A Class Act - 2004 - London Articles Page 19

Pushcart Players' 44th Season presents "Velveteen Rabbit" at Plumstead Library Branch of the Ocean County Library in a free performance on Friday, March 16 at 10:30 am. The performance is hosted by the New Jersey Theatre Alliance's Stages Festival, the State's largest celebration of live professional theater.

Premiere Stages, the professional theatre company in residence at Kean University, has selected its four finalists for the 2018 Premiere Play Festival and will increase its cash awards for honored playwrights by one-third, the theatre announced today. Premiere Stages received a record 572 submissions for the festival, an annual competition for unproduced scripts that offers developmental opportunities to playwrights with strong affiliations to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The 572 submissions marked a 43% jump from 2017, and represented playwrights of all backgrounds and ages. For the first time in the festival's 14-year history, three of the four finalist scripts selected were requested from synopses submitted by playwrights.

The Grand Theatre is thrilled to announce a first-time collaboration with the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), bringing A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS to the Spriet Stage. This acclaimed stage adaptation, based on the award-winning novel by Khaled Hosseini, had its world premiere in San Francisco in July 2016 and became the bestselling production in A.C.T.'s history. The Grand's production will premiere an all new, all Canadian cast with original staging by A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff. The Title Sponsor for A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is London's Selectpath. 

Legendary ballet costume designer HOLLY HYNES and costume and scenic designer ZACK BROWN are among the 2018 TDF/Irene Sharaff Award recipients which were just announced by TDF, the not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts. Ms. Hynes was selected to receive the 2018 TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award for costume design and Mr. Brown will receive the Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design. The awards are presented through TDF's Costume Collection. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, April 20, at 6:30pm, at the Edison Ballroom (240 West 47th Street).

MCC THEATER (Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey, William Cantler, Artistic Directors; Blake West, Executive Director) today announced the complete cast for the fourth show of its 2017-18 season: the World Premiere production of Transfers, written by MCC Theater's Youth Company Playwriting Lab Director and Obie Award winner Lucy Thurber, and directed by Jackson Gay.

'Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians,' sings a young lady feeling the bright television lights on her face as cameras capture her every move for a national audience in Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee's outrageous, endearing and perceptive social commentary, JERRY SPRINGER -- THE OPERA.

The extraordinary is turned ordinary when the need to be heard, to believe in the right of happiness, overcomes what reason dictates one should do to achieve it; reason becomes as much of an ally as it is a weapon. What is so beautiful about Sondheim's Assassins is not only how the root of such an evil deed is understood as something so human, but this 'American Musical Comedy' is nothing short of brilliant - especially when presented by Brooklyn Heights' own Theater 2020.

Previews begin tomorrow, Tuesday, February 27, 2018, for Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. Three Tall Women stars two-time Academy Award-winner Glenda Jackson, Tony Award winner, three-time Emmy Award winner, and 2018 Academy Award nominee Laurie Metcalf, and Tony Award nominee Alison Pill. This production is directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello and produced by Scott Rudin. Three Tall Women will have an official opening night on Thursday, March 29 at the Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street).

Introverts weren't exactly regarded as sexy, at least not as a norm, when Edward Albee's one-act classic 'The Zoo Story' premiered in 1958, launching the career of a playwright whose name became synonymous with the psychoanalyzation of privileged white American dysfunctionality.

Marguerite Lowell's exquisitely crafted performance as Sister Aloysius will continue to reverberate long after the curtain has come down on Studio Tenn's remarkably prescient and timely production of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which runs at Jamison Theatre in the Factory at Franklin through Sunday.

Check out the exciting lineup of artists coming to City Winery Chicago next month!

Pushcart Players, New Jersey's Emmy nominated and award-winning touring theater for young audiences presents "Stone Soup…and other stories" on Wednesday, March 7 at 10:00 am at the Gordon Theater, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts.

Playwrights' Arena, the only theater created and dedicated to producing bold new works for the stage written exclusively by Los Angeles playwrights, will be celebrating its 26th Anniversary with their annual fundraising gala, HOT NIGHT IN THE CITY. The event will be held at Barnsdall Gallery Theater, 4800 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, starting at 7:30 PM (with a VIP reception beginning at 6 PM). For tickets go to www.playwrightsarena.org or call 800-838-3006.

Pushcart Players, New Jersey's Emmy nominated and award-winning touring theater for young audiences presents "Stone Soup…and other stories" at 10:00 am at the Gordon Theater, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts.

February 19, 2018 - Based on Roundabout Theatre Company's Tony Award-winning production, Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty) and Rob Marshall's (Into the Woods and Chicago, the films) CABARET will play The Playhouse on Rodney Square in Wilmington for eight performances, March 13-19. This is the first time the Broadway revival has toured the historic Wilmington theater.

Damian Woetzel continues his innovative interdisciplinary series uniting artists from across fields in a special one-night only performance, March 7 in the Terrace Theater. Part of the inaugural DIRECT CURRENT, the Kennedy Center's two-week celebration of contemporary culture, this installment of the multi-genre series will present recently commissioned works, including a world premiere, and Washington, D.C. premieres by some of today's most creative and groundbreaking voices in dance and music.

Porchlight Music Theatre announces Merrily We Roll Along, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, with direction by Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Weber, associate direction and musical staging by Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Associate Christopher Pazdernik and music direction by Aaron Benham has been extended through March 17 at Porchlght's home, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn Street. Merrily We Roll Along is based on the play by the same name written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. 

The quick-witted American actor and icon, Groucho Marx was a frequent visitor to New Hope and Bucks County. Now nearly 41 years after his death, Groucho makes a hilarious return to Bucks - this time in the form of award-winning actor Frank Ferrante in the global comedy hit, "An Evening with Groucho." The show is presented February 14 - 25 at Bucks County Playhouse as part of the 2018 Visiting Artists Series.

Choreographer and disability arts innovator Alice Sheppard, along with the Kinetic Light collaborative, announces the New York Premiere of DESCENT. Performed on a custom-designed architectural ramp installation with hills, curves, and peaks, DESCENT explores the pleasures of wheeled movement and reckless abandon. This new evening-length duet takes audiences on a transformative ride and obliterates cultural assumptions of what disability, dance, and beauty can be. Carla Peterson, Director of Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and former Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, calls DESCENT a 'beautiful, intelligently wrought experience for audiences.'  This limited engagement spans three performances March 22, 23, and 24 at New York Live Arts.

NYC trio Consider the Source defy easy description. If intergalactic beings of pure energy, after initiation into an order of whirling dervishes, built some kind of pan-dimensional booty-shaking engine, powered by psychedelics and abstract math, it'd probably just sound like a CTS tribute band. Drawing from progressive rock, fusion and jazz, with alien sounds soaked in Indian and Middle Eastern styles, CTS blends disparate parts into a striking, utterly original whole. Dubbed "Sci-Fi Middle Eastern Fusion", the band's music strikes a rare balance between cerebral and emotional, intellectual and primal. A relentless touring schedule has won the band a fervent following from California to Israel, with fans ranging from jam-band hippies and jazz cats to corpse-painted headbangers and prog geeks.

Audiences and critics alike swooned over relatively unknown Leslie Uggams when she made her Broadway debut starring in Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Arthur Laurents and Jule Styne's progressively-minded 1967 Broadway musical HALLELUJAH, BABY!

Porchlight Music Theatre is proud to announce the next mainstage production it its 2017 - 2018 season Merrily We Roll Along, January 26 - March 11,  2018, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, with direction by Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Weber, associate direction and musical staging by Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Associate Christopher Pazdernik and music direction by Aaron Benham at Porchlght's home, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn Street. Merrily We Roll Along is based on the play by the same name written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The performance schedule is Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. (March 4 and March 11) and 6 p.m. (February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25) with a weekday matinee Thursday, March 8 at 1:30 p.m. There is no 4 p.m. performance Saturday, Feb. 3 and no 7:30 p.m. performance on Thursday, March 8. Tickets are $33 - $60 and are available at PorchlightMusicTheatre.org or by calling the Porchlight Music Theatre box office, 773.777.9884.

Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) is proud to announce the fourth group of composers for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Launched in 2015, Kronos' Fifty for the Future is an exciting partnership with Carnegie Hall and others to create 50 new works - by 25 women and 25 men - expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. Each year, ten composers are announced. As ever, scores, parts, recordings, videos, and other learning materials for the compositions will be offered free of charge online at kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future. 

St. Ann's Warehouse presents the American Premiere of Schaub hne Berlin's Returning to Reims, an adaptation of French author Didier Eribon's memoir of the same name, directed by Berlin auteur Thomas Ostermeier, February 4-25. This production marks the first collaboration between St. Ann's and the Schaub hne, whose production of Richard III recently garnered acclaim in BAM's Next Wave Festival.

Broadway Associate Director Michael Bradshaw Flynn The Front Page, It's Only A Play leads a talented cast, including Broadway Alums Autumn Guzzardi 9 to 5, Escape to Margaritaville (Pre-Broadway Tour) and Danielle Sue Jordan Follies (w/Bernadette Peters), Cinderella and The Music Man (1st National Tours) in the 2004 Award-Winning play, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead written by acclaimed Stage, TV and Film writer Bert V. Royal (Easy 'A' (w/Emma Stone), Recovery Road (ABC) . The play runs Feb. 2-4 9-11, 2018, at the Matthew Corozine Studio Theatre, located at 357 West 36th St., #202, New York, NY, just a few blocks from the heart of Time Square.