What Goes Up…! - 1963 - West End Articles Page 7

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) is proud to present for the first time Richard Nader's 27th Annual Summer Doo Wop Concert.

Join the Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning Keen Company for Keen on New Work: Presentations from the 3rd Annual Keen Playwrights Lab, today, Friday April 15th.

Join the Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning Keen Company for Keen on New Work: Presentations from the 3rd Annual Keen Playwrights Lab, beginning performances today April 15th.

The idea for Nunsense, the whimsical musical about five wacky but lovable nuns from the Little Sisters of Hoboken, came to creator Dan Goggin from an unexpected quarter. A friend had presented Goggin with a mannequin dressed as a Dominican nun in traditional habit, with the idea that it would be fun to feature a photograph of the mannequin and Goggin as part of a greeting card. The cards were a success and so, having worked in theater since 1963, Goggin decided to emulate Pygmalion by bringing the mannequin to life. The first Nunsense production opened in 1983 with a cast featuring three nuns, a priest, and a brother. The show featured sketches written by a friend, Steve Hayes, but in order to move the show to Off-Broadway, they had to have an actual 'book' to replace the sketches. It was at this time that the priest and the brother became additional nuns and a story was written to tie all of Goggin's songs together. The expanded Nunsense won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical and ten years and 3,672 performances later, it ended its original run, becoming second in longevity only to The Fantasticks for an Off-Broadway show. Since then, there have been over 8,000 productions of Nunsense around the world, with the show translated into twenty languages and a half-dozen sequels following in its wake. What makes Nunsense so universally loved? Simple. It's funny, the songs are cute and singable, and the good feelings inherent in the show's believable characters are infectious.

Country music legend Merle Haggard, well known for his such as 'Okie From Muskogee' and 'Mama Tried,' passed way today, April 6th, his 79th birthday. Celebrities from the country music world have expressed their sadness today at Merle's passing. See what some of them had to say below!

Mosaic Theater Company of DC announces its second season, an explosive lineup of youthful new voices, multicultural convergences, an acclaimed portrait of an African-American cultural icon, and a multi-prismatic lens trained on two global conflict zones-the Middle East and South Africa. The 2016-17 season builds on the triumphs of the inaugural year by introducing audiences to a host of bold new colors and brash tones while maintaining a continued commitment to the company's ambitious mission of thought-provoking drama and public discourse.

In THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL, Jack Viertel takes about musicals, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love with the art form all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next-by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion from OKLAHOMA! to HAMILTON and onward.

Since the dawn of the genre, stage shows have been adapted from various sources; books, other plays, poems, historical events, and, increasingly over the past two decades, movies. The best projects based on movies take what is special from the source material and use that as inspiration to form a fresh stage adaptation. However, the DIRTY DANCING National Tour, playing at Orlando's Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts through Sunday, April 3rd, focuses so intently on recreating the minutia of the film, that it completely misses what made it so captivating in the first place; authentic, compelling characters and an intimate, passionate story.

? At an exclusive event last night for subscribers, donors and members of the press, Tony Award-winning Trinity Repertory Company, under the leadership of Richard L. Bready Artistic Director Curt Columbus announced their 2016-2017 season: Ghosts of the Past, Dreams of the Future.

Combined together, the resumes of actress Tracy Lynn Olivera and director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge feature just about every great musical from the golden age of Broadway, except one.

NEW YORK, March 11,2016 /PRNewswire/ It's been fifty-nine years, but it feels like a day, since The Cat in the Hat came to our house to play. Clearly the book has stood the test of time, as our feline friend and his 'Things' are U.S. adults' top unprompted choice when asked to name their favorite book from childhood. Runner up for the win is another beloved Dr. Seuss classic, good old Green Eggs and Ham. Further solidifying the good Dr.'s impact on American childhoods, unspecific mentions of Dr. Seuss outpaced mentions of any single work he published.

Tonight at Birdland - for the first time since it debuted in Nashville in 2012 - a New York audience will finally have the opportunity to hear Marvin Hamlisch's final theatrical score for Nutty Professor, the musical based on the iconic Jerry Lewis film.

There's currently a live version of the classic movie Dirty Dancing touring, and it's in Denver through the end of the month. I'll admit, I've never seen the film version of Dirty Dancing. (I swear, it's the truth.) But I had the time of my life. (OK, sorry.)

Audiences round the country are gearing up to Twist and Shout when the biggest ever tour of The Beatles' celebration show LET IT BE starts next week (Tuesday, 12 January) - and a further five venues have been added to the tour before the curtain even goes up.

Relive the Golden Age of Broadway and the magical moments from TV's past with Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews,Carol Burnett and many more as we look at the history of live TV musicals.

Thanksgiving is a time for families to gather together, to share a meal, and to count all of the wonderful blessings that they have received over the past year. That is, of course, unless your family is filled with monsters, ingrates, and malcontents. For BroadwayWorld's readers not fortunate enough to have a loving family, Thanksgiving can be a time of sibling rivalry, domestic disappointments, and turke-time tantrums.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) located at 1 Center Street in Newark, New Jersey is proud to present for the first time Richard Nader's 27th Annual Summer Doo Wop Concert.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the details for Action and Anarchy: The Films of Seijun Suzuki, November 6-17.

Hottest Articles on BroadwayWorld.com from this weekend Sunday, August 2, 2015 - Sunday, August 2, 2015.

'What is my purpose in life?' is a question asked by many people as they ponder the reasons for their existence. Finding one's raison d'etre could be the ever-elusive challenge, and should you never discover it, you are in good company. It is an existential question that lingers eternally for people who really want to have a life that matters. Now on stage at The Fisher Theatre is the musical PIPPIN, the tale of existential woe.

Somewhere in my prodigious vinyl collection there is at least one album by the self-proclaimed 'High Priestess of Soul,' Nina Simone; and having just seen SIMPLY SIMONE: The Music of Nina Simone, at the Hattiloo Theatre, I am taking a deep breath and planning to thumb through my myriad of records in order to seek it out. Nina Simone never quite 'caught on' with mainstream audiences; the legendary Aretha Franklin, who, like Simone, emerged from a gospel background and was a gifted pianist, was much more successful in that respect. Simone was too idiosyncratic a performer to be pigeonholed or labeled. She scoffed at being called a blues singer or a jazz singer; her early classical training, encouraged by a white pianist and patron (who collected money from the people in the town and helped to enroll at Juilliard), always informed her music. Moreover, the songs she chose to interpret, in addition to her own, were an eclectic repertoire: Everything from Gershwin to the Beatles. Underappreciated in her own country, and disillusioned by the stagnation of the Civil Rights Movement after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she found her audience abroad, particularly in France; she turned her back on disco (which she disdainfully dismissed) and was selective and intelligent in the music she chose to interpret, which left no room for her on the popularity bandwagon.

Maryland Ensemble Theatre has announced its 2015-2016 Mainstage season. MET's 18th Mainstage season will run from September of 2015 through June of 2016 and will feature a cheeky English comedy, an original twist on a horror classic, a traditional holiday musical, and contemporary crowd pleasers.

That will also explain my rapturous response to the performance of A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline, a dramatized tribute to the country music superstar that opened at Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theater on Thursday, June 4, running for a much-too-short two weekends at what was once known as The Renaissance Center.

Cathy Street, artistic director of Street Theatre Company, and Taylor Kelly, one of the actors in this production of Dogfight, took some time out of their schedules to answer some questions for us about this amazing production. Kelly is a new addition to the Nashville theatre community, having moved to Nashville right before rehearsals started on this production.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre will conclude its 48th season with Richard Bean's internationally acclaimed One Man, Two Guvnors, a sassy update of Carlo Goldoni's classic knee-slapper, The Servant of Two Masters. Set in 1963 Brighton, England, One Man, Two Guvnors is a brilliantly delicious mash-up of splendid comedy, British pantomime, and music-hall revues. The uproarious plot features a disarming and doltish Francis Henshall who finds himself trapped by farce into working for two bosses - who are connected in wildly improbable ways. He just has to keep them from discovering each other. Inspired insanity, high-low antics, and nimble wordplay ensue - all backed by live musicians paying homage to rockabilly and a certain Fab Four. Directed by David Ivers - artistic director of the Utah Shakespeare Festival - and with songs by Grant Olding, One Man, Two Guvnors is a riotous blast complete with a colorful cast of characters in a topsy-turvy world of love triangles and mistaken identities. It previews today May 8, 2015, opens today, May 15, 2015, and plays through Sunday June 21, 2015. Press night for One Man, Two Guvnors will be held today, May 15, 2015. Individual tickets start at $29 and can be purchased by phone at (510) 647-2949 or online at berkeleyrep.org.