Before You Go - 1968 - Broadway Articles Page 17

C.F. Martin & Co. is continuing to add to their official Martin Guitar Ambassador program with today's hottest artists including Grammy nominee Elle King, Sam Hunt, Anderson East, Father John Misty, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, Flo Morrissey, Brett Dennen, and Megan Rapinoe.

Michael Weber, artistic director of Porchlight Music Theatre, has announced Porchlight Music Theatre's 2016 - 2017 mainstage season which includes In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's first big hit and winner of four Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, September 9 - October 16, 2016; End of the Rainbow, the Chicago premiere of the Judy Garland bio musical play, a recent smash hit in London and New York, November 4 - December 4, 2016; The Scottsboro Boys, the long-awaited Chicago premiere of the final collaboration of Kander and Ebb concerning one of the most infamous events in American history, February 3 - March 12, 2017; Marry Me a Little, Jeff Award-winning Porchlight Artistic Associate Austin Cook stars in this rarely seen Stephen Sondheim production, April 14 - May 21, 2017.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

-This summer marks another historic milestone for the annual Bard SummerScape festival. For the first time since its founding, this season's focus is on the music and culture of Italy, with seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret keyed to the theme of the 27th Bard Music Festival, "Puccini and His World." This intensive examination of the life and times of Giacomo Puccini opens a window onto Italy's rich musical heritage from Palestrina to Menotti, by way of the most popular and successful - yet, paradoxically, frequently critically underrated - opera composer of all time. Complementing the music festival, some of the Tuscan master's most compelling compatriots provide other key SummerScape highlights.

This summer marks another historic milestone for the annual Bard SummerScape festival. For the first time since its founding, this season's focus is on the music and culture of Italy, with seven weeks of music, opera,theater, dance, film, and cabaret keyed to the theme of the 27th Bard Music Festival, "Puccini and His World." This intensive examination of the life and times of Giacomo Puccini opens a window onto Italy's rich musical heritage from Palestrina to Menotti, by way of the most popular and successful - yet, paradoxically, frequently critically underrated - opera composer of all time. Complementing the music festival, some of the Tuscan master's most compelling compatriots provide other key SummerScape highlights. These include a rare, fully staged production of Iris, a forerunner of Madama Butterfly by Puccini's close contemporary Pietro Mascagni; the world premiere of Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed, four newly unearthed puppet plays from leading Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero, as reimagined by Dan Hurlin;the world premiere of Fantasque, a new ballet set to the music of Respighi and Rossini by John Heginbotham and Amy Trompetter; a film series on "Puccini and the Operatic Impulse in Cinema"; and the return of Bard's authentic and sensationally popularSpiegeltent,hosted by the inimitable Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. Taking place between July 1 and August 14 in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College's stunning Hudson River campus, SummerScape's 2016 offerings provide new opportunities to discover that, as Time Out New York puts it, "the experience of entering the Fisher Center and encountering something totally new is unforgettable and enriching." Tickets go on sale on Monday, February 15; click here for more information.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

We go around our Broadway World to feature France as our newest International spotlight. Below, we round up the top 10 theatre companies in France. Check out the list below!

King's story of struggle and triumph is chronicled in American Masters: B.B. King: The Life of Riley, premiering nationwide during Black History Month today, February 12 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

How often have you wondered what it would be like to go back in time and talk to an historical icon? Katori Hall's THE MOUNTAINTOP is a gripping and often humorous re-imagining of events the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that won London's 2010 Olivier Award for best new play. It's one of the best ways imaginable to honor Dr. King, Black History Month and the Black Lives Matter movement by experiencing its Los Angeles premiere at the Matrix Theatre, directed by Obie Award-winner Roger Guenveur Smith and starring Larry Bates and Danielle Truitt. I cannot imagine any two actors more suited to step into the shoes of these two characters, having worked together in a previous production of the play at San Diego Rep, also directed by Smith.

On the evening of April 3, 1968, after delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retired to his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.  In this gripping re-imagination of events occurring in the hours before his assassination, playwright Katori Hall picks up with a fictional depiction of a mysterious stranger who arrives at the motel room with some surprising news, forcing Dr. King to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.

A hit in the West End and on Broadway, End of the Rainbow will embark on a UK tour this month, starring Lisa Maxwell as Judy Garland. 

Gene Roddenberry had a bold vision when he pitched his inspiration to NBC as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars' in 1964. The first episode of Star Trek aired on Sept. 8, 1966. It was a show with unknown actors, and limited special effects, but what it lacked in flash, it made up for in sensibility. America was entangled in the Vietnam War, the Cold War was at its height, the Civil Rights Movement was battling the status quo, and pre-regulation smog was covering major cities with toxic gray clouds.

Katori Hall, who wrote the award winning play THE MOUNTAINTOP, which is in production at Cleveland Play House, in her script attempts to answer such questions as: What was Martin Luther King, Jr. like as a person? With all the death threats that King received, what was his last night alive like? What did he believe was going to be his ultimate role in the Black rights movement?

It is a lost era of civilization, the dinner party, which Arena Stage will conjure up starting this week in The City of Conversation.

The latest production is one that resonates today, he says. "It's a story we all fell in love with."

King's story of struggle and triumph is chronicled in American Masters: B.B. King: The Life of Riley, premiering nationwide during Black History Month on Friday, February 12 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS

The Ridgefield Playhouse for Movies and the Performing Arts has announced its March 2016 and continuing spring 2016 lineup. Scroll down for details!

The Matrix Theatre Company honors Black History Month with the Los Angeles premiere of The Mountaintop, directed by Obie Award-winner Roger Guenveur Smith and starring Larry Bates and Danielle Mone Truitt. Recipient of London's 2010 Olivier Award, Katori Hall's gripping and often humorous re-imagining of events the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. takes on new meaning with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Mountaintop opens at the Matrix Theatre on February 6, with previews beginning January 28. (Scroll all the way down to view links to high resolution photos.)

After an exciting first season, Sutton Theatres is proud to announce its spring 2016 season of West End transfers, high profile comedians and new circus work alongside local community pieces.

The tea-guzzling Tiger pounces back into the West End in this truly magical Olivier Award nominated production of THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, opening at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue tonight 25 November 2015 and running throughout Christmas to Sunday 10 January 2016.

From the cobblestone streets of London and the islands off the Irish coast, to the halls of Harvard and clamor of the second Continental Congress, Artistic Director, Mark Abram-Copenhaver, is proud to announce the 2016 season at the South Bend Civic Theatre.

“The Bee Gees are one of the strangest, most complicated, most brilliant groups ever to achieve pop stardom,” Rolling Stone's Josh Eells wrote in his 2014 profile of Barry Gibb. The new 80 Proof Media tribute album, To Love the Bee Gees: A Tribute to The Brothers Gibb, which will be released next Friday, November 27th, proves that yet again.

How wonderful is it that a song can usher in all sorts of memories - perhaps of your first kiss, driving in a car along a dusty country road, or of people once-loved, still-loved, who are no longer a part of your life - to flood your mind, fill your heart and to transport you, as if by magic, to some earlier time? I love that feeling, which we in the theater are subject to far more often than regular folk, thanks to the music that underscores our dramatic lives and which allows everyone onstage, offstage, backstage - in whatever stage of life - to indulge in the play of 'make believe.'

The tea-guzzling Tiger pounces back into the West End in this truly magical Olivier Award nominated production of THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, opening at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue on Wednesday 25 November 2015 and running throughout Christmas to Sunday 10 January 2016.