Over Here - 1918 - Broadway Articles Page 3

On January 31, 2021, the Workers Circle will present a Yiddish Schmooze featuring Zalmen Mlotek, the Artistic Director at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which presented the award-winning Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish and whose parents were integral members of the Workers Circle and passionate proponents of Yiddish culture.

Hershey Felder's latest livestream - one of his most deeply personal - airs this Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 at 5pm Pacific | 7pm Central | 8pm Eastern. As he prepares for the livestream, he took a few moments to talk with BroadwayWorld.com about the show and the state of theater during the pandemic.

Africa's leading arts and book event Aké Festival will return Thursday 22 - Sunday 25 October with a free programme of 65 inspiring talks, workshops, panel discussions and performances from the most exciting voices across Africa and the African Diaspora.

When the lockdown started in mid March, theatres all over the country were forced to shut down in a hurry. Nina Dunn, video designer with credits spread all over the West End and Europe, has been documenting the struggle of the industry through chilling photographs of empty theatres where silence dominates. A fundraiser has accompanied her online photo essays, which are now being turned into a book whose proceeds will go straight to charity. We had a chat to discuss her project, the effects of the closures, and dark theatres.

What better way to spend a summer evening than in the company of artistic genius in the form of iconic composer Ludwig van Beethoven as interpreted by renowned musical theater artist Hershey Felder? On Sunday July 12th at 5pm PDT, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley will present a livestream of the hit show Hershey Felder: Beethoven, an intimate and theatrical portrait of the legendary composer. Tickets to the livestream are available on TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's website (www.theatreworks.org) with proceeds to benefit TheatreWorks while the Tony-winning regional theatre remains dark due to the Covid pandemic. Inspired by an account of a Viennese doctor who spent his boyhood by the Beethoven's side, this enchanting musical features masterful performances of some of the composer's greatest works, from a?oeMoonlight Sonataa?? to the a?oeNinth Symphonya?? and the a?oeEmperor Concerto.a?? The enormously popular show's 2017 World Premiere still holds TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's box office record to date. BroadwayWorld recently had the pleasure of speaking with Felder from his home in Florence, Italy where he will be performing the livestream. As cicadas whirred in the background (really!), we had a wide-ranging discussion about Beethoven, Felder's relationship with TheatreWorks, the pandemic and the wonders of Florence. In conversation, Felder is an engaging amalgam of seemingly contradictory qualities, at once erudite and folksy, brainy and empathetic, quick with an arcane cultural factoid or a self-deprecating remark, equally expressive of joy and sorrow.

Manhattan School of Music: Celebrating 100 Years (1918 - 2018), a deluxe 304-page book celebrating MSM's history, has been awarded a 2020 Circle of Excellence 'Grand Gold' Award in the category of 'Institutional Relations - Promotional Publication' by CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Cadence13 today announced it will be directing and producing Hope, Through History, a limited-run documentary podcast series written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham. HISTORY will be providing archival material and multi-faceted marketing support as a partner in the franchise.

Bard SummerScape's 17th edition celebrates one of the most important female figures in classical music history, with seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film and the SummerScape Spiegeltent, centered around the 31st Bard Music Festival, 'Nadia Boulanger and Her World.'

Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything. Nora: A Doll's House is now playing at the Young Vic (66 The Cut).

As part of its third season in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Target Margin Theater will continue its multi-year exploration of The One Thousand and One Nights with P*ssyc*ck Know Nothing, a new work that wrestles with The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad stories from the collection of classic Silk Road tales.

On February 2, 2020, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Giacomo Puccini and Giovacchino Forzano's 1918 Gianni Schicchi with Maurice Ravel and Colette's 1925 L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), a pair of lesser known operas, to a most receptive audience at Occidental

The GRAMMY AWARDS Premiere Ceremony took place at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 26, from 12:30-3:30 p.m. PT. Preceding the 62nd Annual GRAMMY AWARDS telecast, the Premiere Ceremony was hosted by two-time GRAMMY winner and current nominee Imogen Heap and featured a number of performances by current GRAMMY nominees. Performers included classical violinist Nicola Benedetti, jazz legend Chick Corea, folk music supergroup I'm With Her, West African sensation Angélique Kidjo and Best New Artist nominee Yola.

The Actors Fund, the national human services organization for everyone in performing arts and entertainment, will hold its Annual Gala on Monday, April 6, 2020. The evening will celebrate Tony Award-winning actor Matthew Broderick and Emmy Award-winning actor, producer and designer Sarah Jessica Parker; Tony Award-winning actor and Chairman of The Actors Fund Brian Stokes Mitchell; Academy Award-winning producer, co-owner of the New York Football Giants, and philanthropist Steve Tisch; and American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard L. Trumka as they receive The Actors Fund's Medal of Honor.

Recording Academy® President/CEO Deborah Dugan alongside Academy Chair of the Board of Trustees and renowned record producer Harvey Mason Jr., as well as GRAMMY Awards® host Alicia Keys and past two-time GRAMMY® nominee Bebe Rexha, today revealed nominees for the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in select categories. This year's nominees reflect a melting pot of artistic innovation that defined the year in music, showcasing the unparalleled craftsmanship of established artists and the industry-shifting impact of rising music creators. Leading nominees Lizzo (8), Billie Eilish (6) and Lil Nas X (6) not only topped the charts but ignited a cultural conversation around their genre-bending hits. As the only peer-selected music award, the GRAMMY Awards are voted on by the Recoding Academy's membership body of music makers, who represent all genres and creative disciplines, including recording artists, songwriters, producers, mixers and engineers.

The first clue that ANASTASIA was going to be different than what I expected was a note on the title page reading, “Inspired by the Twentieth Century Fox Motion Pictures.” Plural? A savvy journalist, I quickly asked Siri to bring up the imdb page for “Anastasia”. Turns out Fox made ANASTASIA twice, the 1997 animated movie and a 1957 film that scored Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar and marked Helen Hayes' transition to the big screen. And it turns out the musical version has more in common with LES MISERABLES and RAGTIME than BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Gone is the hell-wizard Rasputin, his talking fruit bat sidekick, and the singing demon caterpillars. At intermission, I asked my third grade niece, Adalyn, how she was liking it. “It's awesome…it's real people, like no Beast or anything. No animals.” We decide that Disney staged musicals are great but more it's more impressive when you can achieve the magic without a story that departs from reality. ANASTASIA is historical fiction hypothetical. It poses a “what if…?” that a daughter of the last czar of Russia (The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna) escaped when the czar's family was executed in 1918. Rumors persisted for decades that Anastasia did, in fact, escape. In 2007, DNA testing confirmed the remains of all four Grand Duchesses were in the Imperial grave. In this version, Terrence McNalley's book follows Anastasia's rediscovery of her identity after surviving the attack on her family and sustaining some plot enabling amnesia. Renamed “Anya” she grows up and makes a life in post-Revolution Russia. Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress (in a staggeringly moving performance by Joy Franz) has fled to France and offered a cash reward for anyone escorting the rumored alive Anastasia to Paris. The wily duo Vlad (Edward Staudenmayer) and Dmitry (Jake Levy) pull a My Fair Lady style makeover on Anya to collect the Dowager's prize. They are pursued by Gleb (Jason Michael Evans). A Soviet officer drawn to Anya romantically but tasked with finding and eliminating the last Romanov. Anya's memory becomes somewhat coaxed back, but the Dowager has stopped seeing Anastasia claimants after too much heart-break from countless frauds. It sounds dark, but with high-tech digital scenery and inspired performances across the cast it is delightful. Stephen Flaherty (Music) and Lynn Ahrens (Lyrics), responsible for bringing us RAGTIME, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, LUCKY STIFF, as well as the Oscar nominated songs carried over from the animated film. ANASTASIA is a perfect context for this pair. “Stay, I Pray You” (my favorite song of the evening) is evocative of RAGTIME's “New Music”. The two songs literally race my heart in a strangely specific way. My real test of a National Tour at Gammage is how fast I get the music playing in my car on the way home. At ANASTASIA I was already finding, “Stay, I Pray You” walking through the parking lot. The rest of the score is similarly haunting. Lila Coogan, as Anya/Anastasia, powers through the score with nuance, clarity, and passion. Tari Kelly, as Countess Lily, and Stadenmayer (Vlad) were Adalyn's favorite performances and I have to agree. This incredibly gifted pair take the “triple threat” designation (singer, dancer, actor) and go quadruple with the addition of flawless comic timing. The choreography by Peggy Hickey is masterful. It somehow combines inventive and traditional throughout and the ten-minute slice of “Swan Lake” infused into “Quartet at the Ballet” is the highlight of the second act. It's a fun-size version that gets an under-represented art form onto the plate. This kind of trope often means the plot putting the plot on hold. But here, it is the connective tissue between Anya, Dmitry, the Dowager, and Gleb as they each bring us up to speed heading into the show's climax. Ultimately, the show's success comes from applying a higher artistic standard to the “previously-animated-film-now-theatrically-staged” genre. It cashes in on the name draw of the 1997 film then gives the viewer something much more enriched than what they think they are coming to see.

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced a new five-year extension of Franz Welser-Möst's contract as Music Director, continuing a partnership that began in 2002 to 2027. The announcement was made at Severance Hall in Cleveland at the Gala Concert opening the Orchestra's 2019-20 season.

The persistent legend, mystique and fascination of what may have happened to Anastasia during Russia's revolution finds a new home in the musical ANASTASIA

Today, The Cleveland Orchestra announced free events and programs taking place throughout Northeast Ohio this summer, providing children, families, and community members an opportunity to connect with the Orchestra and with music.

The DC Jazz Festival (DCJF) is pleased to announce the sizzling schedule for Jazz in the 'Hoods Presented by Events DC, an essential component of the DC JazzFest, celebrating its 15th anniversary, June 7-16. Spotlighting the District as a vibrant cultural capital, Jazz in the 'Hoods brings a stunning array of music - from the traditional to the avant garde - in all quadrants of the nation's capital, with performances at more than 20 neighborhood venues. 

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!

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Happy first full day of Spring! Start the season right by checking out some of the top Broadway news!

After a successful run at the Jermyn Street Theatre, Billy Bishop Goes to War transfers to the Southwark Playhouse on 13 March. I spoke to director Jimmy Walters about what made Billy Bishop special, and how he's managed to bring Bishop's story to life.

Some pieces of theater require your undivided attention because of some deep underlying message that the playwright doesn't want you to miss. This is not the case for MetroStage's return holiday engagement of Catherine Flye's Christmas at The Old Bull & Bush and that's totally ok. This British Variety Music Hall Entertainment is full of music, good performances, and some really corny jokes. In other words, it is everything you would expect from a show set in 1918 in Hampstead, London.

The princess might be sleeping on the Belgrade Theatre's Main Stage over Christmas, but there's not much chance of snoozing in its B2 auditorium, with alternative panto Over The Top getting the holiday season off to an explosive start.

The Actors' Gang has announced an extension of 'Johnny Got His Gun' at the Ivy Substation, adding two performances, a matinee performance on November 11th, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I and Veteran's Day and an evening performance on November 14th. The stage adaptation of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, written by Bradley Rand Smith and directed by Tim Robbins, began previews on October 6th and opened October 13th.