Once On This Island - 2002 - Broadway Articles Page 18

'So here I am, a preacher's son, playing the preacher!' smiles David Ruprecht. The renowned star of television, film, and stage muses about his latest gig playing the Reverend Shaw Moore in Maine State Music Theatre's production of Footloose, which runs from August 6-23. Ruprecht's affinities for the part and this production are numerous. It is, first of all, directed and choreographed by his wife, Patti Colombo, an experience he says he finds 'very interesting because I never have worked with her as a director before, only once long ago as a choreographer.' Then there is the role of the charismatic and troubled Texas preacher who forbids dancing to the townsfolk of Bomont. 'My dad was a preacher [a Lutheran minister] in Florida, where I grew up, and he was very, very charismatic. Naturally, he wanted his son to become a preacher, too. I had all the talents, but not the calling, so I did the next best thing and became an actor. After all, both actors and preachers put on costumes and speak to large groups or people, and both have a little wine after the show,' he jokes mischievously.

The Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC), one of the most acclaimed new play developmental programs in the country, announces its 17th season with an illustrious program of playwrights, new play workshops and special performance events. For the first time, the OPC Summer New Works Festival will take place over two weekends from today, August 2 through 10, 2014 in Ojai, California.

BroadwayWorld.com is very excited to kick off a brand new partnership with THE SONDHEIM REVIEW. Each month we'll be bringing you special, and exclusive archives from the quarterly magazine dedicated to the work of the musical theatre and Broadway's foremost composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim. Each issue contains news, interviews, features, reviews, historical information, upcoming productions in your area, puzzles, and more. Our correspondents in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and all over the world bring you the latest, most accurate information and insights.

A great, big Broadway season is on its way, with fourteen productions already slated to open in the next few months. With weeks until the craziness begins, there is still plenty of time to catch up on what's been going on at Broadway's already occupied theaters. BroadwayWorld will be profiling the hits of the Great White Way that continue to draw crowds after months, years, and (in some cases) decades. Meet the current cast of Broadway's MOTOWN below!

Rubicon's Summer Youth Program presents The Drowsy Chaperone, the Tony Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison based on a book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar. With direction by Brian McDonald, musical direction by Miriam Arichea and choreography by Carolanne Marano, The Drowsy Chaperone features over 25 local youth performers in a production well suited for children, adults and families. Opening Wednesday, August 13th and running through Saturday, August 16th, performances of The Drowsy Chaperone begin at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and continue 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday, 8 p.m. on Friday, and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday. For tickets, call 805.667.2900 or go to rubicontheatre.org.

The New York Philharmonic will present its 11th season of Summertime Classics, July 2-6, 2014, featuring five themed concerts with Bramwell Tovey, who has been the host and conductor of the series since its founding in 2004. On the first program, July 2-3, 2014, titled 'Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Friends,' the New York Philharmonic will perform Shostakovich's Festive Overture; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, with pianist Joyce Yang as soloist; Musorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain; Rachmaninoff's arrangement of his own Vocalise; and Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, and Marche slave. The second program, July 4-6, 2014, titled 'Star-Spangled Celebration,' will feature the New York Philharmonic and United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps - 'The Commandant's Own,' which is celebrating its 80th-anniversary year - in a program that includes Copland's Clarinet Concerto, with Associate Principal Clarinet Mark Nuccio as soloist, and Fanfare for the Common Man; Gershwin's 'Strike Up the Band' from Strike Up the Band; Sousa marches; and more. In these performances Major Brian Dix, director and commanding officer of 'The Commandant's Own,' will share conducting duties with Bramwell Tovey.

Michael Cerveris, Isaiah Johnson, Randy Newman, Laura Osnes, Vonda Shepard, Brooklyn Shuck, Tony Vincent and Broadway Inspirational Voices have been cast in Randy Newman's Faust: The Concert, which will be performed tonight, July 1 as the second Encores! Off-Center presentation of the 2014 season. Faust will be directed by Thomas Kail and choreographed by Marcos Santana. Jeanine Tesori is the Encores! Off-Center artistic director; Chris Fenwick is its music director.

Hy-Fi, the winning project of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1's 2014 Young Architects Program, opens today, June 27 in the MoMA PS1 courtyard. A circular tower of organic and reflective bricks that uses biological technologies combined with cutting-edge computation and engineering, the structure is made of biodegradable material and was created through a new method of bio-design conceived by its designer, David Benjamin of the New York-based architects The Living. It will remain on view through September 7.

The Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC), one of the most acclaimed new play developmental programs in the country, announces its 17th season with an illustrious program of playwrights, new play workshops and special performance events. For the first time, the OPC Summer New Works Festival will take place over two weekends from August 2 through 10, 2014 in Ojai, California.

Hy-Fi, the winning project of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1's 2014 Young Architects Program, opens on June 27 in the MoMA PS1 courtyard. A circular tower of organic and reflective bricks that uses biological technologies combined with cutting-edge computation and engineering, the structure is made of biodegradable material and was created through a new method of bio-design conceived by its designer, David Benjamin of the New York-based architects The Living. It will remain on view through September 7.

Michael Cerveris, Isaiah Johnson, Randy Newman, Laura Osnes, Vonda Shepard, Brooklyn Shuck, Tony Vincent and Broadway Inspirational Voices have been cast in Randy Newman's Faust: The Concert, which will be performed on July 1 as the second Encores! Off-Center presentation of the 2014 season. Faust will be directed by Thomas Kail and choreographed by Marcos Santana. Jeanine Tesori is the Encores! Off-Center artistic director; Chris Fenwick is its music director.

Two legends came together today with BroadwayWorld.com in honor of this Sunday's Tony Awards. Rosie O'Donnell (while en route to Parker's graduation), who will be receiving the 2014 Isabelle Stevenson Award and Grammy, Tony, Emmy award-winner Cyndi Lauper chatted by phone (while on tour with Cher) about the Tonys, Rosie's Theatre Kids, her theatrical favorites, and of course about LAST year's big winner - KINKY BOOTS! The Isabelle Stevenson Award is presented annually to a member of the theatre community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations. If that doesn't describe Rosie, we don't know what does. O'Donnell will be presented with the 2014 Isabelle Stevenson Award for her commitment to arts education for New York City's public school children.

North America's largest showcase of Japanese film and “One of the loopiest… and least predictable of New York's film festivals” (New York Magazine), JAPAN CUTS: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema returns for its eighth annual installment.

Melba Moore will play two shows at New York's Metropolitan Room on June 20, 2014, at 7pm & 9:30pm. Price $35.00 - $115.00.

This June, July and August, 54 BELOW presents an exciting lineup of the brightest talent from Broadway and beyond. Located just below the legendary Studio 54 at 254 West 54th Street.

A nominee for the Tony Award for Best Play in 2012 and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, a co-production with the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, kicks off the summer at Performance Network Theatre from June 12 - July 20, 2014.

The Music Academy of the West will inaugurate an unprecedented partnership with the world-renowned New York Philharmonic and present a new production of Georges Bizet's popular opera Carmen in honor of Marilyn Horne's 80th birthday as part of the Academy's 67th annual Summer Festival. The Music Academy will present some 200 events over the course of its coming season, which begins June 16 and concludes August 9.

Columbia University School of the Arts Film Program and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will co-present the 27thAnnual Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), a weeklong program of screenings, dramatic readings and special events in New York. The celebration will continue with events to be announced for June 17-20 in Los Angeles. This marks the third year that the Festival is co-presented by the Film Society.

Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd announces the cast and creative team for Alan Ayckbourn's science fiction comedy Communicating Doors. Eleven plays penned by Alan Ayckbourn have been produced by the Alley, including the American premiere of Henceforward, directed by Ayckbourn, in 1987 and House & Garden in 2002. Alan Ayckbourn has been inducted into the American Theatre's Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics' Circle Award for Services to the Arts, became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards and was knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announces the subject matter of the upcoming works to receive their world premieres by the Orchestra as part of the groundbreaking artistic collaboration with the MusicNOW Festival and Artistic Director Bryce Dessner. On Today, March 21, the Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director Louis Langrée, will premiere Nico Muhly's Pleasure Ground, a portrait work depicting the life of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead. On Saturday, March 22, Mr. Langrée and the CSO will premiere mountain, a new work by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang depicting the life of American composer Aaron Copland.

Actor/director Tony Torn and Julie Atlas Muz star in Ubu Sings Ubu, an immersive theatrical mash up of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and the songs of experimental cult band Pere Ubu. Adapted from a version of the original French text, and run through the Google Translateengine, Torn and company are fueled by the giddy, angular new wave rock of Pere Ubu, the cult band whose name and style were inspired by the play. Torn, who co-directs with Dan Safer of Witness Relocation, plays Pere Ubu while Muz is Mere Ubu, in a bizarre parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth, set in Poland instead of Scotland.

The New York Philharmonic will present its 11th season of Summertime Classics, July 2-6, 2014, featuring five themed concerts with Bramwell Tovey, who has been the host and conductor of the series since its founding in 2004. On the first program, July 2-3, 2014, titled "Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Friends," the New York Philharmonic will perform Shostakovich's Festive Overture; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, with pianist Joyce Yang as soloist; Musorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain; Rachmaninoff's arrangement of his own Vocalise; and Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, and Marche slave. The second program, July 4-6, 2014, titled "Star-Spangled Celebration," will feature the New York Philharmonic and United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps - "The Commandant's Own," which is celebrating its 80th-anniversary year - in a program that includes Copland's Clarinet Concerto, with Associate Principal Clarinet Mark Nuccio as soloist, and Fanfare for the Common Man; Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" from Strike Up the Band; Sousa marches; and more. In these performances Major Brian Dix, director and commanding officer of "The Commandant's Own," will share conducting duties with Bramwell Tovey.

This spring Japan Society continues to honor the late Donald Richie, whose criticism, commentary and advocacy contributed incomparably toward making Japanese art and culture, especially its cinema, revered throughout the world. As the second and final leg of the ongoing series, again curated by noted film scholar Kyoko Hirano, A Tribute to Donald Richie (1924-2013), Part 2: Richie's Electric Eight: The Bold & the Daring encompasses eight films that reflect the complexity, nuance, and brilliance of Japanese society, as seen through Richie's unflinching and insatiable eye.

This just in! New York City Center's acclaimed Encores! Off-Center series, under the artistic direction of Jeanine Tesori, will return this summer for a second season of landmark Off-Broadway musicals. The season opens with Jonathan Larson's tick, tick… BOOM!, June 25 - 28, starring Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo, directed by Oliver Butler, and continues with a one-night only performance of Randy Newman'sFaust: The Concert, with Randy Newman as the Devil, directed by Thomas Kail, on July 1. Pump Boys and Dinettes, withbook, music and lyrics by John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann , directed by Lear deBessonet and choreographed by Danny Mefford, wraps up the season, running July 16 - 19. Chris Fenwick is the Encores! Off-Center music director.

Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd announces the cast and creative team for Alan Ayckbourn's science fiction comedy Communicating Doors. Eleven plays penned by Alan Ayckbourn have been produced by the Alley, including the American premiere of Henceforward, directed by Ayckbourn, in 1987 and House & Garden in 2002. Alan Ayckbourn has been inducted into the American Theatre's Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics' Circle Award for Services to the Arts, became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards and was knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre.