Theater

Manhattan Theatre Club held its 2013 spring gala on Monday, May 20 at Cipriani 42nd Street. The evening celebrated the new musicals of Broadway and off-Broadway, with performances from the casts of A

Unhappy middle-aged men often make bad life choices, from leaving their devoted wives for a 20-something gold-digging bimbo to going into debt to buy a Ferrari. But Halvard Solness, the title charact

Forever Tango, Luis Bravo's music and dance entertainment extravaganza, which originally played on Broadway in the late '90s, is heading back to Broadway this summer. The production will play the Wal

The 58th Annual Obie Awards ceremony, presented by the Village Voice, was held last evening at Webster Hall. Jessica Hecht and Jeremy Shamos, current costars in Broadway's The Assembled Parties, host

The Brooklyn Academy of Music has announced the programming planned for the 2013 Next Wave Festival, which will run September 17-December 22. The festivities will include opera, theater, music, and d

The Amoralists, a seven-year-old downtown off-Broadway theater company, has set the dates for its New York premiere of Rantoul and Die, the opening production of its summer season called "The Summer

Abby Rosebrock is diving headfirst into the shark tank of New York theater with her new comedy, Different Animals, now playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Rosebrock began her career in comedy writing

Not Until We Are Lost is a beautiful thing. Ockham’s Razor has created a delicate, comtemplative aerial show, which is a hymn to flight and the human body. Performers Alex Harvey, Tina Koch, Charlotte Mooney, Luke Horley and Haike Irina Amelia Stollbrock push themselves to their limits as they soar around Circomedia’s gorgeous space inside an old church. The piece, which is made up of vignettes exploring what it means to be lost – and found – is at its best when all five of the group scramble and clamber across and above the audience. Having the freedom to wander is lovely; there is none of the fear or irritation that some promenade pieces provoke where you are constantly worrying that you’re missing something. Just look up and you can see the whole thing. Some of the pieces featuring just two or three performers are less effective, with less exciting choreography that becomes slightly repetitious. However, this is only noticeable because we are so spoiled by the group pieces: when all five performers move together, whether on a frame high above our heads or inside a clear tower, they create something magical. The penultimate piece, where a huge metal frame is turned into a giant swing, has audience and performers alike beaming. The show is remarkable not only because of the feats of which these five are capable, impressive though they all are, but also because they inject wit and humour into every piece, too. It’s surprisingly funny, and the interactions between the performers are nicely judged – they pull off just the right amount of jokiness and reaction to each other without becoming pantomimic. The accompanying music, composed by Graham Fitkin and played live by Ruth Wall (harp) and Kate Halsall (piano) is beautiful, too, and provides a satisfying backdrop to the aerial wizardry. There is a small choir interspersed throughout the audience who join in periodically, and their plainsong-esque melodies echo through the church, by turns meancholy and euphoric. You really can’t beat the acoustics at Circomedia. Without any dialogue, Not Until We Are Lost manages to convey a deep sense of loss, of friendship/kinship, of trust and of joy. Exploring different ways of being lost, conventional narratives about rescue and love are subverted in pleasing ways. The sheer joy that the performers bring to this show is infectious. I defy you not to leave with a smile on your face. Not Until We Are Lost is at Circomedia in Bristol as part of Mayfest. For more information, visit the Mayfest website. The post Mayfest review: Not Until We Are Lost appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

Playwright/screenwriter Paul Weitz (American Pie, Trust), the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, and the 10th anniversary of Second Stage Uptown (curated by Chris Burney) were honored at Second Stage Theatr

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein Well, what a week it’s been here at Filskit Theatre Company. Between the three of us we have spent roughly 32 hours on trains, seen 24 performances of eight shows and consumed what must be gallons of tea. But it was all for a very worthy cause, as we attended the Imaginate Children’s Theatre Festival in Edinburgh. Whilst this was our first time at the festival, Imaginate itself has been around for quite a long time: in their own words, “Every year the Festival presents the finest selection of shows from Scotland and across the world; each and every one adding their own wonderful character and zest to a programme of exciting and stimulating shows to suit children and adults of every age.” And boy, they’re not kidding. It was an exciting, international programme bringing together shows from as far flung as the USA (Intergalactic Nemesis). The festival is open to the public and many a school group giggled along to shows such as Curious Seed’s Chalk About. Along with family audiences, these festivals are always popular with people in the theatre industry such as venue programmers, as they’re a great way of watching a large range of diverse, new work in a condensed period of time. The traditional route for this is through the purchase of a delegate pass. There are various delegate packages available, depending on how long you wish to attend for and how many shows you wish to see. We attended the Take Off Festival in Durham as delegates back in November and had an amazing experience. But, as you can imagine, these delegate passes certainly do not come cheap and when you add on train tickets, accommodation and food to the ever-increasing costs, it’s no wonder that small, newly-formed companies are often under-represented on the delegate list. Luckily for us, we were thrown a lifeline. Instead of buying our delegate passes, we all attended the festival as volunteers. Our various duties included meeting school groups, front of house work and answering phones. In return, we got to enjoy the Imaginate experience, fully equipped with shows, talks, networking events and even a ceilidh. As a young company, we are always keen to see other shows – it can help shape your own work and inspire you to push the boundaries of your practice. For us, this was such a fascinating process. We could view a cross-section of contemporary dance, puppetry, comedy and projection, suitable for a range of age groups and all in one city. One of the things that we like most about attending theatre festivals is being surprised: we all go with a list of shows in our heads that we think we are going to absolutely love, but sometimes it is the unexpected ones that really make an impression. One of our highlights from Imaginate has to be Maas Theater en Dans’ Wanted: Rabbit from the Netherlands: very funny and very, well…Dutch! Another favourite of ours was The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean by Scottish artist Shona Reppe, a quirky piece with great pace and an excellent design. At a recent Theatre for Young Audiences event at Rose Bruford College, there was a lot of praise for children’s theatre from Europe, particularly from the Netherlands and Belgium. There is no denying that European work is innovative, beautifully simple and very well done, so we can completely understand its popularity within the industry. The big question for us is how can emerging TYA companies from England capture this quality in our own work? How can we allow ourselves to be less conservative and take more risks? One thing that seems to be working for Scotland and Imaginate is exposing new TYA companies to this work early on, by supporting them in attending TYA festivals both at home and abroad. This exchange makes perfect sense to us. Whether you see moments that inspire you or that make you think “let’s never do that”, the work that you see will impact that which you create. So, which European fe