Charles Busch Receives Another Legend Award!
By Michael Musto 
Thu., Jun. 23 2011 at 10:30 am

Award winning actor/playwright Charles Busch is getting another honor to accessorize his mantel with on Monday.

His frequent costar Julie Halston will present him with the New York Innovative Theatre Awards' 2011 Luminary award at Therapy (348 W. 52 Street), from 6 to PM.

On the eve of his barrage of ritualized lovin', I phoned Charles for a chat.


Me: Congrats on all your awards, darlin'. You're approaching Marian Seldes status.

Busch: It is rather aging, isn't it? (laughs) At the Rochester Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I was given a humanitarian award. Julie Halston said, "What have you ever done for anyone?" I said, "I've done plenty. Look at your career."


Me: And you've given the world play after play. Tell me about your new one.

Bush: We start rehearsals Tuesday. It's called Olive and the Bitter Herbs at Primary Stages. It's in the vein of Tale of the Allergist's Wife. I'm not in this one, but Julie is once again--this is the 10th role I've written for her. I don't know if that puts us in the Guinness Book of World Records. When we did The Divine Sister, she had a bad rehearsal day and said, "The headline could be 'Muse Canned!' "

Me: Is Julie paying Olive?

Bush: No, Olive is played by a wonderful actress named Marcia Jean Kurtz. Julie and I have become cultists for her. We stalked her at one point. She thought we were goofing on her. I said, "No, no, we really think you're the Jewish Duse!" Olive is a cantankerous actress whose biggest claim to fame is she starred in the "Give me the sausage" commercial in the '80s. She has two mirrors, and in the mirror within the mirror she thinks she sees a young man. It's a little bit of a mystical play--and very funny.

Me: My mirror says you've worked with Joan Rivers, who loves you.

Busch: We became close friends. She doesn't suck the air out of the room. She's really interested in other people and has a real conversation.

Me: I know! She deserves all the legend awards too. Speaking of awards, let's have a real conversation about the Tonys. I liked it.

Busch: I'm really not a cunt. I'm a glass half full kind of person. I thought it was emotional and the entertainment was entertaining.

Me: Wait--you're not a cunt? That's my lead!

Busch: That's why I'm getting these legends awards. (laughs)

Your Weekend Starts Now 6/2/11
By: Stephanie Simon

NY1's weekly segment "Your Weekend Starts Now" shows entertaining picks for great things to do this weekend all around the city. NY1's Arts reporter Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

The Planet Connections Theatre Festivity
www.planetconnectionsfestivity.com
The Planet Connections Theatre Festivity opens this Sunday at the Robert Moss Theatre on Lafayette Street with a preview party Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

This is an eco-friendly and socially-conscious theater festival that runs all month long with more than 50 productions. Tickets are $18.

10 quick to do's before you start pre-production 
  (KampFIRE's NYU class cliff notes)

1. Get tickets on sale (theatermania, brownpapertickets)
2. Make a great postcard
3. Gather lists of friends/neighbors/collegues of all cast/crew ect.
4. Join an e-mail service like Madmimi.com or constant contact
5. Make a website via Weebly, google sites, or dreamweaver
6. Get great professional photography (2-3 people, in costume, staged, 4x6, 300dpi)
7. Make a Facebook page for your company and an event for your production
8. Consider social media ads: ie: Facebook/Google low-cost high ROI
9. Hire a publicist
10. GO TO OTHER PEOPLE'S SHOWS

For more helpful marketing tips check out Kampfire Kounsel or theKampfire Films PR website.    

Bruce Vilanch to Perform at Queens Theatre in the Park May 7
By: Dan Bacalzo · Feb 28, 2011  · New York

Emmy Award winner Bruce Vilanch will perform with special guests, The Bev Leslies, at Queens Theatre in the Park on Saturday, May 7 at 8pm.

Gagwriter for the Oscars and many Hollwood stars, Vilanch is considered one of today's most outrageous, uproarious personalities. His one-liners have tickled audiences when delivered by Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O'Donnell. Vilanch also starred in the Broadway production of Hairspray and his one-man off- Broadway show, Almost Famous.

The Bev Leslies are a unique powerful soulful band serving up a musical cocktail of greasey soul and smokey torch, rockin the house with tunes from Etta James to Tom Waits. They are fronted by Bette Sussman and Elain Caswell and also include John Putnam, Shawn Pelton, and Paul Socolow.

For tickets and more information, click here.

Queens Theatre in the Park Hosts Bruce Vilanch, 5/7

THEATRE IN THE PARK is pleased to present a one night engagement with Bruce Vilanch, a huge comedic personality best known for his droll writing skills, his stint on ?Hollywood Squares? and playing Edna Turnblatt in Hairspray, with special guest THE BEV LESLIES. Bruce Vilanch and THE BEV LESLIES will be at Queens Theatre in the Park (located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Flushing, NY.) on Saturday May 7, 2011 at 8:00 pm.

Gagwriter for the Oscars and many Hollwood stars, Bruce Vilanch is one of today?s most outrageous, uproarious personalities! His one-liners have tickled audiences when delivered by Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O?Donnell. Vilanch starred in the Broadway production of Hairspray and his one-man off- Broadway show, Almost Famous. You may have seen Bruce as a panelist on ?Hollywood Squares? or as a guest on ?Celebrity Fit Club.? Although he?s enormous, gay, bearded and Jewish, Bruce says he is frequently mistaken for Brad Pitt!

Bruce Vilanch
Saturday, May 7th 
8:00 pm

Tickets are $37, Senior $35, Student $22 and are now available online at www.queenstheatre.org or by calling 718-760-0064. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the Box Office, Tues- Sat 12pm ? 6pm & 1 hour prior to performances.

Running Time: 90 minutes

Website: queenstheatre.org

Read more at Broadway World

Dixon Place and El Gato Teatro Present NUEVO LAREDO, 4/8-4/23
February 23, 2011; Posted: 11:02 AM - by BWW News Desk 

EL GATO TEATRO is pleased to announce the world premiere production of Gabriella Barnstone's NUEVO LAREDO. This dance theater work will play a three-week limited engagement Friday and Saturdays only at Dixon Place (161a Chrystie Street, Ground Floor). Performances begin Friday, April 8 and continue through to Saturday, April 23.

In the ghost town of NUEVO LAREDO, an assassin, a new-age drug lord, and la Santa Muerte (Saint Death) deal in the day-to-day business of Death, Faith and Rehab.

The production features scenic design by Paul Olmer, costume design by Oana Botez/Ban, and lighting design by Garin Marschall. Nicholas Colvin is the sound designer and Anna Kroup is the stage manager.

NUEVO LAREDO plays the following regular schedule through Saturday, April 23:

ALL SHOWS ARE FRIDAY AND SATURDAY AT 9:30 PM

There will be a Mexican Band upstairs in the lounge at 9:00 PM prior to the performance.

Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door and are available online at www.dixonplace.org or by calling 866-811-4111. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the theatre box office ½ hour prior to the performance.

Running Time: 60 minutes

Website: dixonplace.org and Elgatoteatro.com

This production was made possible by the generous donations of the people who contributed to Barnstone?s successful Kickstarter Campaign, which raised $10,000. Click here to see video about the production on Barnstone?s page.

Nuevo Laredo is commissioned & presented by Dixon Place with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, with private funds from the Peg Santvoord Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. This project is also made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

BIOGRAPHIES

GABRIELLA BARNSTONE/EL GATO TEATRO (creator) is the founder of El Gato Teatro. In New York City she created and performed Heistman (The Ohio Theater?s Ice Factory Festival ?08 and Dixon Place), Scenes from a Wedding (University Settlement and The Chocolate Factory), The Dinner Party (NYU and Williamsburg Art Nexus), Laredo (Dixon Place and The Kitchen), Somewhere in Between (NYC subway and Galapagos), Priere (Collective Unconscious), The Ferris wheel (Cunningham Studio), and Looking for r.m. (Hudson Guild Theater). She created the all male dance troupe ?The 60 Second Dancers? for the Sixty Second Film Festival 2000. She is the puppet dancer in Drink Me, a live action animated film shown at IFFRotterdam and Sundance Film Festival. Her documentary Salsero was shown at the Dance On Camera Festival and Cine Las Americas. For television she choreographed the Macy?s ?Holiday Spectacular?. Choreography for plays includes Goodbye April, Hello May (HERE), Millicent Scowlworthy, (SPF), Pains of Youth (American Academy of Dramatic Arts), and Inverse Theater?s On the Origin of Darwin, Icarus and Aria, and Midnight Brainwash Revival. She is the choreographer for Ethan Lipton?s music video Hit it. Gabriella is a site-specific performer in the yearly Wonder Walk with the Obie award winning Secret City. Her most recent work, Nuevo Laredo, will premier in April of 2011 as part of Dixon Place?s Mondo Cane! Commissioning Program. For more information about El Gato Teatro, please visit www.elgatoteatro.com.

DIXON PLACE is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 to provide a space for literary and performing artists to create and develop new works in front of a live audience. While other venues of its kind have since died off or now only present established artists, Dixon Place remains at the heart of the New York experimental performance scene. Taking risks is crucial to the life of Dixon Place, its artists and audiences. In April, Dixon Place will launch a year long 25th Anniversary season with special events, parties, and the return of many DP alumni to celebrate a home for new artists to present their evolving work.

Read more 

Astoria Performing Arts Center Presents Galt MacDermot's THE HUMAN COMEDY 5/5-5/21 
Wednesday, February 16, 2011; 
Posted: 07:02 PM - by BWW News Desk 

The Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC) announces the reunion of their award-winning Children of Eden team with their upcoming production of Galt MacDermot's (HAIR) musical, The Human Comedy. With libretto by William Dumaresq based on the story by William Saroyan, the production will be directed by APAC Artistic Director Tom Wojtunik and music directed by Jeffrey Campos, reuniting IT Award Nominee Christine O'Grady as choreographer, IT Award Recipient Michael P. Kramer as set designer, Hunter Kaczorowski as costume designer and casting by wojcik|seay casting.

"The Human Comedy has one of the best scores ever written for a musical," remarks Wojtunik. "When it opened on Broadway in 1984, its intimate story was no match for the trend of over-the-top spectacle musicals. APAC will bring this deserving and gorgeous piece back to New York City in a thrilling new production, as we did with our critically-acclaimed revivals of Ragtime and Children of Eden."

The coming-of-age tale focuses on young Homer Macauley, a telegram messenger who is exposed to the sorrows and joys experienced by his family and the residents of his small California town during World War II. Homer's mother Kate is struggling to support her children following the death of her husband, his older brother Marcus is in the Army, his teenaged sister Bess daydreams about romance, and his younger brother Ulysses divides his attention between the passing trains and an unrequited desire to know why his father had to die. An ode to "home," The Human Comedy is one of the most enjoyable and moving musicals to have fallen into relative obscurity.

William Dumaresq (Libretto) Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1930, Dumaresq original set out to be an English teacher. In 1962 he moved to England to attend the University of London, where he was sidetracked when he met Galt MacDermot, another Canadian ex-pat with whom he began writing and producing songs. Together they wrote the screenplay and music for Duffer (1971), a film based on Dumaresq's yet-to-be-published novel of the same title. Their final collaboration was an adaptation of The Human Comedy, based on a story by William Saroyan, for which Dumaresq contributed the libretto. The two also collaborated on a British musical, Isabel's a Jezebel, loosely based on a Grimm's fairy tale, it premiered on London's West End in 1970. After suffering a non-fatal stroke at the door of his workplace in 1992, Dumaresq was diagnosed with cancer. He died in England in 1998.

Galt MacDermot (Composer) A Grammy and Tony-award winning composer, MacDermot is best known for the music he wrote for the Broadway scores of HAIR and Two Gentlemen of Verona. His work spans the gamut of performing arts: musicals, ballet scores, film scores, chamber music, the Anglican liturgy, orchestral, poetry, drama accompaniments, band repertory and opera. Film scores include Rhinoceros, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Mistress and HAIR. He draws inspiration from a wealth of musical styles, crossing the boundaries of jazz, folk, funk, gospel, reggae, and classical styles. Galt was inducted into the 2009 Songwriter's Hall of Fame.

Galt trip: MacDermot's masterful Human Comedy gets revived in QueensPosted in Upstaged by Adam Feldman on Feb 15, 2011 at 3:25pm

Manhattanites in search of good theater have grown accustomed to traveling to Brooklyn more than they used to. But recently, the Off-Off Broadway scene has started to get a foothold in Queens. For example, Long Island Theatre's Secret Theatre, home to the Queens Players, has earned notice for its wide range of new and classical productions. And then there is the Astoria Performing Arts Center, a modest outfit distinguished by its excellent taste in material. "I’m not coming at it from a ‘safe’ point of view," APAC artistic director Tom Wojtunik told an interviewer last year. "I start with the biggest vision and look for the story I want to tell." That ambition shines through in the company's programming choices, which are only getting bolder. APAC's tenth-anniversary season began in the fall with a revival of MilkMilkLemonade, Joshua Conkel's 2009 Off-Off Broadway sissy-farmboy parable. And now TONY has learned that the troupe will return in May with an ambitious staging of one of the greatest musicals you've probably never heard: Hair composer Galt MacDermot's deeply underrated The Human Comedy, a sweeping, homespun everyman epic that show-tune authority Ken Mandelbaum has called "the great American pop opera."

Adapted from William Saroyan's neomythic novel, MacDermot's nearly through-sung musical debuted at the Public Theater in 1983, to mixed but generally appreciative reviews. Writing for the Times, Frank Rich noted that Saroyan and MacDermot shared "a rhapsodic, Whitmanesque vision of this country";  praising Wilford Leach's lean production, which unfolded on a nearly bare stage, he compared the production to Thornton Wilder's Our Town. "But Mr. MacDermot's music is far more sophisticated than the ambience suggests," Rich continued. "What usually prevents Saroyan's novel from becoming saccharine is its style: the riffs of language and the edgy, eccentric narrative events. The composer preserves that tone in his score, which is written in the true operatic manner, recitatives included. As befits Saroyan's pantheistic sense of community, the music is also highly eclectic: it encompasses gospel, jazz, swing, hymns, barbershop harmonies, blues and plaintive lullabies that almost might have been written by Woody Guthrie."

Eight years later, in his indispensable Not Since Carrie, theater historian Mandelbaum seconded Rich's appreciation. "MacDermot's music, one of the most sophisticated scores of the last decade, combined country, forties swing, and classical lyricism into a wholly unique, original mixture," he wrote. "Saroyan's novel was a rich subject for American opera, and its musical version not only captured Saroyan's tone of sentimental sweetness perfectly, but actually gave the story more weight and made it more moving than it was in the novel or film. If [Bill] Dumaresq's lyrics were occasionally primitive, they lay well on MacDermot's finest score. Stylistically in a class by itself, it was a beautifully executed adaptation but probably too special a show to have ever succeeded on Broadway."

And succeed on Broadway it did not. When the musical transferred from the Public to the Royale Theatre in the spring of 1984, it did not get the critical support that it deserved, and—lost in the shuffle of a busy season that also included Sunday in the Park with George, La Cage Aux Folles, The Rink, The Tap Dance Kid and Baby—it closed after just 13 performances. It was, in short, theCaroline, or Change of its day, and it received only a single Tony nomination: for Stephen Geoffreys as its central character, Homer. (Geoffreys's life since then has been an epic unto itself: After going on to star in the 1985 vampire flick Fright Night, he began a career slide that bottomed out in the mid-1990s when he appeared, under the pseudonym Sam Ritter, in a number of ultrashabby hardcore gay-porn videos.)

In the past few years, however, The Human Comedy has been staging a comeback. After more than a decade on the shelf, a two-disk, two-hour cast album of the original production—whose cast included Rex Smith, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Olga Merediz (plus Donna Murphy and Cass Morgan in the chorus)—was finally released in 1997, correcting an injustice that Mandelbaum had lamented in print. MacDermot has been the subject of sustained renewed interest, with major recent revivals not only of 1967's Hair but also of his Tony-winning 1971 Two Gentlemen of Verona. And London's Young Vic mounted a full production of The Human Comedy in September, with 100 people in the cast, to launch its 40th season.

Astoria Performing Arts Center's revival, directed by Wojtunik, runs from May 5 through May 21, and tickets are now on sale for just $18. Is The Human Comedy a show whose time has come? Take time to go to Queens and find out.

Gentrifusion 
reviewed by Jody Christopherson

Walking toward the subway at 12:45pm in my Crown Heights neighborhood on the way to Red Fern Theatre Co’s production of Gentrifusion, a dude on the street offered to personally gentrify me, intimately and specifically. 

This made me angry (as it usually does) and I said a few things, and he said a few things, followed by gestures while police looked on, very little got accomplished and I went on my way to a Sunday matinee in the theatre. I have no idea who this man is, I probably couldn’t recognize him on the street tomorrow it happened so quickly. My impulse was to shut him out, protect myself. But I live there, not separate from him or our neighborhood.

At these intersections of interaction are the difficult places we have the opportunity to listen . . . even change. This is what theatre, unlike life can do for us, allow us a context in which to observe as we explore deeply personal issues. Gentrifusion is such a experience- 6 skilled writers (Jon Kern, Crystal Skillman, Michael John Garces, Joshua Conkel, Carla Ching, Janine Nabers) create realistic scenarios in which many perspectives exist and can be given equal weight, displaying destructive and constructive interconnectedness without sentimentality or safety.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the work:

Michael John Garces’ ghost story inhabited- 3 inhabitants (Molly Caden, Gio Perez, Michael Schantz) of haunted building witness their presence becoming a part of a buildings history, playing on fear of the past and the way the present informs the future. 

Crystal Skillman’s Crawl,- two brothers (Sheldon Best and Nathan Hinton) selling their Crown Heights family home after their real estate broker father passes away, look to move towards something better. A hilariously heart breaking search for home, based on a true story from a Crown Heights broker.

Joshua Conkel’s Robert Mapplethorpe Doesn’t Live Here Anymore- Andre St. Claire Thompson plays a acerbic vulnerable and gorgeous pre-op transvestite opposite Devin Norik’s adopted chinese baby toting affluent gay doctor, broaching the changing class scape between “queer people and gay people” in a gentrifying chelsea neighborhood losing and regaining it’s fierce authenticity. 

Janine Naber’s ominous play (2)11 is rife with stand out performances from Andrea Day as a young recently divorced mother ( ex-park slope dweller) who is held up at gun point with her newborn in a baby bjorn and Federico Trigo the police officer who interviews her and escorts her home (to his old and her new neighborhood, 11211).

Jon Kern’s Ours is the Future, Ours is the Past- couple, Lucy (Megan Tusing) and Max (Eugene Oh) relocate to 11211, their apartment is robbed. A violent and ultimately honest interaction ensues with local mechanic (Salvador Chevez) as they break the cycle of violence and separateness. 

Carla Ching’s First of the Month- with the talented trio- Rajesh Bose, Wayne T. Carr and Tiffany Villarin- everybody broke in broke neighborhoods, even people who seem like they have cash don’t. Most of us who have the money to live here without personal wealth have a few jobs and are lucky to be scrimping by while sharing a place with room mates. We really need each other to survive hard times. 

Would be truly exciting to see this is a collection of work travel into the communities represented; crown heights, chelsea, etc encouraging people who regularly attend theater and those who do not regularly attend to experience the piece together.

Gentrifusion: : an installation of new work

Playwrights include: Carla Ching, Joshua Conkel, Michael John Garcés, Jon Kern, Janine Nabers and Crystal Skillman

Directors include: John Giampietro, Colette Robert, and Moritz von Stuelpnagel

Artistic Producers: Andrea Day and Kel Haney

Executive Artistic Director: Melanie Moyer Williams

Full Cast List in Alphabetical Order:
Sheldon Best *, Rajesh Bose *, Tim Cain *, Molly Carden, Wayne T. Carr *, Salvadore Chevez, Gilbert Cruz *, Andrea Day, Nathan Hinton *, Devin Norik *, Eugene Oh, Gio Perez*, Casey Robinson, Michael Schantz, André St. Clair Thompson, Federico Trigo *, Megan Tusing, Tai Verley, and Tiffany Villarin

January 27 - February 13, 2011
The LABA Theatre At The 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street between First and Second Avenues
4/5/6/N/R/Q to Union Square; L to First Avenue

Thursdays at 8 p.m. 
Fridays at 8 p.m. 
Saturdays at 8 p.m. 
Sundays at 3 p.m. (Super Bowl Sunday, February 6 at 2pm)

Additional performance on Monday, February 7 at 7pm.

Tickets are $25 and are now available online atwww.theatermania.com or by calling 866.811.4111. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the theater box office ½ hour prior to the performance.

Running Time: 120 minutes (with intermission)

MOTHER OF GOD! VS SPIDERMAN
8FEB

As far as I know, Ben Brantley’s review of a Broadway production--Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark-–still in previews is unprecedented.  It is theater etiquette not to review a show until it has officially opened, thus allowing the team time to gauge audience reaction and fix any problems that may thus be apparent before they are set in stone (or at least print).  So in a normal situation—as if theatre is ever normal—I’d refuse to read such a ‘preview review’.  In this case, however, I have to admit Brantley and reviewers from the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The NY Post, among others who also recently reviewed the show have a point.  In what can be seen as a brilliant marketing scheme, the production has been raking in the dough to packed houses (paying full price, for the most part) for months  as opening night has been delayed again and again.  For the most part audiences seem attracted to the spectacle in the media rather than a spectacle on stage: the press coverage of the excessive budget (at $65 million about par with the total amount of aide provided to the earthquake victims of Haiti), numerous accidents, celebrity guests and endorsements (finally something that Oprah and Glenn Beckcan agree on!) and it’s star-driven (and apparently just driven) team, includingJulie Taymor, and U2’s Bono and Edge.  It seems that the most in the audience are there to see a trainwreck—some glitch in the mechanics, or, more gruesomely, an actor’s literal fall from grace, or just in the entire overblown production itself.  Will these reviews, which have focused on such peripherals as plot, music, dialogue, acting and character and have been overwhelmingly negative put a damper on audience turn-out?  It remains to be seen. 

Just for fun, however, I’d like to compare my play, MOTHER OF GOD!, which will be in production next month, with the current production of SPIDERMAN: TURN OFF THE DARK.