2,240 stories by "Christopher Arnott"
The dance scene has changed deeply in just a couple of decades. National touring troupes are fewer, some local dance companies have been around long enough to become institutions and many sh…
Live comedy in Connecticut this fall can be scripted, improvised, musicalized, politicized, feminized, interactive … whatever makes you laugh. The state has more comedy venues than it's ha…
Steve Martin's new play "Meteor Shower" is a comedy about a couple of married couples contemplating life, love and the cosmos while having dinner and drinks in a spacious Los Angeles backyar…
Joseph Voelker invokes the 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's essay "Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles" in discussing how he came to set up a six-hour symposium on "Politic…
The HartBeat goes on. Fifteen years after it was founded, HartBeat Ensemble's pulse is felt throughout the city. The politically aware, community-conscious theater troupe marks its decade-an…
"Development" is the watchword of the regional theater community. In past decades, that could mean the building of repertory acting companies, loyal subscriber bases or new performance space…
"Chasing Rainbows," at the Goodspeed Opera House Sept. 16 through Nov. 27, is a new musical with a lot of familiar faces and tunes you can hum on your way into the theater. The characters in…
T.D. Mitchell's "Queens for a Year," having its world premiere at Hartford Stage Sept. 8 through Oct. 2, is about women in the military. It's also, behind the scenes, about women in the thea…
A few weeks before the Yale Repertory Theatre season begins in earnest, the Rep's "No Boundaries" performance series brings in Carrie Mae Weems' cutting-edge, current-events multi-media perf…
Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss will star as Albert Einstein in a TheaterWorks production of the play "Relativity" this fall. The show will open the TheaterWorks 2016-17 season,…
E = MC, squared. The Big E (that multi-state state fair officially known as the Eastern States Exposition) is turning C (that's 100 in Roman numerals). The fair has resided for that entire c…
Comedian Chris D'Elia of TV's "Undateable," not to mention the 2015 Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber, is at the Funny Bone Comedy Club in Manchester at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 7. Lik…
David Pittsinger has distinguished himself both in new operas ("The Crucible," "Appomattox") and in classic American musicals ("South Pacific," "Kiss Me Kate"). Pittsinger's tackling the lea…
Julia Pistell, managing director of Sea Tea Improv, improvises a sigh of relief. "We're done! We're doooonnnnne!" The Hartford-based sketch comedy troupe has completed work on its new year-r…
"Riverdance" began in 1994, and first toured the U.S. in 1996 (as those who saw the anniversary tour at the Bushnell in May can tell you). But what of all the Irish Europop spectacles that f…
Actors, comedians and spouses Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally worked together on Offerman's TV series "Parks and Recreation," on Mullally's series "Will and Grace" (in 2001, two years befor…
Rebecca Goodheart became the new producing director of the Elm Shakespeare Company last year, after two decades of leadership by the company's founder James Andreassi. Goodheart's off to a g…
"It's very immediate here. Nobody's lying around," declares cabaret performance icon John McDaniel, currently holding forth at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford. That's a funny …
"If/Then," the thought-provoking, consciousness-shifting Broadway musical, has made Hartford the next to last stop on its national tour. Oh, how different our lives would be if it hadn't com…
The Quebec-based circus theater troupe Cirque Eloize has been tumbling and twirling into Connecticut for decades. The troupe's first show, which toured internationally in the 1990s, was simp…
Fifty years ago, it was common for someone who had starred in a hit musical on Broadway to continue with the show when it went on its first national tour. Now such continuity is almost incon…
The comedian Hannibal Buress already had a career, including a Comedy Central special, TV writing gigs and stand-up tours, but he blew up big time after some remarks in his stand-up routine …
When it was newly born, it was small and adorable and made a lot of noise. In its early years, it was a bit of a loner, finding its voice. In its teens, it was able to hang with the cool kid…
For outdoor summer Shakespeare companies, the place is the thing. As usual, William Shakespeare said it best. In "Love's Labour's Lost," the Bard of Avon wrote, "They have measured many a mi…
"If/Then" is Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's follow-up to their Pulitzer-winning hit "Next to Normal" (about bi-polar depression) and it doesn't find the maverick musical-makers playing it any s…
