Mid-Summer - 1953 - Broadway Articles Page 15

When the radiant, intellectual soprano Julia Bullock stepped on stage Carnegie Hall's intimate venue, Weill Recital Hall (just 268 seats), to wild applause, I felt like I was the only one hearing her “live” for the first time. Everyone else there seemed to have a personal relationship with her and her artistry. I'd somehow missed her “live,” in previous recitals and in the title roles of CENDRILLON and CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN at Juilliard. My loss--and a significant one.

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts' 2018-19 classical season showcases some of the world's most celebrated musicians in the intimate Virginia G. Piper Theater.

AstonRep Theatre Company is pleased to present FOUR BY TENN - A Tennessee Williams One-Act Festival, featuring four one-act plays by one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. FOUR BY TENN will play March 26 - April 4, 2018 at the new Strawdog Theatre Company, 1802 W. Berenice in Chicago. Tickets are currently available www.astonrep.com. 

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.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History recently received a donation from the family of actress Jean Stapleton (1923-2013) that showcases her career. The objects range from the apron she wore while playing Edith Bunker in All in the Family, a crew jacket from the set of All in the Family, a selection of the awards that she won throughout her career, costumes and props from her career in theater and TV, memorabilia related to her work as a women's rights activist and papers reflecting her dedication Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy.

Rubicon Theatre presents a timely and trenchant production of Shakespeare's tragedy KING LEAR as the centerpiece of the company's 20th Anniversary Season. Directed by Co-Founder James O'Neil, the production features a 20-member cast led by acclaimed actor and company memberGeorge Ball, who has starred in previous Rubicon productions of All My Sons, Man of La Mancha, and Jacques Brel… (New York, L.A., and international companies of the latter).

Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, musical integrity and vibrant sound. The Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient will make her Broad Stage solo recital debut on Saturday, March 10.

AstonRep Theatre Company is pleased to present FOUR BY TEN - A Tennessee Williams One-Act Festival, featuring four one-act plays by one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. FOUR BY TENN will play March 26 - April 4, 2018 at the new Strawdog Theatre Company, 1802 W. Berenice in Chicago. Tickets are currently available www.astonrep.com. 

Juilliard Dance, led by acting artistic director Taryn Kaschock Russell, continues its season with Spring Dances, a repertory program featuring Merce Cunningham's Sounddance, set to Untitled 1975/1994 by David Tudor and staged by Jean Freebury; Crystal Pite's Grace Engine, set to music by Owen Belton and staged by Alexandra Damiani; and Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupe, set to music by the Beach Boys and staged by Richard Colton.

Michael Weber, artistic director of Porchlight Music Theatre, is proud to announce Porchlight Music Theatre's 24th season that includes the 2018 - 2019 Mainstage, Porchlight Revisits and New Faces Sing Broadway seasons. Porchlight's Mainstage and Porchlight Revisits return to the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn Street.

Falls directs his adaptation, based on a translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, with a cast featuring Philip Earl Johnson as Thomas Stockmann, doctor and chief medical officer of the baths; Scott Jaeck as Peter Stockmann, Thomas' older brother and town mayor; Lanise Antoine Shelley as Katherine, Thomas' wife; Rebecca Hurd as Thomas' daughter, Petra. Rounding out the cast are Jesse Bhamrah (Billing), David Darlow (Morten Kiil), Allen Gilmore (Aslaksen), Aubrey Deeker Hernandez (Hovstad), Larry Neumann, Jr. (The Drunk) and Carley Cornelius, Arya Daire, Guy Massey, Roderick Peeples and Dustin Whitehead as townspeople.

Park City Institute presents singer Mavis Staples, Saturday March 3, at 7:30 PM. Staples will perform on the Main Stage, part of PCI's 20th Anniversary Season at the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Center.

The Bach Choir is making history by performing at the historic State Theatre Center for the Arts for very first time.

Ken Ludwig's Moon Over Buffalo is the kind of well-constructed, old-fashion farce that has been a mainstay of community theaters for generations, yet it was written in the early 1990's. Set in 1953, it captures the struggle in desperation of a second-rate repertory company touring mid-range towns with a reliable mix of the classics: Shakespeare and Cyrano de Bergerac, with slightly more modern comedies like Noel Coward.

Today, Goodman Theatre announces the Summer 2018 return of Jim McGrath's Pamplona starring stage and screen veteran Stacy Keach as Ernest Hemingway, directed by Artistic Director Robert Falls. Originally scheduled for Spring 2017, Pamplona appeared for 11 preview performances but closed prematurely after its star suddenly fell ill on Opening Night and doctors ordered recuperation.

Music Director Designate Jaap van Zweden will return to conduct the New York Philharmonic in Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Yuja Wang as soloist, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. The performances take place Wednesday, February 28, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 2 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, March 3 at 8:00 p.m.

St phane Den ve will conduct the New York Philharmonic in an all-Prokofiev program featuring the Violin Concerto No. 1, with James Ehnes as soloist; selections from Romeo and Juliet; and The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Today, January 25, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 26 at 2:00 p.m.; and Saturday, January 27 at 8:00 p.m.

The artistic evolution of an iconic American modernist is the focus of a new exhibition opening January 26 at the Arkansas Arts Center. Featuring never-before-exhibited drawings and watercolors from the Arkansas Arts Center Collection, Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work explores the artist's transformation from intuitive draftsman to innovative watercolorist and etcher.

Renowned Choreographer Mark Morris Returns to Philadelphia as the Annenberg Center's Inaugural Artist-in-Residence; residency includes performances of Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble, the Philadelphia Dance for PD Symposium, and an American Musical Film Series

Tony Babino, performer Carol Ostrow and the Actors' Temple Board of Directors are celebrating their 101st year honoring the historic entertainers who have passed through their doors, with their annual gala YOU AIN'T HEARD NOTHIN' YET. Entertainers past and present will commemorate this mecca of modern Jewish culture, including Tony Babino, George Bettinger, Sir Frank London and Friends and special guest Star of the Yiddish Theatre, Joanne Borts. The gala takes place on Monday, March 19, 2018 at 6:30 pm in the Barbra Streisand and Milton Berle rooms of another hub of entertainment greats, the Friar's Club (57 East 55 Street, NYC). Tickets vary in prices and are available at www.theactorstemple.org/events.

Music Director Designate Jaap van Zweden will conduct the New York Philharmonic in a program pairing the New York Premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams's Dark Waves with Act I of Wagner's Die Walk re (in concert), with soprano Heidi Melton as Sieglinde, tenor Simon O'Neill as Siegmund (in his New York Philharmonic debut), and bass John Relyea as Hunding.

St phane Den ve will conduct the New York Philharmonic in an all-Prokofiev program featuring the Violin Concerto No. 1, with James Ehnes as soloist; selections from Romeo and Juliet; and The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Thursday, January 25, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 26 at 2:00 p.m.; and Saturday, January 27 at 8:00 p.m.

Guest pianist Natasha Paremski joins the Columbus Symphony and Music Director Rossen Milanov as they celebrate the passion and exoticism of the Russian masters in the first installment of the Russian Winter Festival. The full program includes Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 ( Classical ), and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy.

Roundabout Theatre Company - in association with Chocolate Factory Productions and Sonia Friedman Productions - has announced the full cast joining Tom Hollander in the first Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard's Tony Award-winning play Travesties.

SITI Company, the internationally acclaimed ensemble theater, co-founded by famed American director Anne Bogart, showcases directed by SITI Co-Artistic Director Leon Ingulsrud.