Eight Broadway shows are opening in the next ten days. Two opened last week, Bullets Over Broadway and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.
It’s tax time, which may be why there is a special section on artists and money (see 13 below)
Also below: News about Michael Cera, Taylor Mac, Tommy Tune, Spring is Here beefcake section (shirtless Zac Efron, Neil Patrick Harris, James Franco)
The Week in New York Theater
Monday, April 7, 2014
Mayor Bill de Blasio names Queens Museum’s Tom Finkelpearl to be commissioner of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
The King and I will be on Broadway (at Lincoln Center) for the fifth time in 2015, says Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization’s Ted Chapin. They are in talks with Kelli O’Hara to star
Morgan Saylor (Dana Brody in Homeland) will play Cherry Jones’s daughter in MTC’s When We Were Young & Unafraid.Opens June 17
The disabled are US’s largest minority, yet invisible on our stages, says Christine Bruno of Inclusion Arts.
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Michael Cera (Juno, Arrested Developmnet), Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down.) to co-star in Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth on Broadway. Opens Sept 11, Cort.
Cera will play the character of Warren, a young man who has stolen $15,000 from his father, and Culkin will play his self-absorbed drug-dealing friend, Dennis. It will also feature the Broadway debut of Tavi Gevinson.
110 years ago today, Long Acre Square was renamed Times Square. (Pictures of Times Square through the years in Museum of the City of New York collection.)
Jane Greenwood, who’s been designing costumes for Broadway since 1963, will get a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement
2014-15 New York Theater Workshop season will include: 1. Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, adapted. 2. The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar (Pulitzer winner), about kidnapped stockbroker
MT @ValisiaLeKae It is DONE! I finished my last round of chemo. I’m so grateful for your love & Support! pic.twitter.com/sUsTkdGN42
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) April 9, 2014
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2014 Tony Awards for Excellence: The Actors Fund’s Joe Benincasa, photographer Joan Marcus, general manager Charlotte Wilcox
It was set to reopen tomorrow Off-Broadway, but A Night With Janis Joplin “will postpone its opening indefinitely due to production issues.”
Yes, accessible theater IS possible. third in Howlround series on disability. Q & A with Charles Baldwin of Wheelock Family Theater.
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Even people who don’t care for a particular Broadway show give it a standing ovation, survey by Ken Davenport found.
Meh to show but standing ovations:
41 percent: “I liked the actors, just not the show.”
36 percent: “Everyone else was standing, so I did too.”
My reasons for standing during a standing ovation:
1. I can’t see the performers bowing otherwise
2. I need to put on my coat.
Theater should do what fashion does: Make avant-garde seem exciting, even if you don’t want to wear it ~ Taylor Mac in interview with Bomb Magazine. “My outsiderness gave me a way inside to something else.”
NINE-time Tony winner Tommy Tune in “More Taps,Tunes and Tall Tales” his #CafeCarlyle cabaret debut April 22-May 3
Star Ryan McCartan of Heathers: From Disney dream date to serial killer
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RIP Phyllis Frelich,Tony-winning deaf actress (Children of a Lesser God), co-founder of the National Theater for the Deaf, age 70.
Those who love him forgive his syphilis jokes. Drama Desk panel on Shakespeare
“Most of my plays begin as questions,” says Cleveland’s Eric Coble, making his Broadway playwriting debut with The Velocity of Autumn.
What are your dream roles?
Ben Platt: Bobby in Company.
Nic Rouleau: I’m playing mine right now. Book of Mormon #BOMCHAT
MT @theebillyporter Check me out at Barnes & Noble for my CD release on 4/15! I’ll be signing & hugging pic.twitter.com/Xz0chsgUZw
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) April 11, 2014
The Obamas attended A Raisin in the Sun. At intermission, Michelle Obama gave A Raisin in the Sun actor Stephen McKinley Henderson a hug: “I’ll never be the same”
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Theater Artists and Money
Haven’t done your taxes yet? Tax guide for freelancers (e.g. artists) from Freelancers Union
The theater is “built on the backs of unpaid young people” writes Greg Redlawsk, who was one of them. Why unpaid internships are wrong.
They are also illegal: For an unpaid internship to be legal, it must be “for the benefit of the intern” not the employer, says the Department of Labor.
@Monicadrama @NewYorkTheater True enough – but those off-off companies aren’t running on million dollar budgets. These Institutions are.
— Greg Redlawsk (@GRedlawsk) April 12, 2014
@Monicadrama @NewYorkTheater Well, when they can afford 80 Million to renovate a building, that’s the message they send.
— Greg Redlawsk (@GRedlawsk) April 13, 2014
“Real artists have day jobs..The biggest myth we’re fed is that we need to sustain ourselves solely on our art”~ Sara J. Benincasa
Instead of unpaid internships, Americans need more paid apprenticeships . U.S. Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey is co-sponsoring a bill to create them.
In Mexico, artists can pay taxes with artwork Can actors pay with performances?
@NewYorkTheater Currently only painters, sculptors, graphic artists. Performance artists are being considered for future.
— Movie Bungalow (@moviebungalow) April 13, 2014
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My review of Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Audra McDonald is the same age as the Billie Holiday she is depicting in the first Broadway production of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” a remarkable performance that transcends the two singers’ differences…ust looking at the photographs of Holiday in the period of the play show the challenge that a clean liver and radiant beauty like McDonald would have in depicting her. McDonald meets that challenge successfully — but a question remains: Why?
Full review of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Spring Is Here
