In Gay Company - Articles Page 5

Felice Lesser Dance Theater's 2017 season will feature the world premiere of Lightning, a multi-media dance dealing with timely issues facing the world in the new year, set to a score by the contemporary Slovenian composer Borut Krzisnik*. The season will run for six performances, February 8 – 12, 2017 at The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues).

Kokandy Productions will launch its fifth anniversary season with a revival of the Tony Award-winning Best Musical THE WIZ, with book by William F. Brown, music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls, directed by guest director Lili-Anne Brown, music direction by Jimmy Morehead and choreography by Breon Arzell. 

The producers have announced Golnesa "G.G." Gharachedaghi, star of "Shahs of Sunset," will make her stage debut in New York's longest running comedy Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man for a limited two-week engagement this December. 

The New Group announces additional casting for productions coming up in the company's 2016-2017 Season.

The producers have announced Golnesa "G.G." Gharachedaghi, star of "Shahs of Sunset," will make her stage debut in New York's longest running comedy Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man for a limited two-week engagement this December. 

Kokandy Productions has announced casting for its upcoming revival of the Tony Award-winning Best Musical THE WIZ, directed by guest director Lili-Anne Brown with music direction by Jimmy Morehead and choreography by Breon Arzell, playing March 5 - April 16, 2017 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago.

The hugely popular re-imagining of Charles Dickens' festive staple A Christmas Carol, starring Simon Callow and directed by Tom Cairns, will return to the Arts Theatre in London for a strictly limited season from 8 December to 7 January.  

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), announces that Lisa Portes is the recipient of the 2016 Zelda Fichandler Award, which recognizes an outstanding director or choreographer who is transforming the regional arts landscape through singular creativity and artistry in the theatre. The award heralds accomplishment to date and promise for the future, artistic vision, and deep commitment to a region outside of New York. It carries an unrestricted grant of $5,000 to the individual recipient.

Tickets are now on sale for American Composers Orchestra's (ACO) 40th Anniversary Season, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and Music Director George Manahan. This season includes eight world premieres by a diverse set of composers performed by ACO at Carnegie Hall and Symphony Space, and continues the orchestra's commitment to serve as a catalyst for the creation of new orchestral music, providing unprecedented opportunities for American composers to create new work and for audiences to discover it. Founded in 1977, ACO remains the only orchestra in the world dedicated exclusively to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works. ACO takes its commitment to fostering new work beyond the stage in its annual Underwood New Music Readings for emerging composers, now in its 26th year in New York, and through its program EarShot, the National Orchestra Composition Discovery Network, which brings the Readings experience to orchestras across the country in partnership with American Composers Forum, the League of American Orchestras, and New Music USA.

Samuel French has announced the winners of the 2016 Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, the nation's premier short play competition.

The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, the nation's premier short play competition, takes place August 9 - 14 at the East 13th Street Theater (Classic Stage Company).

The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, the nation's premier short play competition, takes place August 9 - 14 at the East 13th Street Theater (Classic Stage Company). Chosen from 1,500 submissions from the U.S. and abroad, 30 finalist plays, each running 10-30 minutes in length, will be presented.

Director Jimmy Maize (Spoon River Anthology at The Invisible Dog) and BOSS (En Garde Arts) will lead actresses Libby Winters (American Idiot) and Ito Aghayere (Lortel Nomination for Familiar at Playwrights Horizons) in Uniforms by Jeffrey James Keyes (The End of Days &Imaginary Friends) next month in the Samuel French 41st Annual Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival in New York City.

True-to-life eccentrics tend to make the most riveting dramatic/comedic characters. In 1975 Albert and David Maysles produced an award-winning documentary called Grey Gardens about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie), aunt and cousin respectively of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The film was eventually rated among the top 10 greatest documentaries of all time, and provided the basis for a the musical of the same name, produced off and on Broadway in 2006. The musical, with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, shows the socialite family in its heyday in East Hampton, New York in Act One. Act Two is their demise into total poverty. The estate inhabited by the reclusive mother and daughter combo was condemned by the board of health, and the two women gained notoriety for their delusional, certifiable behavior. Now at the Ahmanson through August 14, Grey Gardens explores the fiercely fiery relationship between the two Edies, offering Betty Buckley (older Big Edie) and Rachel York (younger Big Edie/Little Edie) their most cherished roles to date.

The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, the nation's premier short play competition, announces the 30 finalists for its 41st festival.  Chosen from 1,500 submissions from the U.S. and abroad, these 30 plays will be presented during a week-long festival August 9 - 14. All performances will take place at the East 13th Street Theater (Classic Stage Company).

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company will open its 40th annual tour August 6 with 'Election Selection, or You Bet!,' a rip-roaring musical in which three everyday New Yorkers are galvanized into community activists. Free performances will tour City streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs through September 18. Book, lyrics and direction are by Crystal Field; the musical score is composed and arranged by Joseph Vernon Banks. (Schedule follows at bottom of this document.)

Grey Gardens/Ahmanson Theatre/July 6 - August 14, 2016 Based on the 1975 documentary of the same name, the story recounts the fall from uppercrust society of mother and daughter Edith Bouvier Beale, eccentric cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived in poverty in East Hampton, New York. This is the long-awaited west coast premiere of the Tony winning musical, and it will star Rachel York as 'Little Edie' and Betty Buckley as 'Big Edie'. www.centertheatregroup.org Beautiful - The Carole King Musical/Pantages Theatre/June 22 - July 17, 2

This weekend The Landing Theatre Company presents the 2016 New American Voices Play Reading Series. The series features new plays by four of America's top emerging playwrights.

In THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL, Jack Viertel takes about musicals, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love with the art form all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next-by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion from OKLAHOMA! to HAMILTON and onward.

The 1975 smash hit Broadway musical A CHORUS LINE truly is a singular sensation. After winning nine Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize (one of only eight musicals to do so), it ran for 15 years, making it the longest running musical on Broadway at the time (it still ranks as number six). I've been waiting almost seven years for a local production of A CHORUS LINE, since seeing the Broadway revival tour in 2009. The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts has finally fulfilled my wish, and it's well worth the wait. Featuring a fabulously talented cast of over two dozen legit triple threats, about half of whom are local, co-directed and co-choreographed by A CHORUS LINE expert Kerry Casserly and Artistic Director James Rocco, this show hews very close to the original. There's no re-imagining here, this is a beautifully faithful production of the singular sensation that is A CHORUS LINE. If you call yourself a musical theater fan, it's a must-see.

Sex and gender. Race and power. Politics and family. Plus Queen Victoria! Antaeus Theatre Company presents Caryl Churchill's outrageous, hilarious and bitingly satirical Cloud 9 in a fully partner-cast production. Casey Stangl directs for a March 10 opening at the Antaeus Theater in NoHo, with low-priced previews beginning March 3.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) celebrates the 2015 holiday season with a wide variety of concert programming, from the traditional annual performances of Handel's Messiah with the Concert Artists of Baltimore to a one-of-a-kind experience that pairs world-class acrobats and gymnasts with music by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, in an exciting program titled Cirque de la Symphonie.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today details for upcoming events in Print Screen, a recurring series bridging the worlds of cinema and literature where authors present films that complement and inspire their work, followed by discussions and book signings.

John Barrowman is a Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, host and writer who has both British and American citizenship. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1975. His first big break was as Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes on London's West End. His most recent West End credit was in the 2009 production of La Cage aux Folles. To American audiences, he is primarily known for his TV work playing Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and Torchwood. He is also openly gay.

Tim Dang, Producing Artistic Director of East West Players in Los Angeles, CA, is the 2015 recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award, an award to recognize an outstanding director or choreographer who is transforming the regional arts landscape through imaginative, brave work in theatre.  The $5,000 award, given by Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, heralds both accomplishment to date and promise for the future, and lauds deep commitment to a community.