earlier this year.
But now the floodgates are open, as a number of new alumni have recently turned their theses into book contracts, some with large commercial houses. Pratima Cranse '12 has a so-far-untitled novel in the works from Viking. 'The Trees Beneath Us,' a novel by Darren R. Leo '13, will initiate a new literary line of fiction from the Stark House Press. And Charlie Stella '13 is co-authoring a biography, 'Dogfella,' due out from Da Capo.
Other Southern New Hampshire alumni have novels on the production line at several small presses like Piscataqua. 'The Holy Fool' by Ken Butler '12 is forthcoming from the Touchstone Press; 'They Call Me Crazy' by Kelly Stone Gamble '12 from Red Adept Publishing; 'Fallen' by Mike Hancock '08 and 'The Keepers of Mercia' by James Marino '09, both from Black Rose Writing.
'This is a hard thing to do, taking your very first attempt at long-form fiction or nonfiction and getting it published,' said Nugent. 'But we're proving now that we can make Bob's go-write-your book model work. At the very least, our students are leaving the program with stories that have a fighting chance in the marketplace, and the skills to write more.'
Nonetheless, Nugent said, he and his faculty are moving to diversify the program by also offering a curriculum track for those who want their MFA work to simply prepare them to write that first novel or nonfiction narrative-rather than to require writing it immediately.
'We think some students would benefit more from being able to experiment,' Nugent said. 'This would involve, for example, trying out lots of short stories or essays and throwing them out, or trying out a few novel or memoir ideas, and finally settling on one and getting it started. Students will still complete a thesis, but the parameters will be more flexible.'
Very rarely a Broadway musical transcends mere entertainment and becomes part of the cultural landscape. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF is such a musical. Although the word 'iconic' has been overused of late, I daresay FIDDLER has reached that status. Its themes of family, love, community and yes - tradition - have made it a transformative experience for five decades of theatergoers.
A sweeping spectacle of bawdy buffoonery and bloody rebellion, director Jonathan Epstein's razor sharp and condensed adaptation of Henry IV delivers both parts in one dynamic evening of theatre. Performances run in the Tina Packer Playhouse August 2 - August 31. Press Opening is Friday, August 7, at 7:00pm. To RSVP or for interview opportunities contact Communications & Press Director Elizabeth Aspenlieder: aspenlieder@shakespeare.org.
William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy, As You Like It, opens at Theater at Monmouth on Friday, July 11 at 7:30 p.m. Set in the 1940s, As You Like It explores the ups and downs of love and courtship. Filled with mistaken identities and misplaced devotion, As You Like It lampoons the often puzzling, yet utterly gratifying, labor of love.
Tickets are on sale for the Australian premiere of Broadway rock musical High Fidelity, which will debut at Chapel Off Chapel later from September 11th this year.
Point Park University's Conservatory Theatre Company will produce five works, including the world premiere of a new musical about the life of the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente, in the 2014-2015 season.
