Category — Family

Inside the acrobatic magic of the award-winning show

Even if it delivered nothing but acrobatics, Leo would be a striking piece of theatre. The show, which won the Best of Edinburgh Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and is now being presented at Theatre Row, exists to make our jaws drop, to make us question our own eyes.

The “tricks” are even more alluring because we see exactly how they’re done. On the right side of the stage, we find Leo (played by German acrobat Tobias Wegner) standing in a colorful room with nothing but a suitcase.  Lounging around, he lies on the floor and puts his feet on a bright red wall. Later, he balances on one leg and slowly bends down to touch the floor with one hand, letting his other arm and leg jut into the air. By the time the show’s over, he’s contorted himself into all sorts of exotic shapes.

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How Sam Eaton became New York’s most prominent mentalist

“My name is Sam Eaton,” says the man standing at the lip of the stage. “And today you have no secrets.”

With those words, Eaton ushers his audience into his “mentalism and magic show” The Quantum Eye. During a recent performance, he detected a murderer by probing the thoughts of four suspects, served as a conduit through which a couple communicated telepathically, and most confounding, performed an illusion involving a mind-reading canvas banner.

But while his feats are impressive, Eaton’s longevity is even more noteworthy: The Quantum Eye has been running for eight years, which is a lifetime in the crowded and competitive Off-Broadway world.

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Inside Broadway’s first autism-friendly performance

In many ways, the October 2nd matinee of The Lion King was like any other performance. The theatre buzzed with families, people sang along with their favorite songs, and the actors gave it their all.

But this show was special. It was Broadway’s first “autism-friendly” performance and the debut of Theatre Development Fund’s Autism Theatre Initiative.

Overseen by TDF’s Accessibility Programs (TAP), the Autism Theatre Initiative creates a friendly, supportive theatre environment for children or adults with an autism spectrum disorder. Because people on the autism spectrum often have trouble adjusting to mainstream social situations, and because they often fidget or make noise, they typically can’t attend live performances. Loud sounds and bright lights might aggravate their symptoms, and their behavior might disturb performers or audience members.

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A new show pushes the boundaries between the circus and the stage

Les 7 Doigts de la Main, the Montreal circus troupe colloquially known as 7 Fingers, makes a point of pushing its virtuosic performers beyond the typical three-ring feats.

Take Traces, which opened earlier this month to rave reviews at the Union Square Theatre. This kinetic production interweaves the expected gasp-worthy acrobatics with self-effacing bits of dialogue, charmingly modest musical interludes, and stylized fisticuffs that make the Jets and Sharks look like coach potatoes.

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How a deaf CUNY law student uses TDF’s program

Caitlin Parton is a law student at the City University of New York who spent her early twenties interning with a U.S. senator. She’s also a lifelong theatregoer, and the theatre is richer because of bright, passionate fans like her. Not that long ago, however, the theatre wasn’t very accommodating to Parton or the hundreds of audiences members like her.

Parton, 26, identifies as deaf, and though a cochlear implant gives her partial hearing, she still hears less than most people. When she was young, that seriously hindered her theatregoing.

“My mother is an actress and her father was a Broadway producer, so I grew up having an appreciation of the performing arts and attending Broadway performances with my mom,” she recalls. “I would enjoy them, but she would sit next to me and mouth what people were saying so that I could lip read when I missed it. We would watch movies of musicals before we would go to see the production, so I’d be familiar with it, but there would just be so much that I would be missing.”

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