artistic production

Putting the Spotlight on Those Unseen Artists

Over the weekend, the New York Times featured a story about the small army of artists and engineers who are responsible for keeping each Broadway show running every performance, while the directors and designers move on after opening night. Take The 39 Steps, for instance. In the Times article, Mark Blankenship writes: For 90 minutes crew members snake past one another with ladders, smoke machines and life-size dummies, all without making a sound. But most patrons don’t even know these backsta...

Self-hating Americans in England

I caught the final performance of the Second Stage revival of “Some Americans Abroad” yesterday in Manhattan. The play was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1980s and had its American premiere at Lincoln Center Theater two decades ago. It’s a sour piece of work by Richard Nelson — an American writer who has found more success on the other side of the Atlantic — about U.S. academics leading a college English department's annual trip to see plays in London and Str...

Andre De Shields to Star in The Flea Theater's Cato

Andre De Shields will star in The Flea Theater's production of Joseph Addison's Cato, to be directed by Flea artistic director Jim Simpson, October 10-November 2. Additional casting will be...

CyberLink?s PowerDirector 7 Goes Above, Beyond Video Editing

Today’s new high-def camcorders, such as our new AVCHD camcorder, make it possible for almost anyone to shoot really professional looking footage. The problem for most of consumers is that they don’t take the very best of the content and convert it into an interesting movie people want to sit down and view. For our family we wanted software that would give the technical experts in the family (our son, daughter) a comprehensive end-to-end editing solution and still lets the more video-challe...

CyberLink?s PowerDirector 7 Goes Above, Beyond Video Editing

Today’s new high-def camcorders, such as our new AVCHD camcorder, make it possible for almost anyone to shoot really professional looking footage. The problem for most of consumers is that they don’t take the very best of the content and convert it into an interesting movie people want to sit down and view. For our family we wanted software that would give the technical experts in the family (our son, daughter) a comprehensive end-to-end editing solution and still lets the more video-challe...

The Singers and The Songs

Along with the resurgence of classical music,opera seems to be more popular in the past year than in the previous 25. The most impressive example is the amazing attendance records for the Metropolitan Opera performances that are shown on movie screens around this country. The number of screens employed during the 2007-08 season was nearly 3 times that of the previous year (almost 400!) I am often asked why I don't mention opera performances in my column. Outside of the Connecticut Opera Company...

Hooked on the Bard

It's all Jeff Allen's fault, this new addiction. First, he asked my wife and me to appear in his production of "Hamlet", set to go up the first weekend of October. He seduced us with an excellent cast, a trimmed-down script, a juicy part for me and the opportunity to work with an excellent director (Jerry Winters.) Then, he started to talk about "Slings and Arrows", which I had always thought of as part of a speech from Hamlet. But these particular "Slings and Arrows" was not just turn of a phr...

allAfrica.com: Tunisia: Artistic Scene Witnesses Birth of Second All- Female Music Group

A new all-female music group calling itself "Hourriet Tounes" (The sirens of Tunisia ) was recently created by the music production company 'Noujoum Ben Ammar'. leer más

Theater Review: 'The Sound of Music' hits all the right notes

You may think you know "The Sound of Music," but if you believe it's just a singing nun and some cute kids, you didn't get the whole story. The 1959 classic from songwriting geniuses Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein features not only a series of memorable songs but an honestly emotional story of faith, commitment and love. A brisk, engaging production from Music Circus artistic director Scott Eckern has opened the 58th season of musicals in the round on a high note. Capt. Georg von Trapp (G...

We are all artists now

You gotta love this. Chicago's nanny state culture is drawing national attention due in part to the Obama nanny state in store for us, but some have had second thoughts. Tribune. Sun Times, Alderman Brendan Reilly: Reilly said he would introduce the amendment at Wednesday's City Council meeting and push for speedy passage to allow the Chicago production of "Jersey Boys" to put cigarettes back into the hands of actors playing Frankie Valli and the boys. "While I fully support the smoking ban and...