Category — Regional Theatre

I’m delighted to announce a new collaboration with Samuel French, Inc., one of the world’s leading play publishers. From time to time, TDF Stages will exchange articles with Samuel French’s new online theatre magazine, [Breaking Character]. Because [Breaking Character] reports on theatre from around the country, this partnership will expand TDF Stage’s conversation about the theatre in valuable ways.

Today, I’m recommending a [BC] project called Collaborative Creation, which follows a successful musical theatre team as they create a new show. If all goes well, they’ll be ready to premiere their show in Vermont this September, and we’ll get a weekly glimpse into their process. I can’t wait to see what we learn as they move from “big idea” to opening night.

And now: Take a look at this excerpt from Collaborative Creation, then go enjoy the rest of the story at the [Breaking Character] website.

Cheers,

Mark (TDF Stages editor)

p.s. — I’m also excited to tell you that this summer, I’ll be teaching a course on arts criticism as part of the Samuel French Institute. For more information, just go here.

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Collaborative Creation: Week By Week, #1
By Tajlei Levis

Our musical GLIMPSES OF THE MOON began when the Algonquin Hotel (of Round Table fame) sought to highlight their literary heritage by presenting a new musical in the Oak Room. They offered us the Manhattan equivalent of a barn – with oak-paneled walls and red velvet banquettes- and John and I had an incentive to quickly write a new musical…

John and I are now embarking on a new project, an original musical which explores a different side of 1920’s New York. The Bootlegger and the Rabbi’s Daughter was inspired by the thought of combining our respective cultural traditions (John’s family is Italian, mine is Jewish) into a meaningful multi-cultural holiday show, a Jewish Christmas musical, which would fit into our specialty of writing vintage New York musical comedies. We have a date to present it in a theatre – a former barn – in Vermont in September. So far, we have a detailed treatment and the start of several songs. By the end of the summer, we hope to have a complete script and score.

Read the rest of the story here.

Pictured: Writing team Tajlei Lewis and John Mercurio

Robert Patrick (photo by Dylan Kenin)

We were captivated by this story in LA STAGE Times about Robert Patrick, the playwright and off-Off Broadway pioneer. His frank stories about the off-Off scene—and what happened to him when he left it—are rich, moving, and occasionally heartbreaking.

Take a look at this excerpt, and then read the full story at LA STAGE Times.

[Read more →]

For a television star like Kirsten Vangsness (above left), who’s currently seen on the CBS drama Criminal Minds, the theatre can offer a chance to go wild, to say and do things that just aren’t possible on a major network.

Recently, our friends at LA STAGE Times spoke to Vangsness about the challenges and rewards of playing an amateur porn star in Figure 8, Phinneas Kiyomura’s new play about “ordinary sinners doing sinfully ordinary things.” We’re delighted to share the following excerpt from the story. To read the rest, just go here.

[Read more →]

Director Jeff Calhoun brings a new musical to life

For a director, the canvas of a new musical can be intimidatingly blank: There might be songs and scenes, but they need a world to exist in, a physical space to bring them to life. As Jeff Calhoun says, “A show has to look like something. Ideas are hard to come by when you’re working on new material, so when you do get something that you love, you have to hang onto it and go from there.”

And he should know: Calhoun is directing the new Broadway musical Bonnie & Clyde, which tells the story of the infamous American outlaws who became famous for their Depression-era crimes and their passionate love affair.

He also directed the show’s 2009 premiere at California’s La Jolla Playhouse, where he quickly seized on a concept for the set. “I said, ‘I would like the topography of the set to be as perilous as these times they’re living in,’” he recalls. “Nothing is easy. The platforms are at all different levels. You have to walk up to one and cross over to another and step over a gulley to another. I wanted it to be precarious.”

[Read more →]

Director John Tiffany brings the hit indie film to the stage

The 2007 film Once charmingly blurs the line between reality and fiction. The stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, are indie musicians who dated in real life, so they’re natural on screen as struggling musicians who fall in love.

But how does Once work without them? That’s the question facing John Tiffany, who’s directing a stage musical adaptation at New York Theatre Workshop. Best known for innovative productions like Black Watch, he’s focusing not only on the story, but also on the story’s theatrical shape.

[Read more →]