Yvonne News

Ahead of its June 5 premiere on Hulu, the critics have weighed in on the third season of the Emmy winning drama THE HANDMAIDS TALE. 

32 years after his first involvement with Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Court Theatre's Artistic Director Ross Gumbley is back in the rehearsal room, directing the play that marked his first professional acting debut!

Flat Rock Playhouse continues the 2019 Season with summer blockbuster musical and Broadway classic, South Pacific. Known for its glorious score by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the show transports audiences to the Pacific Islands in World War II as young couples struggle with the dynamics of love, war, and faith. Yet, South Pacific also showcases a vibrant, delightful comedic side found in the business of everyday life: raising children, relationship squabbles, and workplace gossip.

Originally broadcast live from the world famous London Coliseum in 2015, cinema audiences will have a rare opportunity to see these classic Gilbert and Sullivan operas again in stunning multi-camera HD and amazing 5.1 surround sound.

Multiple award-winning Magnet Theatre presents G7: OKWE-BOKHWE directed by Mandla Mbothwe and starring the talented graduates of the fifth Magnet Theatre training programme.

San Jose Stage Company (Randall King, Artistic Director and Cathleen King, Executive Director) has announced the cast and creative team for the final production of The Stage's 36th Anniversary Season, the smash hit ABBA musical MAMMA MIA! Featuring music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and a book by Catherine Johnson, MAMMA MIA! will run from May 29 - July 7, 2019 at San Jose Stage Company (490 South 1st Street, San Jose, CA, 95113). San Jose Stage's production of MAMMA MIA! will be directed by Allison F. Rich* (who will also play the role of "Tanya Cresham-Leigh"), with choreography by Keith Pinto (who will also play the role of "Harry Bright"). Martin Rojas Dietrich will serve as Associate Music Director. The press opening will take place on Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets range from $32 - $60 and can be purchased through the Box Office at (408) 283-7142 or online at www.thestage.org.

Nominated for five 2019 OIivier Awards, including Best New Musical, Best Choreography and Best Costume Design, the West End smash hit SIX, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, today announces its plans for a nine-month Royal Tour visiting theatres across the Queendom. Opening at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford on Thursday 24 October 2019, SIX will visit over 33 venues nationwide, including a Christmas season at The Lowry Quays Theatre from Tuesday 3 December 2019 to Sunday 5 January 2020. The cast, yet to be announced, are backed by the show's all-female band, The Ladies in Waiting.

The CUNY Dance Initiative, Queensborough Community College's Dance Program, and the Queensborough Student Association present Jennifer Archibald's Arch Dance Company.

I had the pleasure of seeing Neil Simon's THE DINNER PARTY at the High Plains Community Center presented by The Orange Players. Dinner parties where you don't know anybody can be awkward, but how about being blindsided by seeing an ex-spouse there? Three divorced couples are put in a private dining room in an unexpected, somewhat out of the blue dinner party. Hilarity ensues as the couples see each other, for some the first time in years, and they try to figure out why they are there and where is this mutual friend who invited them. Fabulously directed by Chelsea Dacey, this clever comedy was a joy to all.

dance: made in canada / fait au canada Festival (d:mic/fac) proudly unveils a diverse program featuring the country's most sought-after dancers and choreographers for its milestone fifth biennial edition on stage from August 14-18, 2019, at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. Living legend and 2019 Dance Hall of Fame inductee Louise Lecavalier will open this year's festival with a special artist talk and screening of the recent documentary Louise Lecavalier - In Motion. Additionally, 13 artists and companies will be presented across three Mainstage programs - curated by Matjash Mrozewski, Lina Cruz, and Festival Director Yvonne Ng - coupled with a lottery-based platform titled 'What You See Is What you Get' (WYSIWYG). An ancillary Arts Encounters program explores the photography, media arts, and other creative expressions created by five dance artists.

The Parahumans' Artistic Director, Dave Wilson presents Triad, a double-bill of two 30-minute solo dance performances co-created with his long standing dancers of seven years, Yui Ugai and Lauren Runions.

Black Public Media (BPM) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) have announced the recipients of the Jacquie Jones Memorial Scholarships. The $300,000 scholarship fund, made possible by CPB, is inspired by the life and work of Jacquie Jones, the Peabody Award-winning director and former executive director of Harlem-based BPM, who was steadfast in her commitment to helping foster diverse content creators prior to her death in January 2018. 

The cast has been announced for Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending at Stockwell Playhouse, presented by The Lost Theatre Company. Natasha Colenso takes on the lead role of Lady Torrence alongside Greg Miller Burns (Wicked, Assasins) as Valentine Xavier and Sophie Tergeist as Carol Cutrere. The production will have a limited run at The Stockwell Playhouse from 15th May - 18th May.

The company that brought you Punch and Judy, or The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II and Hercules Insane returns to Hollywood Fringe with an exciting new take on the seldom-produced classic that inaugurated the Elizabethan theatrical renaissance. 

Winner of the Best Fringe Theatre at the 2019 Stage Awards, The Barn Theatre's upcoming production of the classic comic thriller, The 39 Steps, which opens at the Cirencester theatre in July 2019, will now transfer to the Theatre Royal Windsor from 12 - 17 August 2019. The production launches the theatre's Built By Barn initiative, transferring shows from the venue across the UK.

Michelle Keegan returned to South Africa this week to begin filming the fourth series of Tony Ground's hit BBC One series, Our Girl.

CLYBOURNE PARK is a savagely funny, ferociously smart, and brilliantly written play by Bruce Norris which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. Perhaps best known as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry's classic play A RAISIN IN THE RUN, an audience favorite that has been produced at theaters all over the world, Norris' play is set in the home purchased by Lena Younger in an all-white neighborhood of Chicago in Raisin although we never see the home during that play, However, in it we do meet Karl Linder, a representative from the Clybourne Park community association who attempted to convince the Youngers to NOT move into the home as he, as well as many others, believes racial integration would ruin property values for everyone else staying in the area. In CLYBOURNE PARK we meet the sellers, and then re-visit the house 50 years later during its next sale.

One-woman show for Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks celebrates Will's 455th Birthday at the historic Pump House of the former Homestead Works steel industry location, site of the Battle of Homestead.

Performance Space New York presents Gillian Walsh's Fame Notions, a meditation on the American dancer. As part of the No Series-comprised of works that locate power and creativity in refusal- Fame Notions refuses the externalized spectacle of dance; it hovers well beyond performative time, within dancers' interior experiences of alienation derived from a life circling the desires of the contemporary dance economy. Walsh-a Performance Space New York Associate Artist-has a love-hate relationship with the medium of dance that results, as she describes, in pieces that often work 'underneath expectations of theatrical affect, leaning into an infinite and dense emptiness'; they are 'abstract, anti-didactic, and anti-narrative.' Behind the seemingly hermetic surface of Walsh's repetitive dances, however, lies a sincere attempt to carve out a new role for dance as an artistic medium to experiment with non-capitalist temporalities and create new spaces for collective experiences. Fame Notions asks everyone in the room-including the audience-to slow down considerably.