I Have Been Here Before - 1938 - Broadway Articles Page 3

Today (October 30) in live streaming: Find out who made the Top 5 on Next On Stage, Christina Bianco sings at Birdland, and so much more!

As those lines were read by the “stranger” during the first Zoom rehearsal for The War of the Worlds, director Matt Ripa, M.F.A. 2008, looked into his computer screen at his student actors. “You could see the hint of familiarity come across their faces,” he recalls. “It hit home.”

For his debut solo album, rising Los Angeles-based pianist Thomas Kotcheff has taken on a formidable challenge: the premiere recording of American composer Frederic Rzewski's virtuosic (and timely) Songs of Insurrection, based on protest songs from seven countries around the world.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the greatest theatrical works (non-musical) from 1920-2020; see if your favorites made the list!

Theater suffered a huge loss this week when the playwright Terrence McNally died at 81, of complications of our current plague, the coronavirus. It was a sad irony since many of McNally's plays dealt with the effects of a previous plague, AIDS, in the 1980s.

How do we make a list of the 101 greatest show tunes from the past 100 years? Well, we did the near-impossible task.  Check out our full list here! 

In this intensely physical production, cast members from The Actor's Gang tell their ancestors' stories in twelve different eras, all woven into a single narrative about escaping an oppressive homeland and being drawn to the beacon above Ellis Island.

Legendary singer-songwriter James Taylor releases his new album, American Standard on February 28TH, 2020 via Fantasy Records.

With the topic of illegal immigration so prevalent in today's news, now is the perfect time to take a very personal look at the trials and tribulations of those who immigrated, both legally and illegally, to our country in THE NEW COLOSSUS, a new play co-written by The Actors' Gang ensemble and its Artistic Director Tim Robbins, who also directs the production. In it, twelve of the acting troupe's members tell their ancestors' stories, reflecting their great diversity, struggles and journeys from oppression to freedom, a real personal testament celebrating the courage and great character of the refugees who came to this country throughout the last 200 years.

Pasadena Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman has announced the on -sale of tickets for the Los Angeles premiere of Ann - written by and starring Holland Taylor and directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein from May 27 to June 28, 2020, and a new production of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun with book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, directed by Sarna Lapine, from July 28-August 23, 2020.

The Legendary Chita Rivera keeps on moving in her extraordinary nightclub act at 54 Below.

Rose Theatre Kingston today announces that Jerry Gunn will step down as Executive Producer.

'Smoke on the Mountain' is a entertaining and uplifting show about a 1938 traveling family roadshow bringing gospel music, bluegrass and more. South City Theatre brings this touring performance from church to church for just a few weeks. Even if you are not a religious person, you will find this show to be fun and delightful in character work and music.

Although set in 1938, it's still so sadly relevant today.

Gibson is pleased to announce new creative collaboration agreements with key boutique guitar makers and music inspired partners.

Elizabethan comedy meets modern constructs of gender fluidity in Kokandy's top-notch production of HEAD OVER HEELS.

What makes a Broadway theatre? Technically any venue with 500 seats or more, located along Broadway in New York City's Theatre District is a Broadway theatre, and the art that is produced in these special places is widely considered the highest form of theatrical entertainment in the world. Today, forty-one theatres are technically Broadway houses, each with their own rich history. Below, we're giving you the scoop on the life of every one of them!

When the Rodgers and Hart musical, 'I Married An Angel,' opened in May of 1938, choreography by way of Mr. George Balanchine, Brooks Atkinson, the critic of the New York Times, rained applause down: '...George Balanchine has designed his most gorgeous ballet patterns...the central part of the Angel is played by Vera Zorina, whose grace as a dancer is informed with imagination and awareness.

Multiple Grammy and Oscar winning artist, musician and producer T Bone Burnett gave a thought provoking keynote speech at SXSW today, warning of the current dangers of the dominance of digital monopolies like Google and Facebook, while championing the value of the independence of artists. See below for the full text of the speech.

In 1938, at the age of 33, Austrian composer Eric Zeisl and his wife fled the Nazi invasion of his home in Vienna for a new life in the United States. When he arrived in Los Angeles, Zeisl committed himself to applying his mastery of classical compositional technique to commemorating the destroyed Jewish European heritage. Now, in celebration of the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony's 25th Anniversary, Albany Records has just released The Music of Eric Zeisl with the LAJS, conducted by Dr. Noreen Green.

A longtime advocate for music suppressed by the Nazi regime, Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski (vnoo-koff'-skee) makes his New York debut this February as part of a festival dedicated to the music of Galician-Jewish composer Karol Rathaus (1895-1954). Little-known today, Rathaus was a protege of Franz Schreker and built a successful career in Berlin before fleeing in 1932 due to the deteriorating political situation in Germany. He first migrated to Paris, then to London in 1934. He settled in New York in 1938 and joined the music faculty of Queens College two years later as its first professor of composition.

On October 30, 1938, just before 8:00 pm, Americans gathered around the radio to listen to Mercury Theatre On The Air, an anthology series produced and hosted by Orson Welles. That evening's program, scripted by Howard Koch, was a modern-day adaptation of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds, one of the first tales of alien invasion, in which Martians emerged from meteors to lay waste to all of the Earth's civilizations. Except that Koch, with help from producers John Houseman, Paul Stewart and Welles himself, structured the program to play, at least in the first moments, as special news bulletins interrupting a normal performance by a dance orchestra. The ruse seems thin even for the time, but Hitler had 'annexed' Austria a few months earlier, and was threatening to do more, so the program struck a chord and the resulting panic in the area in close proximity - Welles' Martians landed in a New Jersey pasture, sent East Coast residents scurrying across bridges and clogging highways.

Bringing together some of today's most remarkable ballet talents, Daniel Ulbricht's Stars of American Ballet returns to Jacob's Pillow, appearing in the Ted Shawn Theatre August 22-26. A principal dancer with New York City Ballet since 2007, Ulbricht is lauded as "one of the best male ballet dancers in New York" (Dance Magazine). As Artistic Director, curator, and performer, Ulbricht brings a unique vision and perspective to performance. With a cast highlighting 14 powerhouse dancers of New York City Ballet, this collective celebrates the legacy of choreographic legend Jerome Robbins with a program of his masterpieces on the occasion of his centennial, augmented by two Robbins-related PillowTalks.

The second Wednesday in June marks a special evening of acoustic blues, a concert honoring the roots of the blues while sharing the music of those working at the forefront of the genre.

Particularly in light of the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, author and civil rights activist James Baldwin is garnering new attention and appreciation for his astute analyses of race, class, and sexuality in U.S. culture. Our reading group will take up his groundbreaking semi-autobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). Attendees are invited to read this seminal text that brought mid-20th Century African-American literature out of the shadow of Richard Wright while deftly exploring the post-Civil War Great Migration, its southern roots, its religious inflections, and its generational tensions. The suggested edition is the most recent paperback (ISBN 978-0345806543). Traditional New Orleans fare of coffee and beignets at Muriel's Jackson Square with lively discussion to follow led by Festival favorite and Southern literary scholar Gary Richards. Seating is limited to 50 persons; pre-registration is required.