Manhattan Made Me - 1983 - Off-Broadway Articles Page 11

One of the biggest downers perpetrated by American culture is the characterization of Labor Day weekend as the 'unofficial end of summer.' But given what has passed for cabaret entertainment-at least the shows I was able to attend--since the 'unofficial start of summer' on Memorial Day weekend, the end of summer can't come soon enough. But my dismay over the hours lost watching average shows this season was tempered a bit by the pride and joy I felt watching the June performances of three strikingly attractive and talented 30ish brunettes with powerhouse voices-- Jackie Kristel, Karen Gross and Jodi Beck, who all staged entertaining shows as spring was turning to summer.

Critically acclaimed theatre company The Playwrights Realm presents the New York premiere of Lauren Yee's new play The Hatmaker's Wife, directed by recent OBIE Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812). The Hatmaker's Wife marks the first Playwrights Realm production at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street) in midtown Manhattan, following previous engagements in several downtown Off-Broadway venues. Previews begin tonight, August 27, for an opening Thursday, September 5.

Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis will collaborate on A BED AND A CHAIR: A New York Love Affair, a new musical event featuring Sondheim's music arranged and performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. This Encores! Special Event, directed by frequent Sondheim collaborator John Doyle, with choreography by Parker Esse and musical supervision by David Loud, was conceived by Peter Gethers, Jack Viertel and John Doyle, and will run for seven performances, November 13 - 17 at City Center.

The heat wave may be over, but it's still sizzlin' hot at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. If you thought July was on fire, wait until you see what August is cooking up! From classic country to bayou blues, superhuman dancers to tall toe-tappers, uproarious comedians to family friendly fun, the WHBPAC invites everyone to experience the magic of live performance!

Critically acclaimed theatre company The Playwrights Realm has announced the cast and creative team for the New York premiere of Lauren Yee's new play The Hatmaker's Wife, directed by recent OBIE Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812). The Hatmaker's Wife marks the first Playwrights Realm production at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street) in midtown Manhattan, following previous engagements in several downtown Off-Broadway venues. Previews begin Tuesday, August 27, for an opening Thursday, September 5.

Sound Opinions co-presents the 3rd annual Music Box Theatre Summer Music Film Festival today, June 28-July 2 at Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Avenue. Single tickets are $8-$15 and festival passes are $70 at www.summermusicfilmfestival.com.

Sound Opinions co-presents the 3rd annual Music Box Theatre Summer Music Film Festival June 28-July 2 at Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Avenue. Single tickets are $8-$15 and festival passes are $70 at www.summermusicfilmfestival.com.

Christine Baranski, Kelli Barrett, Walter Bobbie, Jeremy Cohen, Dalton Harrod, Randy Skinner, Shonn Wiley, Karen Ziemba,New York City Ballet Principaldancer Joaquin De Luz and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Irina Dvorovenko will star in Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes, the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 New York City Center season.

The Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC) has announced Willy Russell's (Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine) BLOOD BROTHERS, musical staging by Christine O'Grady, musical direction by Julianne B. Merrill, and directed by Tom Wojtunik. BLOOD BROTHERS will play a limited engagement at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church (30-44 Crescent St, Astoria, NY 11102. Entrance on 30th Road.) Performances begin tonight, May 2 and continue through Saturday, May 18.

Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis will collaborate on A BED AND A CHAIR: A New York Love Story, a new musical event featuring Sondheim's music arranged and performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, announced Arlene Shuler, President & CEO of New York City Center. This Encores! Special Event, directed by frequent Sondheim collaborator John Doyle, and conceived by Peter Gethers, Jack Viertel and John Doyle, will run for seven performances, November 13 - 17 at City Center. City Center's annual Gala Benefit will take place on Thursday, November 14 and will include a post-performance dinner at the Plaza Hotel.

Christine Baranski, Kelli Barrett, Walter Bobbie, Jeremy Cohen, Dalton Harrod, Randy Skinner, Shonn Wiley, Karen Ziemba,New York City Ballet Principaldancer Joaquin De Luz and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Irina Dvorovenkowill star in Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes, the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 New York City Center season. Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, On Your Toes will have guest music direction by Encores! founding music director Rob Fisher and will play seven performances, from May 8 - 12 at New York City Center, W. 55th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues). The "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ballet, originally choreographed by George Balanchine, will be staged by Susan Pilarre, who served as a Ballet Mistress of the show's 1983 Broadway Revival.

The Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC) has announced Willy Russell's (Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine) BLOOD BROTHERS, musical staging by Christine O'Grady, musical direction by Julianne B. Merrill, and directed by Tom Wojtunik. BLOOD BROTHERS will play a limited engagement at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church (30-44 Crescent St, Astoria, NY 11102. Entrance on 30th Road.) Performances begin Thursday, May 2 and continue through Saturday, May 18.

Four renowned achievers will be honored for their lifetime accomplishments with the 34th Annual Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service. The awards recognize individuals who have enriched modern society in a range of human endeavors. The 2013 Common Wealth Award winners are: Alan Alda, celebrated actor, director and screenwriter, for Dramatic Arts; David McCullough, preeminent author and historian, for Literature; Jane Pauley, leading broadcast journalist, Today Show contributor and author, for Mass Communications; Martin Sheen, film legend, social activist and humanitarian, for Public Service.

SOLO IN THE CITY: JEWISH WOMEN, JEWISH STARS is a solo performance series which will be presented throughout March at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The series will feature seven leading and emerging NYC-based soloists including Sandra Bernhard, Tovah Feldshuh, Judy Gold, and Jackie Hoffman performing one-woman shows and a special opening lecture/film event. The Baruch Performing Arts Center is located on the campus of Baruch College in Manhattan on East 25th Street between Lexington & 3rd Aves.

Russia's profound and far-reaching impact on 20th-century culture will be explored at the 2013 annual Bard SummerScape festival, which once again offers an extraordinary summer of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 24th annual Bard Music Festival, Stravinsky and His World. Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College's bucolic Hudson River campus, the seven-week festival opens on July 6 with the first of two performances of A Rite (2013) by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company, and closes on August 18 with a party in Bard's beloved Spiegeltent, which returns for the full seven weeks. Complementing the Bard Music Festival's exploration of “Stravinsky and His World,” some of the great Russian-born composer's most captivating compatriots provide key SummerScape highlights. These include the first fully-staged American production of Sergey Taneyev's opera Oresteia; the world premiere of an original stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's seminal novel The Master and Margarita; and a film festival titled “Between Traditions: Stravinsky's Legacy and Russian Emigré Cinema.” Together, SummerScape's offerings will continue Bard's yearlong tenth-anniversary celebrations for the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, which commence with a month of special performances in April.

SOLO IN THE CITY: JEWISH WOMEN, JEWISH STARS is a solo performance series which will be presented throughout March at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The series will feature seven leading and emerging NYC-based soloists including Sandra Bernhard, Tovah Feldshuh, Judy Gold, and Jackie Hoffman performing one-woman shows and a special opening lecture/film event. The Baruch Performing Arts Center is located on the campus of Baruch College in Manhattan on East 25th Street between Lexington & 3rd Aves.

With her tribute show to the music of Harold Arlen and Duke Allington, 'When Harry Met The Duke' is Rosemary Loar's creative foray back into the caressing arms of the Great American Songbook. If you consider that the contemporary cabaret scene in New York is 30 years on (since the opening of Don't Tell Mama in 1982 and the start of MAC in 1983), there have been likely been thousands of cabaret shows with GAS themes and the interesting new ideas may be down to a precious few. And Loar, who has been performing cabaret shows during that same time frame, has managed to come up with yet another variation and her erudite and accessibly sophisticated show goes down like a delicious vodka martini topped with a skewer of blue cheese stuffed olives.

The NY Daily News reports that Barry Manilow was 'absolutely floored' to hear that New York City officials planned to name a street corner of Manhattan after him. The legendary singer called the news the 'biggest honor' he has ever received.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that Academy Award-winner Barbra Streisand, the first American woman artist to receive credit as writer, director, producer and star of a major feature film, YENTL, will be honored at the 40th Annual Chaplin Award Gala held at Lincoln Center on the evening of Monday, April 22, 2013.

Grace Gummer, Corey Stoll, and Treat Williams join Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress, Ellen Barkin, in The Parisian Woman. Commissioned by The Flea Theater, Beau Willimon has adapted Henry Becque's La Parisienne, now set in contemporary Washington D.C. To what lengths will a woman go to advance the political career of her husband? The Parisian Woman tears the veil off adultery in this modern retelling of the scandalous affairs of a bored and intelligent wife left to her own devices. Directed by Joel Schumacher.

Grace Gummer, Corey Stoll, and Treat Williams join Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress, Ellen Barkin, in The Parisian Woman. Commissioned by The Flea Theater, Beau Willimon has adapted Henry Becque's La Parisienne, now set in contemporary Washington D.C. To what lengths will a woman go to advance the political career of her husband? The Parisian Woman tears the veil off adultery in this modern retelling of the scandalous affairs of a bored and intelligent wife left to her own devices. Directed by Joel Schumacher.

Birdland (315 West 44th Street - between 8th & 9th Aves.) has announced its line-up of entertainment for the month of August, 2012.

For the first time on the West Coast, audiences will have the opportunity to see Ainadamar fully staged in its acclaimed revised version. Long Beach Opera (LBO) presents Argentine composer Oswaldo Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang's powerful Grammy Award-winning opera on May 20 and May 26, 2012 at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, CA. Based on the life of famous writer Federico Garcia Lorca and his murder by Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, Ainadamar celebrates Lorca's fight for artistic, political and personal freedom.

CBS News legend Mike Wallace, the 60 MINUTES' pit-bull reporter whose probing, brazen style made his name synonymous with the tough interview - a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago - died last night. He was 93 and passed peacefully surrounded by family members at Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Conn., where he spent the past few years.

CBS News legend Mike Wallace, the 60 MINUTES' pit-bull reporter whose probing, brazen style made his name synonymous with the tough interview - a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago - died last night. He was 93 and passed peacefully surrounded by family members at Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Conn., where he spent the past few years.