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Theater Review: SHANE (City Lit Theater / Chicago)
CITY LIT SADDLES UP A WINNER A terrific central trio and striking stagecraft make Mark Pracht’s world-premiere adaptation a winner The venerable City Lit opens its 46th season with Shane, a world premiere from multi-hyphenate Mark Pracht. Based on the novel by Jack Schaefer, which was previously adapted into a highly regarded 1953 film with…
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Theater Preview: TAYLOR MAC AND MATT RAY: SONGS FROM BARK OF MILLIONS (ArtsEmerson / Boston)
BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE Taylor Mac and Matt Ray dig into history for a two-hour explosion of music, theater, and drag Taylor Mac does not do small. The MacArthur-winning playwright, performer, singer-songwriter and professional button-pusher returns to Boston with composer and longtime collaborator Matt Ray for Songs from Bark of Millions, a two-hour concert…
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Theater Review: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (Signature Theatre / Arlington, VA)
A MERRILY MARVELOUS REVIVAL Sondheim’s famously backward musical moves splendidly forward in Signature Theatre’s hands How do three talented, idealistic friends end up bitter, estranged from one another and far from the dreams of their youth? The reverse-chronology musical Merrily We Roll Along at Signature Theatre answers that question through glorious songs and electrifying performances….
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Theater Review: THEATRE PEOPLE, OR THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR (Scripps Ranch Theatre / San Diego)
A DEVILISHLY GOOD TIME WITH THE NOT-SO-ANGELIC Paul Slade Smith’s delightful farce earns hearty laughs from a terrific cast Playwright and actor Paul Slade Smith is on a winning streak. Besides starring in North Coast Rep’s Scapin earlier this year, all three of his plays have been produced by the combination of NCR and Scripps…
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HOW LOCAL PRODUCTION CREWS SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL THEATER AND LIVE EVENT PRODUCTIONS
Bringing a theater production, concert, corporate event, or live show to another country can attract people who have never seen the show before. I have seen how the excitement builds when the audience first steps onto the stage. It can also bring challenges that’re hard to deal with from far away. The people who are…
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FROM REHEARSAL TO OPENING NIGHT: MANAGING THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF A LIVE PERFORMANCE
From the audience, a live show is effortlessly enjoyable. Behind the scenes, it requires lighting, sound, scenery, video displays, props, performers, and more, all working together at a specific time to create the production. During rehearsals, these individual elements come together, and the production takes shape. It is during these times that the show’s elements…
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HOW NEW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING STAGE DESIGN, LIGHTING, AND LIVE PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION
Live performance has always been an art form that balances creativity, timing, and technical expertise. What is changing is the breadth of tools that production teams can use. Stage designers can now combine physical scenery with large LED displays and video environments. Lighting systems can be triggered with far greater precision. Video, automation, tracking and…
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Theater Review: [TITLE OF SHOW] (Treehouse Collective / Chelsea)
A MUSICAL WORTH ROOTING FOR Four likable friends chase Broadway dreams in this clever and thoroughly enjoyable production A clever script and engaging performances offer an impressive rendition of [title of show] at Chelsea Theatre Works. The 90-minute show, with music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen and book by Hunter Bell, tells the story of…
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BEHIND THE CURTAIN: HOW PRODUCTION TEAMS BRING LARGE-SCALE STAGE PERFORMANCES TO LIFE
A big production can feel smooth and automatic. People step on stage at the right time. Backdrops move up and down. The lights hit their marks with the music. Big screens play the video parts. Sound fills the room. Still, the show does not run on its own. Someone has to make it work. There…
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HOW LIGHTING DESIGN AND SOUND DESIGN SHAPE THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE IN LIVE THEATER
When an audience watches a theatre production, they are focused on the performers, the story being told, and the plot of the performance. Nevertheless, there are several elements that make a production dramatic, exciting, and full of emotions for the viewers. The most important of these are the production’s lighting and sound. Sound and lighting…
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FROM PROSCENIUM TO PRESENCE IN RECORDED PERFORMANCE
A recorded performance in a headset asks something different of its audience: where should I look when the camera no longer chooses every detail? Before assessing the acting or staging, it helps to establish the viewing format. Brain Dance provides an immersive video guide as a starting point for checking a VR playback workflow. The…
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A First-Timer’s Guide to Seeing Live Theater: How to Choose a Show, Find Seats, and Know What to Expect
Seeing live theater for the first time can feel surprisingly unfamiliar. If most of your entertainment experience comes from movies, streaming shows, or online videos, walking into a theater where performers are sharing the same space as the audience may seem like a completely different world. There is no pause button, no second take, and…
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MARKET A REHEARSAL WITHOUT INVENTING THE PERFORMANCE
A rehearsal promo sits between evidence and promise. The room, performers, script pages, and working choices may be real, but the final lighting, staging, costume, cast, timing, and audience response may not exist yet. A polished generated transition can quietly present those plans as finished production. An AI Video Generator can add atmosphere around a…
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THEATER: Bryan Cranston’s West End Show Heads to Streaming as Actor Plots Reunion With Former Castmate
Now 70 years old, Bryan Cranston remains active in the acting circuit. While he rose to prominence in TV sitcoms, Cranston has gone on to prove himself a titan of the dramatic, be that on TV, in film, or on stage. Academy Award and BAFTA Award nominations have been aplenty, but it’s on stage where…
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Broadway Preview: HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES (Barrymore Theatre)
THE PICTURES WE CANNOT LOOK AWAY FROM Moisés Kaufman investigates what an album of Nazi photographs can tell us about the people smiling inside them I’ll see anything Moisés Kaufman puts onstage. From The Laramie Project onward, he has been one of our most adventurous theater makers, particularly when working with documentary material. He knows…
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Theater Review: ADOLESCENT SALVATION (Theater Wit / Chicago)
TEENAGE WASTELAND Growing up is hell in Tim Venable’s funny, disturbing and morally murky gearshift play In the late 1990s, filmmaker P.T. Anderson coined the term “gearshift movie” to describe a film that switches up its tone/theme in an instant. If we were to extend that term to the theatre, Tim Venable’s Adolescent Salvation would…
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Theater Preview: KAIJU (The Road Theatre Company & BroadStage / Los Angeles)
THE MONSTERS HAVE NOTES Two kaiju flatten a city, then stick around to argue Godzilla generally has better things to do after destroying a city than discuss the cultural implications. KAIJU, a world-premiere play by Dan Caffrey, starts with the destruction and then asks its gigantic monsters to talk about it. That premise alone should…
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Theater Review: BEING PIAF (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble / Los Angeles)
PIAF, WITHOUT THE PARROTING Eleanora Owen finds the heartbreak and defiance inside the Little Sparrow’s songs Édith Piaf’s life overflowed with the severest of extremities: the writhing, rapturous harmony of joyous consonances and agonized dissonances, hastened with the rapidity of a tempo that flamed out after a brief 47 years, and woven with counterpoints of…
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Broadway Preview: THE FANTASTICKS (Second Stage Theater / Hayes Theater)
BROADWAY GETS FANTASTICK The world’s longest-running musical takes its first Broadway bow in a beautifully reconsidered form It took The Fantasticks 66 years to get to Broadway. Then again, a musical that ran Off-Broadway for 42 years and 17,162 performances has never exactly needed Broadway’s stamp of approval. But this fall, Tom Jones and Harvey…
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Theater and Tour Preview: CIRQUE MUSICA HOLIDAY WONDERLAND (2026 National Tour)
IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CIRQUE-MAS A high-flying holiday spectacle takes its acrobatic wonder on a 50-city tour If your holiday traditions could use a little more danger, Cirque Musica Holiday Wonderland has an answer: put some acrobats in the air. The family-friendly spectacle returns in an all-new production that combines favorite holiday…
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