tuesday is a joke / played on those not quite prepared / the same game again
The new HULA HOOP SHA-BOOP plays a special limited four-week run opening Friday, August 6 at 7:30 pm at the Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret. Tickets at the Rep Ticket Office at 108 East Wells, by phone at 414-224-9490, or online at milwaukeerep.com. (Katie Siri and Brian Craft in Hula Hoop Sha-Boop.)
...without a doubt, american idiot. the times' charles isherwood gushes:“American Idiot,” directed by Michael Mayer and performed with galvanizing intensity by a terrific cast, detonates a fierce aesthetic charge in this ho-hum Broadway season. A pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions — bring on the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, please! — only to transcend them through the power of its music and the artistry of its execution, the show is as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I’ve seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons past.if the new york production comes anywhere near the ragged intensity and stunning theatricality of the original berkeley rep production (i haven't seen the ny version yet, but i believe it is largely unchanged) then we have a (tony) winner. hands down.
stephen wormley as george and danielle scampini as dot. (photo by lauren stoxen.)In an era in which important new dramatic works rarely get their start in New York, the board's geographical myopia, a vision of the American theater that starts in Times Square and ends just a short taxi ride away is especially disheartening. Does anyone really believe that "Next to Normal" would have been chosen had it been submitted when it was at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.?
Imagine, if you dare, the agonies of the talented people trapped inside the collapsing tomb called “The Addams Family.” Being in this genuinely ghastly musical ...must feel like going to a Halloween party in a strait-jacket or a suit of armor. Sure, you make a flashy (if obvious) first impression. But then you’re stuck in the darn thing for the rest of the night, and it’s really, really uncomfortable. Why, you can barely move, and a strangled voice inside you keeps gasping, “He-e-e-lp! Get me out of here!”here's christine baranski, peter macnicol, christina ricci, jimmy workman and mercedes mcnab in the best addams family musical number ever. and you won't see it on the broadway:
Melding multimedia images with old-fashioned razzle-dazzle, Lady Gaga’s show (which runs through Sunday) manages to integrate theme, image and even some narrative seamlessly into one of the most engrossing dramatic spectacles in town. As a theater critic who has suffered through too many stale, pop-infused musicals, I suggest that Broadway would be smart to follow her lead.
In early May, six weeks after opening, the production began what is by all accounts a Broadway first: over Twitter, the social networking site, an adapted version of the show began to be published in the form of short text messages, or tweets — just a line from a character at a time.you too can read exactly what alice ripley's diana, robert spencer's dan and the rest of the n2n gang are really thinking when they're offstage, as the twitter version of next to normal was written by the play's bookwriter brian yorkey and composer tom kitt:
In the performance, Mr. Yorkey said, “we didn’t know what Dan the father was thinking when (Alice Ripley as Diana) was on the floor making sandwiches. But this is what they would say if they were tweeting, so it’s telling the story of the show but telling it from a lot of different perspectives. It was the show — but a new multiangle way of thinking of it.”actually, i thought i knew exactly what dan the father was thinking at that moment and it honestly wasn't: “do all wives end up sprawled on the floor making sandwiches for no one?”
how do i get good, cheap, last-minute tickets to a broadway show? most folks already know the answer: the tkts booth. people have been standing in line outside a canvas covered trailer in new york's duffy square since 1973, squeezing wads of cash and hoping for half-pricers to "cats," "phantom" or "les miz." now that the booth has been stunningly redesigned (and takes credit cards) victoria bailey, executive director of the theater development fund, has given the new york times some tips about workin' the booth for those cheap seats.
The most general definition I can give for an artistic director is that they provide the vision for the company. The board and the community decide the mission...then they hire an artistic leader to provide a vision to reach that mission.
The managing director is there to manage and execute the artistic director's vision toward the mission. The two should work in tandem, as partners, to provide a healthy system of checks and balances (one oversees the art and education...if there is an education department, and the other oversees the business.) A really simplified explanation is that one raises and earns the money (the managing director) and the other one spends the money (the artistic director).
They both do this responsibly and together toward a shared mission with the board.
On a day to day level, the managing director should be busy overseeing the execution of development, marketing, front of house, finances and facility needs. The artistic director oversees the choice of programming, the hiring of artists to execute the programming, being the artistic public face and representing the organization to the community and theatre world at large, and (most importantly) creating art.
The vision of the artistic director must reflect the needs of the community (as expressed in the mission) but also has a personal signature or stamp to it. The programming should fulfill the mission but also the personal aesthetic of the artistic leader. Otherwise, it's a booking house. Or a building that has a stage in it. And that maybe puts on plays...but it's not a producing organization without someone at the top providing artistic vision.
The artistic leader is reading plays, meeting playwrights, evaluating the plays within the context of their theatre in their community. They have to have their finger on the pulse of what's happening around them in the world of creating art, in order to keep attracting new audiences.
They literally LEAD the organization into the future.
After public outcry about the June 14 firing, Theisen had been asked to be a free-lance director. Then the board changed its mind and invited Theisen back full-time.the response to the skylight restructuring has been far more than a "public outcry," and could, one might argue should be covered in a news piece like this.
AFTER years of pretending to "honor excellence in the theater," Tony officials are finally coming clean about their true calling: making money for the backers of big musicals.but hey, we also get dolly parton, elton john, liza minnelli, and poison.
Tony officials announced this week that the awards for things such as lighting, sets and costumes -- all insignificant components of a Broadway show, as anyone who works in the theater can attest -- will not make the broadcast.
In their place musical numbers from touring productions of "Jersey Boys," "Mamma Mia!" and -- here's a good reason to switch channels -- "Legally Blonde"?
this, for example, is one of the most ridiculous, embarrassing things i've ever heard of. broadway's tony voters this year have a really difficult decision when it comes to their choice for best performance by a leading actor in a musical.Tony award voters have to see only one of the three boys rotating in the title role of “Billy Elliot: The Musical” before voting on their joint nomination for leading actor in a musical.i.e. you're not voting for an actor or a performance, you're voting for a role. shouldn't the writer then get this acting award? this is the nature of theater awards. silly. political. crap.
"If I had to live my life over again, I would have children.stephen sondheim talks about the prospect of never writing another musical, the only lyricist he wants to work with, and katharine hepburn banging on his door at 3:00 in the morning, in a rare interview with the times of london.
That’s the great mistake I made.
It’s too late now. The idea of being a homosexual and raising children was one that was just not acceptable until, my goodness, I’d say the 1970s or 1980s. You want to live long enough to see your children grow up, they’re not puppies. The joy is not just to have them, but to watch them change and grow.
So, yes, that is a great regret.”
