The Circle - 1974 - Off-Broadway Articles Page 14

OCTA is ready to sail into its new season on the wings of the musical spoof, Ruthless! Audiences can catch all the absurd fun of 'the stage mother of all musicals' September 15-October 1.

In Gay Company, the stylish musical revue by Fred Silver, makes its West End debut at the Jermyn Street Theatre later this month for a limited run.

The following acts are performing at City Winery Chicago, 1200 W. Randolph Street, throughout the month of August. Featured performances include three shows with Rachelle Ferrell on August 4-5, Roomful of Blues' on their 50th anniversary tour on August 17, Grammy award-winner Rickie Lee Jones on August 20, Welsh alt-rock group The Alarm on August 28 and more. Scroll down for details!

Committed since its inception to reviving important but neglected operas, Bard SummerScape has long proven itself “an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape” (Musical America). With the long overdue American staged premiere of Antonín Dvo?ák's Dimitrij as its operatic centerpiece, this year's immersion in “Chopin and His World” is no exception.

Committed since its inception to reviving important but neglected operas, Bard SummerScape has long proven itself 'an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape' (Musical America). With the long overdue American staged premiere of Antonin Dvorak's Dimitrij as its operatic centerpiece, this year's immersion in 'Chopin and His World' is no exception. 

The following acts are performing at City Winery Chicago, 1200 W. Randolph Street, throughout the month of August. Featured performances include three shows with Rachelle Ferrell on August 4-5, Roomful of Blues' on their 50th anniversary tour on August 17, Grammy award-winner Rickie Lee Jones on August 20, Welsh alt-rock group The Alarm on August 28 and more. Scroll down for details!

Work continues at George Street Playhouse's interim venue at 103 College Farm Road in New Brunswick, N.J., as the theatre prepares to open its 2017-18 mainstage season with an updated version of the off-Broadway hit musical, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, in October.

Acclaimed actress and writer Maureen Lipman is to direct the world stage premiere of Jack Rosenthal's The Knowledge.

The Hollywood Bowl has announced that Sarah Uriarte Berry, Philip Boykin, and Jonathan Groff will complete the cast for a benefit performance of SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, conceived and directed on Broadway by James Lapine.

People's Light is proud to announce Sanjit De Silva, James Ijames, Deepa Purohit, and Laura Schellhardt as the participating playwrights in the second round of the company's groundbreaking New Play Frontiers Residency & Commission program. The playwrights officially begin the program on July 9, 2017, in conjunction with the final performance of Project Dawn by Karen Hartman, the first New Play Frontiers play to premiere at People's Light. This second round of residencies and commissions, along with the production of Project Dawn, are made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

K-Squared Entertainment and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) are thrilled to announce the complete cast and creative team for the world premiere of PART OF THE PLAN, a new, original musical written by Kate Atkinson & Karen Harris and scored with the music and lyrics of celebrated singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. 

The Hollywood Bowl has announced the cast and creative team for a benefit performance of SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, conceived and directed on Broadway by James Lapine.

The Orchestra of St. Luke's, one of America's most versatile and distinguished orchestras, returns to its summer home at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts to perform six varied programs ranging from opera to tango.

The Festival's theater offerings feature four North American premieres from the U.K., Syria, and Israel, challenging audiences to look backward and forward, while offering perspectives that confront assumptions about human nature.

Meg just left a man. Lenny never had a man. Babe just shot a man. Luke Yankee directs a revival of Crimes of the Heart, the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning comic drama by Beth Henley, for a June 9 opening at International City Theatre. Two low-priced previews take place on June 7 and June 8.

The Poway OnStage 2017/18 season opens with the arena rock of KANSAS. It continues with GRAMMY winning artists: Los Lobos, Aaron Neville, BJ Thomas and Roger McGuinn. Saturday Night Live alumna and Broadway leading lady Ana Gasteyer brings her cabaret show. Local music takes center stage with Six String Society's Sounds of the Big Easy and roots rockers Berkley Hart. Cameron Carpenter brings his international touring organ and a wide repertoire of classical and modern pieces. Love Letters From Vietnam is a unique live theatrical musical performance of Alex Woodward's songs written for the daughter of Vietnam vet Sgt. John K. Fuller. TAO: Drum Heart closes the season with their world tour of large-scale Japanese taiko drumming, dance and martial arts.

Atlantic Theater Company has announced that the New York premiere play Animal by Clare Lizzimore (Mint) and directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Harper Regan, Bluebird) has been extended an additional week through Sunday, July 2 in advance of officially opening next Tuesday, June 6.

The Broadway community mourns the loss of Tony Award recipient Elliot Martin, who passed away on May 21st at age 93. The marquees of Broadway theaters in New York will be dimmed in his memory on Friday, June 2, 2017, at exactly 7:45pm for one minute.

The 71st Annual Tony Awards are this Sunday June 11th at 8/9c hosted by Kevin Spacey. It's the biggest award show of the Broadway season and it closes out a long awards season for Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals and plays. We can't help but wonder what chances this year's Best Musical and Best Play nominees have of taking home the ultimate prize...

Undermain Theatre's 34th season examines the world from a largely female perspective with three mainstage productions and adds a 4 week reading series of new American work in the spring. Our world premiere and season opener examines the world of Mexican cartels as portrayed by an all-female cast, by an evolving young writer. Our fall production is a regional premiere of an established Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, which takes place in an American setting inhabited and driven by three different generations of women in an eerie atmosphere near a Civil War battleground.

Miami City Ballet returns to Jacob's Pillow for the first time since 1998, to open the Festival's 85th Anniversary Season June 21-25, in the Ted Shawn Theatre. Led by Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer who later directed The George Balanchine Foundation, the company performs a program with a trio of works by master ballet choreographers,

Meg just left a man. Lenny never had a man. Babe just shot a man. Luke Yankee directs a revival of Crimes of the Heart, the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning comic drama by Beth Henley, for a June 9 opening at International City Theatre. Two low-priced previews take place on June 7 and June 8.

'There was a musical version of Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun?': this has been universal response of friends who knew I reviewing RAISIN. Even Dev Bondarin, the artistic director of APAC (Astoria Performing Arts Center) who directed the current production, only became aware of the show in college, during an historical survey of musical theater. I will leave it to others to speculate why a musical nominated for nine Tony awards--including Best Original Score, Best Choreography, Best Book--and the winner of two statues (best musical and Best Leading Actress) has all but vanished from theatrical memory. But one hopes that Bondarin's production will restore Raisin to its rightful place in the musical theater canon, not because it takes up relevant social and political topics (which it does), but because it's a fine show with compelling music and lyrics by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan and sharp, elegant by Hansberry's ex-husband and literary executor, Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zalztberg. (The cast album also won a Grammy in 1975.)

 The Mountain Play Association, the San Francisco Bay Area's most magical outdoor theater experience, will present the timeless classic Disney's Beauty and the Beast directed by Jay Manley for their 104th season. Based on the French fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST tells the story of a monstrous prince and a young woman who fall in love. Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST will take place every Sunday from May 21 to June 18, 2017.