Up Against It - 1989 - Off-Broadway Articles Page 9

Little Steven, aka Steven Van Zandt, is commemorating today's 30th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's historic release from a South African prison after 27 years in captivity with the announcement that his 1985 landmark protest album, Sun City, by Artists United Against Apartheid, the extraordinary supergroup brought together by Van Zandt, producer Arthur Baker and journalist Danny Schechter to fight racial injustice in South Africa, will be released on vinyl for the first time since its initial release 35 years ago. The long-out-of-print LP joins five additional classic albums from Van Zandt making all of Little Steven's records from his early career once again available on vinyl. 

'Shirley Valentine' features Anna Kotula in a one-woman show about a middle-aged Liverpool housewife who seeks a change in her life, and does so in drastic fashion, leaving her husband and home to cavort on a beach in Greece. The result is a reaffirmation of life, one that empowers women and those lamenting the absence of passion in their lives - a timely and wonderful journey to help inaugurate the centennial of the passage of the 19th amendment.

The Marsh Berkeley celebrates Black History month with a special, one-night-only performance of Not a Genuine Black Man, the longest running solo show in San Francisco theater history. This funny, honest, and harrowing piece by award-winning actor, playwright, and talk show host Brian Copeland recounts the struggles Copeland faced growing up in what was declared one of the most racist suburbs in America.

Mozart knew a thing or two about how to please an audience. The great German composer wrote his Piano Concerto No. 22 to be performed in 1786 during Lent when the theaters and opera houses were closed in Vienna in observance of the Christian season just prior to Easter. But the previous December, he gave a workshop performance during the intermission of an oratorio titled Esther by composer Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf.

Northern Sky Theater has announced its 2020 Season in Door County, Wisconsin.

The Wanderer, a new musical based on the life of Rock n' Roll Hall-of-Famer Dion DiMucci, the multi-platinum selling American music pioneer, will open at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in the Spring of 2020 prior to a Broadway run.

TBS is turning December into DCember with a selection of DC movies airing throughout the month. All DCember movies will also be available on digital platforms starting December 2. And don't miss the special presentation of DC Universe animated series 'Harley Quinn' airing Sunday, December 8.

The production really comes together as a whole-from the lights to the sound to the costumes to the set and even the set changes, everything has been carefully designed and choreographed to give the audience the sense of wonder and magic that should accompany any telling of Narnia.

As Little Steven looks back on his early solo career with the upcoming boxed set, RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work, the creatively restless Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is simultaneously looking forward with a slew of new releases including a theatrical, Gene Kelly-inspired video for his song “Love Again” from his latest album, Summer Of Sorcery, and an exuberant live performance of Bruce Springsteen's “Tucson Train.” Leading up to the December 6 release of the boxed set, Little Steven aka Steven Van Zandt has been steadily releasing digital deluxe editions of the albums included over the last few weeks and today has made available his 1989 album, Revolution, which includes two rare mixes of the title track. 

Live Arts Bard (LAB), the residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard, announces Where No Wall Remains, the third edition of the acclaimed LAB Biennial, temporarily reconfiguring the Fisher Center as a site for innovative and interactive performances and installations (November 21-24).

In his Broadway debut in 1988, BD Wong won his Tony Award (Best Featured Actor in a Play) for his ground-breaking role of Song Liling in David Henry Hwang's M. BUTTERFLY. Over the last year, in between shooting his two television series (as Whiterose on Mr. Robot, and as Awkwafina's father in Comedy Central's Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens), BD has managed to star in two theatrical productions of Lauren Yee's THE GREAT LEAP (in New York and in San Francisco), and now will be directing THE GREAT LEAP at the Pasadena Playhouse, which begins previews today November 6, 2019.

Live Arts Bard (LAB), the residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard, announces Where No Wall Remains, the third edition of the acclaimed LAB Biennial, temporarily reconfiguring the Fisher Center as a site for innovative and interactive performances and installations (November 21-24). Co-curated by Lebanese live artist Tania El Khoury, a 2019 Soros Art Fellow, and Gideon Lester, the Fisher Center's Artistic Director for Theater and Dance, this four-day festival considers the subject of borders: political borders, physical borders, historical and contemporary borders, borders seen and unseen, the borders of the body, borders between art forms, between performers and spectators, the borders that divide or define us, borders to be crossed, tested, resisted, destroyed, rebuilt, or transcended. Where No Wall Remains follows The House is Open (2014), which explored the relationship between visual and performing arts, and We're Watching (2017), which examined contemporary states of surveillance. This third edition of the festival features nine new performances and installations by contemporary artists from the Middle East and Central America, commissioned by Live Arts Bard. Please see below for dates and times for each work. 

Little Steven has opened the doors on his personal archive of recordings to present an in-depth look at his solo career with a brand new boxed set. RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work (Wicked Cool/UMe) collects the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer's solo work from 1973-1999 – including Artists United Against Apartheid's landmark 1985 LP, Sun City – together with 51 bonus tracks spanning previously unreleased demos, B-sides, rehearsals, outtakes, classic concert performances, and a number of never-before-heard Steven Van Zandt compositions. Little Steven's RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work will be available exclusively via the online store uDiscover Music beginning Friday, December 6; pre–orders are available now.

Esprit's opening concert, I Hit My Head and Everything Changed, an impactful evening of music, takes place on Sunday October 6, 2019 in Koerner Hall. The concert program features works by renowned composers Thomas Adès and Alexina Louie, as well as a World Premiere of a commissioned work by Brian Harman, and a compelling concerto for the left hand by Hans Abrahamsen. Artist Moira Ness, pianist Avan Yu, and the Elmer Iseler Singers will all be featured as guest artists. 

Although most recognizable for his starring turns in the hit TV shows Knight Rider and Baywatch along with numerous feature film appearances (Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, Kung Fury, Click, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Dodgeball, and Marvel's original Nick Fury: Agent Of Shield, among others) and roles on Broadway and the West End in productions of Jekyll & Hyde, Chicago and The Producers, megastar David Hasselhoff is ready to tackle a different role - the role of passionately earnest pop star singing for a new global consciousness in these difficult and troubled times. It's a role not unfamiliar to Hasselhoff whose historic performance of the chart-topping single “Looking For Freedom” on the rubble of the newly fallen Berlin Wall in 1989 became a rallying cry not just to a reunited Germany but for all of the burgeoning democracies that were swept up in the winds of change.

'I do not feel compelled by reason to accept this theory of evolution, nor the periodic table of elements, nor the theory of global warming, nor the supposed crimes against the Jews attributed to one Rudolf Hitler.'  Bad Penny and Sincerity Forever are Mac Wellman plays originally staged in 1989 and 1990.  Absolutely nothing is dated or stale in his evisceration and condemnation of America and its 'littleness and stupidity and bitterness and rage and greed.'

The Marsh San Francisco announces additional performances of Not a Genuine Black Man, the longest running solo show in San Francisco theater history.

Taking the term, 'dysfunctional family', to a completely new level.

La MaMa announces its 58th season, featuring more than twenty world and US premieres, and dozens of artists, playwrights, choreographers, directors, award-winning theater companies and composers, including Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Estelle Parsons, Germaine Acogny, Evan Yionoulis, Theodora Skipitares, Anne Bogart, Charlotte Brathwaite and many more.

September and October Events have been announced at Irvine Barclay Theatre. See full details below. 

In short, THE LITTLE MERMAID taps into the magic of Disney and brings it to Central Texas. It offers family-friendly summer fun that is accessible to all.

Currently docked at the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts in Long Beach through July 28 is Musical Theater West's wonderfully vibrant new regional production of THE LITTLE MERMAID, Disney's Broadway stage adaptation of their hit 1989 animated classic, which itself was adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The resulting show achieves a cheerful, pleasant, and often charming hybrid that honors the original Disney-esque qualities of the film, but also shows what one may call a 'director's cut'---wherein the new 'extras' expand the musical even further in size, elements, and thematic mood. MTW's production is a visual treat.

Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson, Thomas Rhett, Julianne Hough and Hoda Kotb join the growing list of supporters that have participated in United Cancer Front's (UCF) Dance or Donate Challenge, an awareness and urgently needed fundraising campaign. It was created to help UCF continue their mission of finding a cure for cancer using immunotherapy and targeted treatments.

The Marsh San Francisco announces an extension of Not a Genuine Black Man, the longest running solo show in San Francisco theater history. This funny, honest, and harrowing piece by award-winning actor, playwright, and talk show host Brian Copeland recounts the struggles Copeland faced growing up in what was declared one of the most racist suburbs in America

La Monnaie opens the 2019-20 season not by one, but by two world premieres. In September 2019, at the same time as Pascal Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld at La Monnaie, Le Silence des ombres premieres at KVS. It is an opera adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck's Trois Petits Drames pour Marionnettes, commissioned to the young French composer Benjamin Attahir and produced in close collaboration with the author and director Olivier Lexa, a team of novice creators of the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre and a cast of young singers supported by ENOA, the European Network of Opera Academies.