Right This Way - 1938 - Broadway Articles Page 5

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.”

If you were planning the first in-person performance in the Kennedy Center in six months, a kind of historic cultural awakening after the darkness of the pandemic lockdown, you couldn't go wrong with a double bill of Renée Fleming and Vanessa Williams.

Meet your new friend in quarantine! Beginning this September, BPA launches the Bainbridge Pod Accomplice, a free podcast featuring a regular series of different plays starring your favorite local performers and directors.

The Pulitzer Prize Board today will present the 2020 award winners' (originally scheduled for Monday, April 20) for Prizes in Journalism, Books, Drama and Music. Who will win this year? Tune in right here at 3pm to watch the announcement live!

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! 

The Kimmel Center Cultural Campus, along with Resident Company support from Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and The Philadelphia Orchestra, celebrates Women's History Month in March 2020 with an array of programming honoring a breadth of female artistry and expression. Additionally, in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Philadelphia and Drexel University's Vision 2020's 'Women 100' National Women's Equality Initiative will host a series of events, including the Seat at the Table FREE and interactive exhibition, opening in March and running through September in the Kimmel Center's Commonwealth Plaza.

Charleston Light Opera Guild is kicking off 2020 with their highly anticipated production of the classic The Sound of Music, set to debut on January 17th at The Clay Center in the Maier Performance Hall.

The director, writer, and producer of 'An Elf's Story: The Elf on the Shelf,' Chad Eikhoff, gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the classic holiday film.

A group of students has forcibly taken over a theatre space on their college campus. The room hasn't been touched in a year a?' not since a school shooting rocked the very foundation they're playing to, in the middle of a performance of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The survivors have come together to hold a last hurrah: part vigil, part documentary, part call-to-action. See, the building is scheduled for demolition tomorrow a?' and, while they can, the students want to remind their community of what happened and what is at stake if they don't act.

On the eve of her death, Anne Boleyn reflects on the journey that led her to become a queen, a mother, and, eventually, a woman condemned. A fascinating look at one of history's most famous marriages. Part of the 2nd Stages Series.

In the light of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, the term 'gaslighting' has become part of the discourse around abusive behaviour. Many may not realise that it originates from Patrick Hamilton's thriller Gaslight, written in 1938, in which - for reasons later discovered - the dastardly Mr Manningham tries to trick his wife Bella into thinking she is losing her mind. It's part of a pattern of what we would now recognise as coercive control.

La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts Producing Artistic Director BT McNicholl announces its most ambitious and a?oeSpectacular, Spectaculara?? season of special events ever! Revel in the unmistakable sounds of THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS and THE FOUR FRESHMEN and to the songs of country legend TRAVIS TRITT; sing along with MOULIN ROUGE and THE LITTLE MERMAID, and do the time warp with ROCKY HORROR's Dr. Frank-N-Furter!  

'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.

Palm Beach Dramaworks Producing Artistic Director William Hayes and GableStage Producing Artistic Director Joseph Adler are pleased to announce that their companies will be working together to co-produce the world premiere of Ordinary Americans, a play by Joseph McDonough based on actual events in the lives of Gertrude Berg and Philip Loeb, stars of television's groundbreaking sitcom,The Goldbergs, which premiered on CBS in 1949. As previously announced, Ordinary Americans will be staged at PBD from December 6 - 29, 2019. It will then move on to GableStage from January 18 - February 16, 2020. Hayes will direct, and South Florida favorite Elizabeth Dimon will star as Berg. The rest of the cast and artistic team will be announced at a later date.    

GableStage Producing Artistic Director Joseph Adler and Palm Beach Dramaworks Producing Artistic Director William Hayes are pleased to announce that their companies will be working together to co-produce the world premiere of Ordinary Americans, a play by Joseph McDonough based on actual events in the lives of Gertrude Berg and Philip Loeb, stars of television's groundbreaking sitcom, The Goldbergs, which premiered on CBS in 1949.

The first production for Regent's Park Open Air Theatre's summer 2019 season is a revival of Thornton Wilder's 1938 play, Our Town. It's a show that is constantly being revived, particularly popular in the United States where the play is set. It was last on the London stage at the Almeida in 2014 in a production directed by David Cromer.

It only takes a moment to realize that composer/lyricist Jerry Herman, aided and abetted by book writer Michael Stewart (with an able assist from Thornton Wilder), knew exactly what he was doing when he created the classic Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!: put together a star vehicle for a quintessential theater diva, surround her with characters both irascible and lovable, then give them all a score that's delightfully hummable and danceable and a script that's appealingly daft, maybe even a little goofy.

Kansas City Actors Theatre has completed casting for its production of Paul Osborn's "Morning's at Seven," which will run from May 22 to June 9 at the City Stage in Union Station. The production will be directed by Dennis Hennessy of The New Theater in Overland Park, and will star Deb Bluford, Greg Butell, Krista Eyler, Peggy Friesen, Jeannine Hutchings, Gary Neal Johnson, Merle Moores, Victor Raider-Wexler, and Mark Robbins (KCAT co-founder). The production will also feature set design by Gary Mosby, costumes by Sarah M. Oliver, lighting design by Shane Rowse, sound design by Jon Robertson, and props from Shawnna Journagan.

Kansas City Actors Theatre has completed casting for its production of Paul Osborn's "Morning's at Seven," which will run from May 22 to June 9 at the City Stage in Union Station. The production will be directed by Dennis Hennessy of The New Theater in Overland Park, and will star Deb Bluford, Greg Butell, Krista Eyler, Peggy Friesen, Jeannine Hutchings, Gary Neal Johnson, Merle Moores, Victor Raider-Wexler, and Mark Robbins (KCAT co-founder).

One of the quirky charms of the musicals that packed Broadway houses during early decades of the 20th Century, was the practice of allowing a stray remark that has nothing to do with anything that's going on to serve as the cue for a novelty song that has nothing to do with anything that's going on.

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.

At the elegant Soroya Theatre in Northridge, CA, Martha Graham's Dance Company, under Artistic Director Janet Eilber's seasoned guidance, performed a most incredible group of works.  Some were originally created approximately 80 years ago, by Martha Graham, a true icon in the Dance world.  The EVE Project, as this evening, March 2nd, 2019 was entitled, gave us a wide variety of themes within a theme, that being Women and their significance, their power, their passion and their strength.  It was polished to perfection, and each piece carried many meanings and concepts and was just so beautifully performed and articulated. The Martha Graham Dance Company is the oldest contemporary dance company in the United States, founded in 1926.  Since it's inception it has explored and encompassed political and humanitarian issues, as well as affairs of the heart and human interactions, while creating a prolific dance technique that is unequaled in it's scope.  Graham created a total of 181 ballets during her long career, and is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century, being named in 1998 as 'Dancer of the Century' in Time magazine, and labeled one of the female 'Icons of the Century' by People Magazine.