Fame or Famine

It’s a banner day on Broadway, especially for some of the stories I’ve been tracking on this blog.
Stew Gets an Obie for Passing Strange
I wrote recently how musician and auteur Stew had garnered no fewer than seven Tony nominations – but there’s more out there than Tony. The Village Voice also gives out its own theatre award, the “Obie”, and Passing Strange has secured Best New Theatre Piece. I’m a little amused, though, because part of the prize is $1,000 – to be split between Stew, co-author Heidi Rodewald and director Annie Dorsen – which I think is just about …read more

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“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m…” Always loved that Beatles song. And I confess, with four daughters, I’m pretty confident at least one of them will care for me when I’m 64. Or 80, for that matter, which is how old Faye Wright’s mother is now.
And the star of the musical Chicago flew across the world to be with her. Now that’s a mother’s day present. On the other hand, she does sort of owe it all to Mom: “I decided to take her to dancing lessons because she was so shy,” says Natalie …read more

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams, launched a revival on March 2nd of this year. There was one major change – the entire cast was African-American. Terrence Howard (recently on screen in Iron Man) and Phylicia Rashad joined James Earl Jones and Anika Noni Rose in the critically-acclaimed production. It runs until June 22, which means I’m going to just miss it – I’ve a planned trip out to the coast in early July.
Happily, though, producer Stephen Byrd is revving up to take the show to the big screen – supplanting the classic film with Paul Newman …read more

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“I just saw the production; it premiered tonight after being postponed due to the recent hostilities in the county. My sister plays Sharpay Evans and it was thrilling to be able to watch it in the midst of such an ugly national crisis – very emotional.” That’s the comment that Milia Ayache, from Lebanon, left in answer to my entry about a “Multi-cultural High School Musical.”
Milia also directed me to the event profile on Facebook, which I have happily added to my profile (though I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, sorry). Theatre de Mazitou, the production house …read more

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Correction: While having lunch with Douglas Rosenberg today, he corrected one fact that was not clear in my recent post about John Henry. While it is true that John Henry never actually served in Vietnam, he was in the army, and served honorably; the interesting thing is that the metaphor of the war and combat experiences became a metaphor for the struggles he endured as a gay man, as an artist, and as someone fighting AIDS. I apologize for the error.
Jealous of my Friends: A fellow blogger and online friend of mine, Viviane, is sitting as I write this at …read more

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John Henry was a self-described “performing artist/educator” who realized he was dying of AIDS and decided to turn his preparation for death into a performance piece. With the collaborative help of Douglas Rosenberg and Ellen Bromberg, a dance/technology piece was born.
A large part of that piece dealt with John Henry’s experiences as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He integrated those experiences into the piece, combining video of combat footage with live onstage dancing. You can see several videos of the stage performance here; as the piece toured, however, the performance was required to change to accommodate John Henry’s declining health …read more

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In the tradition of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, the new David Mamet play, November, is set just a few days before a presidential election. While having the site be a pseudo-official campaign site, complete with “Vote Now!” buttons, it’s also very entertaining. You also don’t have to watch too much to be able to tell which particular president is the model for Nathan Lane’s role, but again, they do it in a lighthearted way.
I’m sure I won’t get to see it on Broadway, but I’m also sure it won’t be far from a movie, probably with the …read more

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I often talk about the way that dances evolve, the way that they influence each other. Last night, in fact, I watched an excellent performer named Arielle do a hip-hop/bellydance fusion piece (she was also a competitor in a local So You Think You Can Dance competition, featuring Hok, interview forthcoming). Some dances are meant to be joined, and complement each other well.
I’m not so sure that this new turn of Morris Dancing is a good thing, however. According to this article in the UK Independent, there is a movement to take the traditional white-hanky-waving bell-jangling wholesome Morris Dance and …read more

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“It makes me grouchy to show up to “dance” after “dance” to find such a paucity of invention.” That’s the sentiment of Apollinaire Scherr in her recent column about several dances created about the Iraq war. She mentions

“Not About Iraq Dance” at Danspace
“zero degrees” at City Center
“Far…” by Rachid Ouramdane

And she discusses the “Inertia” movement, which is the tendency to show tension in a dance environment through the lack of movement (hence the initial quote). I would have to agree, there does seem to be a lack of originality in terms of works about the war, but I believe the …read more

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OK, relax. It’s a headline trick to catch your attention – there’s nothing actually wrong with the High School Musical craze.
Yes, that’s right, I said craze. While it may be considered this generation’s Grease, and while Zac Efron may be the new John Travolta, it’s kind of like the story about Katie Holmes on Broadway – at a certain point you just reach media saturation, and it seems that everything that can be written has been. Which is why I’ve not written much about the High School Musical, or the sequel.
However, something happened this morning as I was in the …read more

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