Category: theatre

Chicago’s historic Uptown Theatre, shuttered for decades, is up for sale, and preservationists and historians will be following its fate closely. “Regardless of the buyer, it should remove a stumbling block in the theater’s restoration. It will clarify who owns the joint.”

LA’s Mark Taper Forum is back open following a $30 million renovation. “In replacing the 41-year-old theater’s outdated mechanical systems and in helping reframe the most memorable aspects of the original design… the architects have managed to make the building’s architectural value seem unimpeachable.”

“Elicia MacKenzie, the exuberant 23-year-old Vancouverite who went from what Andrew Lloyd Webber called ‘almost zero to hero’ was the surprise winner last night as the CBC-TV program How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? came to a close.”

The Minnesota Fringe Festival (America’s largest) is a sprawling affair, offering 800 performances of 156 shows on 18 stages this August. Also, the Fringe is a nonjuried festival, meaning that performers who want to participate have to enter a lottery that decides who gets a slot and who doesn’t, regardless of the relative fame and/or quality of the submission.

“Tonight, Canadian viewers of CBC’s How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? find out which young woman has won the televised competition to play Maria von Trapp in the Toronto production of The Sound of Music… Of course, the end of the show is just the beginning of the hard work for the successful “Maria,””

“The characters and stories of Little House on the Prairie have delighted readers and television viewers for generations, but now they are being put to a test not unlike a cruel Midwestern winter: Will they thrive in the forbidding world of new American musicals?”

“The company – and its home the Bristol Theatre Royal – went dark in August 2007, after the controversial and sudden decision to close the venue for a multimillion-pound refurbishment. The debacle saw the organisation lose both its artistic director Simon Reade and a large portion of its board, including the then-chairman Rupert Rhymes.”

“If I were to be hopeful about it. I’d say it’s a sign that people want to go to the theater and find characters who can help them be hopeful about what can happen in their lives.”

“A new musical version of Little House on the Prairie was extended two weeks because of demand, the Guthrie Theater said. It stars Melissa Gilbert as the mother of the character she played on the TV series.”

“To the outsider, Broadway is the unquestionable theater-career apex–it bestows “authenticity” on the actor or playwright due to some hazy myth of glamour and tradition. The rest is just the minor leagues, or worse–the amateur fringe. For insiders, though, the perception is just that: perception. And how much artists care about that perception defines their success.”