The Only Son

In many of America’s cities, theatre history exists in plain sight. Whether inside a museum or on a street corner, fascinating pieces of theatre lore exist, waiting to be discovered by an interested passerby. Here are ten inspiring displays of theatre history I saw up close and in person this summer, from New York City to Washington D.C. and beyond. You can visit them too—and many are free to see! 

What did our critic think of THE SECRET GARDEN at Theo Ubique?

Tennessee Williams St. Louis expands to year-round programming with 8th annual festival returning September 7-17.

Tennessee Williams St. Louis has expanded to year-round programming with 8th annual festival returning September 7-17.

Word for Word's Off the Page staged reading series is back for 2023. The next performance is on March 27, 7 pm at the American Bookbinders Museum and will feature two stories by Kevin Barry, “Who’s Dead McCarthy” and 'The Wintersongs,' both directed by Word for Word Core Company Member Paul Finocchiaro. 

Boston Symphony Orchestra will present VOICES OF LOSS, RECKONING, AND HOPE Festival March 3-18. 

Obie and Drama Desk Award winner Frederick Weller (To Kill a Mockingbird, “In Plain Sight”) will join Ruth Stage's provocative and controversial modern staging of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as ‘Big Daddy.’

Beginning Monday November 7th, from 7pm, Mint Theater will be streaming the three-camera archival recording (filmed in HD!) of The New Morality by Harold Chapin, directed by Mr. Bank.

Mint Theater Company will continue its hybrid season of live performances at NY City Center along with the on-demand streaming of acclaimed previous productions. Beginning Monday November 7th (from 7pm) will be streaming of the three-camera archival recording (filmed in HD!) of The New Morality by Harold Chapin, directed by Mr. Bank.

August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, also known as the American Century Cycle, is made up of ten plays, written between 1982 and 2005. Each set in a different decade in Pittsburgh's Hill District (with the exception of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), the plays are meant to depict the Black experience throughout the 20th century.

ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) of Connecticut has announced their 2022-2023 line up of shows. The season will mark the theater's fifth season and will include the Golden-Age classic comedy GUYS AND DOLLS, the smash hit jukebox musical ROCK OF AGES, and the breathtaking Tony Award winning THE SECRET GARDEN!

Tony award-winning musical, The Secret Garden, based on the 1911 novel of the same name, returns to the West End for a one-night-only concert celebration. Find out when, where and how to get tickets.

On An Overgrown Path, Leoš Janáček’s 15 pieces-spanning piano cycle, is here presented in a reshaped guise, arranged for string orchestra and played by the Camerata Zürich under lead violinist Igor Karsko’s direction.

Deemed one of the '25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World' by MovieMaker Magazine in 2019, the Third Horizon Film Festival returns for its fifth edition. This year the festival will be hosted hybrid style with a thoughtfully curated mix of in-person and virtual screenings beginning June 24, 2021, through July 1, 2021, in Miami, Florida.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has announced their Spring season of digital offerings from April 1 to July 1, which is dedicated to the late Gustave M. Hauser.  CMS presents 28 digital programs, with concerts premiering on Thursday evenings at 7:30 and educational and hybrid talk-and-performance programs premiering on Monday evenings.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the greatest theatrical works (non-musical) from 1920-2020; see if your favorites made the list!

East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District (EPABID) presents the 8th Annual East Passyunk Restaurant Week, with two dozen award-winning restaurants offering three course prix fixe lunch and/or dinner menus starting Monday February 24th through Friday March 6th.

 A four-opera saga that unfolds over the course of a single week. Three weeklong cycles to be presented at Lyric in a thrilling new production that has earned rave reviews and attracted audience members from every corner of the planet. One magical lump of gold that leads to the end of one world and the beginning of another. In opera's most monumental undertaking, characters inspired by Norse mythology battle over power and love, violate sacred oaths, and make unimaginable sacrifices a?" all set to Richard Wagner's brilliant, glorious music. The word 'epic' is often overused, but it truly applies to the Olympian achievement that is The Ring of the Nibelung.

Marsha Norman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for 'Night Mother, took home Tony and Drama Desk Awards in 1991 for a?oeBest Book of a Musicala?? for The Secret Garden. With music by Lucy Simon, The Secret Garden is based on the 1911 classic children's literature novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. And while it's tagged as a?oechildren'sa?? literature, The Secret Garden is not your typical light-hearted, happy-go-lucky matinee outing for the kids.

When 3-D Theatricals artistic director T.J. Dawson tells you during the curtain speech to read his program note before THE SECRET GARDEN begins, take him at his word. It will go a long way toward helping you understand the feverish dream sequence that lays the foundation for Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman's dark, but ultimately uplifting, musical based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 classic novel.

Modeled after the highly acclaimed retrospective of Tito Puente in 2017, the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture will honor the late iconic singer and bandleader Francisco Machito Grillo (1908-1984) and his Orchestra (the Afro-Cubans) in a 3-day celebration May 2-4 on the campus of Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse (at 149th Street), in the Bronx. Machito & the Impact of the Afro-Cubans at 80 examines the Orchestra's influence on a variety of Latin musical styles, including Latin jazz that affected the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton and others.

Modeled after the highly acclaimed retrospective of Tito Puente in 2017, the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture will honor the late iconic singer and bandleader Francisco Machito Grillo (1908-1984) and his Orchestra (the Afro-Cubans) in a 3-day celebration May 2-4 on the campus of Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse (at 149th Street), in the Bronx. Machito & the Impact of the Afro-Cubans at 80 examines the Orchestra's influence on a variety of Latin musical styles, including Latin jazz that affected the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton and others.

Theater J, the nation's largest and most prominent Jewish theater, continues its signature Yiddish Theater Lab with readings of two plays in May. The plays are The Rented Bridegroom by Rinne Groff (adapted from a play by Osip Dymov) on May 6 at Foundry Church and Yankl the Blacksmith by David Pinski on May 20 at the Goethe-Institut. These readings follow the first full production of the Yiddish Theater Lab,

Modeled after the highly acclaimed retrospective of Tito Puente in 2017, the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture will honor the late iconic singer and bandleader Francisco Machito Grillo (1908-1984) and his Orchestra (the Afro-Cubans) in a 3-day celebration May 2-4 on the campus of Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse (at 149th Street), in the Bronx. Machito & the Impact of the Afro-Cubans at 80 examines the Orchestra's influence on a variety of Latin musical styles, including Latin jazz that affected the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton and others.