The cast of T: An MBTA Musical (last year) Photo by Jeffrey Mosser.
Only June 8th & June 15th at Club Oberon: http://www.cluboberon.com/events/t-mbta-musical
I hear they’re going fast! They sold out last year with many more shows. I’d get tickets now!
To read our articles go here: Interview with composer Melissa Carubia, Last Year’s Review
Much Ado About Nothing…With A Twist adapted by Daniel Morris, Bad Habit Productions, Deane Hall at Boston Center for the Arts, 4/28/12-5/13/12, http://www.badhabitproductions.org/shows/season/MuchAdo.html.
Review by Craig Idlebrook
(Boston, MA) There’s a funny story the actor Charles Grodin shares about famed acting teacher Uta Hagen, where Hagen was dissecting the terribleness of a scene Grodin had just done. She hated everything except for one moment when Grodin’s scene partner was slow to hand the actor a prop. Because there was a delay, Grodin looked genuinely concerned, and that, Hagen announced, was true acting.
I’m not a big fan of the Method myself, but I’m starting to see her point, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. Acting involves a weird combo of memorization and playful improvisation. But when it comes to the Bard’s work, too many productions are populated with actors who know they are saying weighty words and making weighty gestures; every move is preordained and dripping with importance. Such a style robs the lyrical and impish qualities of plays that once were performed for bawdy Elizabethans.
Luckily, there are productions like Bad Habit’s staging of Much Ado About Nothing to inject life into scripts that we have too long sanctified. Continue reading
photo credit: Lyric Stage of Boston
Episode 6: Geeks, Nerds & Artists Podcast: Spiro Veloudos, Artistic Director of Lyric Stage Company of Boston and director of current production of Avenue Q
Avenue Q: May 11-June 24, 2012 (it is selling out presently)
Spiro Veloudos (Producing Artistic Director) is the Producing Artistic Director of The Lyric Stage Company. and has been honored with numerous awards and honors including The Elliot Norton Award and The Independent Reviews of New England (IRNE) Award. He has been personally honored with the 2006 Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence, Stage Source’s 2002 Theatre Hero Award and was cited as the city’s Best Artistic Director by Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston program in 1999. He has directed over 90 productions in Massachusetts and throughout New England. He is proud to be a three-time winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director. He has also been honored five times as the Outstanding Director of a Musical by the Independent Reviewers of New England.
His directing credits include: Lyric Stage Company –Kiss Me, Kate,Grey Gardens, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Follies, The Importance of Being Earnest, Three Tall Women, Arms and the Man, Souvenir,1776, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia, Urinetown: the Musical(IRNE award for Best Musical Production and Direction), A Number, A Little Night Music,(IRNE award for Best Musical Production and Direction, 2004), Noises Off!, The Spitfire Grill, Book of Days, Side Show, Dirty Blonde, Side Man, No Way To Treat A Lady,(IRNE Award for Best Director of a Musical) The Curse of the Bambino, Glengarry Glen Ross (IRNE Award for Best Production ), Sunday in the Park with George (Best of Year mention: Boston Globe, Herald and Phoenix, The Elliot Norton Award and IRNE for Outstanding Musical Production and Direction), Assassins (Outstanding Production of 1998 and one of 5 most memorable productions in the last 15 years: Boston Globe), Lost in Yonkers and Never the Sinner: The Leopold and Loeb Story (Elliot Norton Award Outstanding Director, for both, along with Assassins), and Speed-the-Plow ( Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production);
Publick Theatre – Design for Living, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ( Boston Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production and Direction), Quilters (The New England Theatre Conference’s Moss Hart Award), Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction for both).
Other venues- The Philadelphia Story, A Christmas Carol, Macbeth Les Liaisons Dangereuse, Cabaret, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cyrano De Bergerac. As an actor his favorite roles were, Big Daddy (Cat on a Hot tin Roof) Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing) Prospero (The Tempest) Garfinkle (Other Peoples Money)Cyrano (Cyrano De Bergerac) Guido Contini (Nine). He holds a BFA (cum Laude) in Acting /Directing from Emerson College. He has taken graduate level courses in financial management, marketing, entertainment law and negotiation through the Organization Development Project and the Achieving Excellence Program of the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He proudly serves on the Board of the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund. He was recently included in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Hellenic American Business and Industry .He is a founding member and serves as the President for the Producers Association of New England Area Theatres, is on the Adjunct Faculty in Performing Arts at Emerson College and is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. (from Stage Source)
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It seems like some experiences on the MBTA are so traumatic that people don’t want to talk about them. However, three brave souls had the courage to share their experiences and one will reap the benefits. Continue reading
IN THE DARKNESS
OF A SMALL THEATRE
CREATING NEW, CHALLENGING, AND EXCITING
PRODUCTIONS, WHERE RESOURCES AND INFORMATION WERE SCATTERED
A GROUP OF ARTISTS JOINED TOGETHER TO INCREASE COMMUNICATION BY FORMING
THE SMALL THEATRE ALLIANCE OF BOSTON
Interview with John Geoffrion by Becca Kidwell
Between 2009 and 2010, Meg Taintor, Daniel Morris, Nora Long, and other small theatre leaders joined together to form the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston share resources, information, ideas, and support each other. Continue reading
l. to r. Bill Mootos, Ceit McCaleb Zweil, Lovely Hoffman, and Jennifer Fogarty in Little Shop of Horrors. Photo by Andrew Brilliant / Brilliant Pictures.
Little Shop of Horrors, book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken, New Repertory Theatre, Charles Mosesian Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, 4/29/12-5/27/12, http://www.newrep.org/little_shop.php.
Reviewed by Kate Lonberg-Lew
Sometimes you are having a bad day. Sometimes you are in such a bad mood that escapism is the only way to manage. It was in such a state that I entered the New Rep’s production of Little Shop of Horrors at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. I tell you this so that you will know exactly how steep a hill the cast had to climb in order for me to emerge smiling; which I did. Continue reading
As the culminating event in the College's year-long examination of the theme of violence, Assassins brims with a particularly urgent energy. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University Photography © 2012 Boston University all rights reserved
Assassins, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, Boston University Colllege of Fine Arts School of Theatre, Boston University Theatre, 4/4/12-4/10/12, http://www.bu.edu/cfa/2012/04/20/assassins/.
Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook
(Boston, MA) It’s nice for Stephen Sondheim and his partner John Weidman to clear up a few things for us about theater in their mishmash of a play, Assassins, playing at the Boston University Theatre.
They have proven a fundamental truth: You can populate your play with profoundly interesting characters, give them things to do that impact every theatergoer’s psyche and bestow wonderful music for them to sing as they do it, but if the script doesn’t allow them to interact in a meaningful way, it’s just an exercise in futility. The playwrights prove this point despite the best efforts of a talented cast, who creates full-fledged and compelling characters. In fact, the cast and stellar set give us such high expectations that it makes the mind want to rebel at this idle script all the more. Continue reading
Juventas New Music Ensemble‘s upcoming events:
Deep in the Balkans, a wandering gypsy woman, Roma (Hilary Anne Walker), meets and agrees to share a week of travel with Hajduk (Kevin Kees), an outlaw. They are not characters, really, but character archetypes who have drifted from their respective stories. Now they seek an audience. Continue reading
Episode 5: Geeks, Nerds & Artists Podcast: Meg Taintor, Artistic Director of Whistler in the Dark Theatre
http://www.whistlerinthedark.com/
Trojan Women: May 18- June 2 at the Factory Theatre in Boston
Meg Taintor is the founding Artistic Director of Whistler in the Dark Theatre, for whom she has directed 13 productions. Also for Whistler, Meg produced three years of FeverFest, a new works festival dedicated to connecting adventurous audiences with young and vital theatre companies and artists in Boston. Meg has also directed for Mill6 Theatre and New Voices @ New Rep.
In 2009, Meg joined with other artists working in the small and fringe theatre scene to form the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston, where served for two years as President of the Board. She is now Chair of the Alliance Events Committee and a member of the Board for StageSource. Meg believes passionately in the necessity for a strong community of local artists supporting and challenging itself to do better and more exciting work.
Her regional theatre credits include the National Players, Rorschach Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, the Potomac Theatre Project and Washington Shakespeare Company. She holds a B.A. in Theatre and Women & Gender Studies from Middlebury College. (profile from website)
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Performance dates: June 8, 15, 29 and July 6 at Club Oberon in Cambridge, MA
Part of why T: An MBTA Musical reaches such a wide audience is because anyone who has ridden the T, even once, know the craziness that is the MBTA.
To win tickets to this show (that will sell out again), tell us your strangest, most humorous, or horrific story by filling the comment form below (click on title or “read more” for the full post) by May 8th. You must enter your full name and a valid email address to win. Winner will be announced on May 10th. Continue reading