Grounded - 2014 - Off-Off-Broadway Articles Page 9

Two works representing the sacred and the secular, and also representing the Los Angeles Master Chorale's past and present, will be performed in Walt Disney Concert on Sunday, March 17 at 7 PM. Maurice Duruflé's Requiem was written by the French composer in 1947 and has become one of the most-beloved choral compositions of the 20th century. The Requiem has been given storied performances by the Master Chorale since the 1960s. Dale Trumbore describes her work How to Go On as a “secular requiem” and the work — commissioned by the non-profit, Southern California-based Choral Arts Initiative — was premiered in July 2016 and subsequently saw Trumbore awarded the ASCAP Young Composers Award in 2017. The March 17 concert will be the Los Angeles Master Chorale's first performance of the work.

Two-time Tony Award-winning Goodspeed Musicals has brought together an extraordinary group of artists to helm the five exciting productions planned this season: an All-American classic, a heart-warming musical tale, an electric dance-filled tuner, an extraordinary true story, and an inspirational journey that's sure to inspire. Single tickets for all five shows set for Goodspeed's 2019 season go on public sale this Sunday, February 17 at 10:00 a.m..

San Francisco Playhouse announced casting for their first Sandbox Series production of 2019 - the world premiere of A White Girl's Guide to International Terrorism, written by Chelsea Marcantel. Morgan Green will direct. The play was commissioned by San Francisco Playhouse.

Neil Gooding (Producer/Director) delivers another well crafted Pro/Am production with Packemin Production's staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Music) and Tim Rice's (Lyrics) JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. 

"People surprise you all the time. Just when you think you have them all figured out." Bart DeLorenzo directs the West Coast premiere of the acclaimed off-Broadway hit Too Much Sun by Nicky Silver (Broadway's The Lyons), presented by Indie Chi Productions in a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre. Previews take place on Feb. 28 and March 1, with opening night set for March 2 and performances continuing through April 21. 

PAGE 73 PRODUCTIONS has named Sanaz Toossi the 2019 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. Selected from nearly 400 applicants, Toossi will receive a $10,000 award and an additional $10,000 budgeted for developing several new plays over the course of the year.

Barbican Cinema is delighted to announce Poetry In Motion: Contemporary Iranian Cinema, which takes place between 3-24 April and showcases some of the country's most inventive filmmakers. 

The Alley Theatre and Interim Artistic Director James Black, announce the cast and crew of the family drama The Humans by Stephen Karam and directed by Alley Artistic Associate Brandon Weinbrenner. The New York Times calls the play "a beautiful and moving play…a genuine and precious rarity." The Humans runs March 1-24 in the Hubbard Theatre. Tickets are available at alleytheatre.org or by calling the Box Office at 713.220.5700.

San Francisco Playhouse announced casting for their first Sandbox Series production of 2019 - the world premiere of A White Girl's Guide to International Terrorism, written by Chelsea Marcantel. Morgan Green will direct. The play was commissioned by San Francisco Playhouse.

Zoetic Stage and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County present THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, Simon Stephens' Tony Award-winning adaptation based on Mark Haddon's best-selling novel.

Second Thought Theatre begins its landmark fifteenth season with the area premiere of Incognito by Nick Payne. STT Artistic Director Alex Organ returns to helm this year's season opener, having previously directed Grounded (2017), Cock (2014), and A Behanding in Spokane (2013) for STT.

SANTA BARBARA DANCE THEATER'S Artistic Director, Christopher Pilafian, kicks off 2019 with DISTANCE AND DESIRE, a fresh program featuring his newest work and that of accomplished and exciting guest artists Josh Manculich and Yusha-Marie Sorzano. The program also includes a special appearance by Doug Elkins' NYC-based company, doug elkins choreography, etc. The event is made possible with support from the Jody and John Arnhold Guest Artist Fund.

Zoetic Stage and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County present THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, Simon Stephens' Tony Award-winning adaptation based on Mark Haddon's best-selling novel.

Pinch 'N Ouch Theatre opens its 10-year anniversary season with the Tony Award-winning rock musical, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, written by John Cameron Mitchell and music by Stephen Trask. Pinch 'N Ouch Theatre's Producing Artistic Director, Grant McGowen will direct Atlanta native Chad Darnell in the role of 'Hedwig,' an East German genderqueer "internationally ignored song stylist." McGowen most recently directed THIS IS OUR YOUTH, FOOL FOR LOVE and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF at Pinch 'N' Ouch Theatre. "This show is a beast of a show and I'm so excited to bring her to back to Atlanta," said Darnell who previously played the role at the Bay Street Theatre in Savannah, GA in January 2018.

For two nights in a row, I experienced rousing gospel music as part of #TCTheater. In other words, was a good week. The night after seeing Penumbra Theatre's annual gospel rendition of the nativity story BLACK NATIVITY, I attended opening night of Park Square Theatre's regional premiere of the new play MARIE AND ROSETTA, the true story of lesser known gospel legend Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Written by Playwrights' Center affiliated writer George Brant, MARIE AND ROSETTA imagines the night of the first performance of Rosetta and her protege/duet partner Marie Knight. A night in 1946 Mississippi when there was no room at the inn for two black women singers, so they rehearsed and slept in a funeral home with a kindly owner. This play with music paints a beautiful picture of these two very different women, their music, and their relationship, as well as the hardships both faced in their lives and careers, and brings these two musical legends to vivid life. A 'joyful noise' indeed.

Baryshnikov Arts Center's new season opens with the New York Premiere of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Verklarte Nacht, a work set to Arnold Schonberg's well-known composition of the same name based on a poem by Richard Dehmel.

From the Water is a domestic drama in a supernatural crisis. Millions of people are disappearing, civilization is moving underground, and the downfalls keep coming. Alex wants to stay, Peter wants to fight, Ava wants closure, and the Numbers are preparing for extinction. This grounded science fiction thriller uses creatures and clones to define what it means to be human, and explores the strength it takes to fight against an unstoppable force.

The Exponential Festival, a month-long January festival for NYC-based emerging artists working in experimental performance, is proud to present the world premiere production of Duet-ed by What Holds Heat. What Holds Heat is a collaboration between Nic Adams (Icarus in the L.E.S.) and Cori Marquis (Cori Marquis + the Nines [IX] and LMnO3). Of their works, they write, "Our kinetic and experiential works of performance seek to extend the boundaries of theatre and expand its power for our audience. Our ensemble-based theatre prioritizes impressionistic storytelling, with subjects ranging from the intimate to the fantastical, while always being grounded in the complexity of human relationships." Since 2015, What Holds Heat has produced three original works for the stage, at venues like Dixon Place, The Bushwick Starr (as part of Target Margin Theater's Stein Labs), and Vital Joint.

Macy Medford and Arden Guice may only be college students, but their performances as Violet and Daisy Hilton, the heroines of Side Show - the iconic musical by Bill Russell, Henry Krieger and Bill Condon that debuted on Broadway some 20 years ago - in Belmont University Musical Theatre's production that runs for just one weekend, are nothing less than a professional triumph for each young woman. Thoroughly committed and startlingly focused, Medford and Guice perform an oftentimes tricky, always challenging, task in order that the two young women effectively become their characters, ensuring the musical packs an emotional wallop delivered straight to the collective heart of its audience, while showcasing the evolution of a musical theatre program at the Nashville university, which over the years has gained a national reputation as the training ground of the next generations of Broadway stars yet to be.

Washington National Opera (WNO) continues its annual holiday family opera tradition with The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me, December 14-16, 2018, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Based on Jeanette Winterson's award-winning children's book which tells the Nativity story from the donkey's point of view, The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me features music by Tony-award winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home) and a libretto by the late poet J.D. 'Sandy' McClatchy. These performances star current and former members of WNO's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, presents the concert's eponymous Trouble written by Indian-American composer Vijay Iyer featuring Korean-American violinist Jennifer Koh, one of the few new works of concert music that ruminates specifically on the minority experience in the United States.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, presents the concert's eponymous Trouble written by Indian-American composer Vijay Iyer featuring Korean-American violinist Jennifer Koh, one of the few new works of concert music that ruminates specifically on the minority experience in the United States. Led by Artistic Director and Conductor Gil Rose, BMOP also celebrates the Boston premieres of Cello Concerto by Lukas Foss featuring cellist David Russell, Evidence by Matthew Aucoin, and Acrobats of God by Carlos Surinach.

Quentin Oliver Lee, the man behind the mask - the dynamic singer/actor leads the national company of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, now on tour throughout the United States - first stepped onstage in the iconic role during its Memphis run earlier this year and he freely admits that the experience left him eager to return to Tennessee to perform on the stage of Nashville's Andrew Jackson Hall.

Over 100 members from 40 different markets attended The Broadway League's Audience Education and Engagement Fall Forum. Emerson College President, Dr. Lee Pelton, was this year's keynote speaker. The two day forum included a number of different topics including The Jimmy Awards, the Broadway Bridges program, program evaluations, technology & streaming and diversity.

Thank goodness my lack of knowledge of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's library of theatrical plays and fictional stories didn't prevent me from enjoying Christopher Durang's wildly hilarious, Chekhov-inspired VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE, a modern-set play that won the Tony Award for Best Play back in 2013. Apparently filled with casual allusions to past Chekhov works---from character names and one-off references to thematic motifs---the play does offer, at its core, a laugh-a-minute comedy about a dysfunctional trio of siblings trying to face the apparently troubling onset of middle age…and the possibility that they may not have done enough in their lives to deem it a satisfactory one. This undeniably funny production continues at Orange County's Tony-winning regional theater South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through October 21, 2018.