Category: theatre

Nearly everyone who has seen Singing in the Rain remembers the instant classic “Good Morning to You,” created when Reynolds was just 19. Now there’s a “Tappy” tribute video that includes Broadway stars from Book of Mormon, Newsies and Cats.

Pretty much, and pretty soon. That’s an unexpected result: “It is an extraordinarily speedy outcome for a film project once regarded as too risky when director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle approached producers in Los Angeles. While film musicals are no longer seen as the financial black holes they were two decades ago, it was a difficult proposition.”

Sure, Broadway shows have investors from all over. But this one “stands out for the size of its success and the concentration of its support in an affluent village, La Jolla, that is about as far from the Garden State Parkway as one can get in the mainland United States. It appears that as much as 40 percent of the show’s financing was raised in San Diego — almost all of it from people who had never previously invested in a Broadway show, and who encountered this one as patrons at the La Jolla Playhouse, where the musical was enormously popular and repeatedly extended.”

The plan: “January 19th will be a moment of gathering within a larger resistance to intolerance at all levels. We aim to create brave spaces that will serve as lights in the coming years. We aim to activate a network of people across the country working to support vulnerable communities. This is not a substitution for protests or direct action, but rather a pledge for continued vigilance and increased advocacy.”

“The funding, provided by the city’s Theater Subdistrict Council, will go to paid training and mentorship opportunities at organizations like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harlem Stage, Roundabout Theater Company and the New York Theater Workshop.”

“How does a cast of 25 actors, plus a dozen stage managers, stagehands, electricians, dressers, props handlers and makeup artists get into the proper groove to envelop a Broadway audience in the antics of an 88-year-old play? Musicals these days are often as large or even larger. But rising costs and a shrinking pool of interested theatergoers have made straight plays of this magnitude an extreme rarity on BroadwayIt’s a complex organism, a Broadway production of this caliber, with a backstage so teeming with experience, talent and ego it could be the subject of an anthropology class.”

“When novelist Michael Cunningham got a call from someone claiming to be David Bowie, he thought it was a friend pulling a prank. He didn’t know he was about to be launched into a yearlong collaboration on a musical involving space aliens, mariachi bands, and an imaginary trove of unreleased songs by Bob Dylan.”

Says the unknown author of Manwatching, “When the idea of it being [performed by] an unprepared man came up, I liked that power dynamic and the act of trust it would require from a man. … An anonymous female voice makes the message so much stronger, and means that any woman who wants to take ownership of it can.” (Her favorite bit of speculation about her identity: “Someone guessed that David Hare wrote it … It’s very funny how quick we are to assume that men wrote everything.”)

Phylicia Rashad. Laurence Fishburne, Leslie Uggams, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and others talk about their first exposure to the playwright’s work and the first time they appeared in one of his plays themselves.

It’s not just that they can sing, dance, and act – that’s no longer enough. Programs are teaching them to write their own shows.