A look at the Broadway Fall 2014 Season Preview Guide and especially the Off-Broadway Fall 2014 Season Preview Guide show promise of a rich and varied season.
Starting tomorrow — Broadway Week, two tickets for the price of one.
The Week in New York Theater, August 25-31
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Poster for Side Show, which is lead vote-getter in Broadway Fall 2014 Poll
New season at SoHo Rep includes “10 Out of 12” by Anne Washburn (“Mr. Burns“) based on her notes during tech rehearsals.
2014 New York International Fringe Festival Excellence Award Winners
Fringe Festival Encores series – September schedule of the best Fringe shows you missed in August.
My review of And I And Silence
In “And I And Silence,” a challenging play by Naomi Wallace, two women, Dee and Jamie, one white, the other black, meet in prison when they are teenagers, and after they are released years later, struggle to survive together in a Southern town in 1959 – a struggle that ends in tragedy…
For those theatergoers in the right mind-set – the patience to treat this piece the way they would a poem, uncertain of its meaning at times, content with its rhythms – “And I And Silence” is dark but beautiful. The rest of us might find it intriguing for about 15 minutes, and shocking for the final five, but spend the bulk of its 90 minutes working hard to pretend it’s not a bore.
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Yet another King Lear: Shakespeare’s Globe will present its touring production of the Bard’s tragedy at the Skirball Center, September 30 to October 12. It stars Joseph Marcell – who was Geoffrey,the English butler on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
2014 Communal Spaces Play Festival
– next 3 weekends, 4 community gardens in Brooklyn, 8 original plays FREE.
Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell in “Mad Men” on AMC) will portray Billy Wilder, with Larry Pine (most recently on stage in Casa Valentina) as Dashell Hammett in Billy and Ray at the Vineyard Theater, a comedy about the making of the noir film Double Indemnity.
Patti LuPone, Sting, Billy Porter, Laverne Cox and many more in Uprising of Love benefit concert for LGBTQI rights September 15 Gershwin Theater
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The 1889 firehouse on 125th Street will become a new cultural center, the Caribbean Cultural Center-African Diaspora Institute. Groundbreaking for renovations will be on September 16. (Marta Moreno Vega is the founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center.)
There’s a “Bard in bar” boom. Companies in New York City alone: Three Day Hangover, Shotspeare, the Drunk Shakespeare Society, the New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Shakesbeer Series (Do they make bad puns because they’re drunk?)
Research: We are happier buying an experience (e.g. theater) than a thing, especially if we buy the tickets in advance.
One of the best things about NYC: Discussing a show with strangers on the bus home
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) August 28, 2014
@NewYorkTheater or riding a packed subway car filled with opera lovers after a great performance at the Met, all of them buzzing about it.
— Daniel Bourque (@Danfrmbourque) August 28, 2014
@NewYorkTheater One of my favorite things about twitter, too! (Minus the bus.)
— Kelly Dwyer (@Barabookd) August 28, 2014
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Some dozen UK actors give advice to beginning actors:
“Treat directors (and writers) as innocent until proven guilty.”
“You need to be nervous. You’d be the walking dead if you weren’t. Acting is a frightening job”-Antony Sher
Debate over Sopranos ending years later indicates dissatisfaction with ending. What show/play ending have you found most satisfying?
.@NewYorkTheater I loved the Sopranos ending–the fakeout black screen, then the credits, leaving it all ambiguous–what’s not to love?
— The Mad Fashionista (@madfashionista) August 28, 2014
@NewYorkTheater I saw the original production of Arcadia in London. Knocked me off my feet.
— Erika Iverson (@nycowgirl_emi) August 28, 2014
@NewYorkTheater 30 ROCK and THE OFFICE did their last episodes so right.
— Hannah Barrett (@Hannah_Blogs) August 28, 2014
Actors Equity and theater artists: What’s their relevance – a Howlround chat
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How can Scott Ellis be directing THREE shows on Broadway at once? (You Can’t Take It With You, The Elephant Man, On The Twentieth Century.) “After raising twins,you get organized”
@NewYorkTheater Twin Efficiency? Not really — but clarity of artistic purpose?Absolutely.
— Stuart Carden (@stuartcarden) August 29, 2014
@NewYorkTheater and secretively diapering while on a design conference call? I’m now a master.
— Stuart Carden (@stuartcarden) August 29, 2014
First annual Oscar Hammerstein Festival September 26-28 kicks off a year of nurturing lyricists at Bucks County Playhouse.
What’s the difference between “devising theater” and playwriting? Nothing, says three “new avant garde” playwrights.
Nobody can predict what Broadway shows become hits? Nonsense, says mathematics graduate student at Cornell: I can.
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Interview with Lindsay Mendez:
“There are a lot of stories to be told for women and by women.”
There are challenges to being a “Mexican-Jewish girl who’s not tiny” – an opportunities too.
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A Romance in Several Acts – How two theater artists, Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812) and playwright/journalist Eliza Bent met, mingled and married.
“Who is this mysterious Bohemian-sounding composer,” she recalled thinking.
“I thought she was out of my league. She was so beautiful and charming and everything, and I was a poor, schlubby composer.”
Here is Richard Gere, who turns 65 today, in the Broadway production of “Grease,” in which over the course of the run he played eight different roles in the musical.
New York Theater August 2014 Quiz
