8,501 stories from Backstage
Thomas Schumacher would like you to embrace that sippy cup. You know that clinking of ice cubes you hear in the audience while you’re performing your heart out onstage? Yeah, that&rsqu…
The 42nd Annual Theater Hall of Fame ceremony was held Jan. 28 at the Gershwin Theatre and was hosted by Tony and Emmy Award winner Tyne Daly. The 2012 inductees included actors Betty Buckle…
Every year, some of theater's finest actors, composers, playwrights, and directors gather for "The 24 Hour Musicals." They spend an intense day (and night) creating musicals and performing t…
Actors’ Equity Association is moving to the valley. The stage actors’ union announced today that it has purchased an 18,000-square-foot North Hollywood building to serve as its n…
Next month, the Academy Awards ceremony will pay homage to movie musicals of the last decade, including special celebrations of “Chicago,” “Dreamgirls,” and 2013 Best…
She enters from the back of La MaMa’s First Floor Theatre while the house lights are still up, tentatively descending the riser stairs in black heels and a tasseled black coat that lar…
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his singular pen name, Stendhal, was a masterful and complex novelist who furthered the romantic fiction of his day into the development of the psychologic…
With five nods apiece, “Silence! The Musical,” Center Theatre Group’s revival of “Waiting for Godot,” and South Coast Repertory’s “Jitney” col…
Broadway director-producer Harold Prince, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and dancer-actor Chita Rivera are the recipients of the 2013 Jerome Robbins Award, the Jerome Robbins Foundation…
Barry Manilow is in good company. The international superstar was set to hit Broadway tonight at the opening of "Manilow on Broadway," but he had to cancel tonight's show – and the res…
It’s rare that a costumer designer steals the show, but Tristan Raines does just that in “The House of Von Macramé,” a delirious new musical at the Bushwick Starr. T…
Two years ago, the future of the Pasadena Playhouse was very much in doubt. Weighed down by $2.3 million in debt, the 686-seat Los Angeles-area theater was forced to close briefly in Februar…
Near the end of “The Steadfast,” eight soldiers stand before us, each in a uniform of one of America’s major wars, from the American Revolution to the war in Afghanistan. T…
New information has emerged about “Tuck Everlasting,” “Aladdin,” “and “Jekyll & Hyde,” three large-scale musicals that have their sights set on …
At the start of the hugely engaging “Here We Are,” the final production of the Living Theatre at its current home, I am greeted by a performer named Jay Dobkin, a member of the i…
“Broadway Bares,” the “Mystery of Edwin Drood” Broadway cast album, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, a screening and discussion with “Lincoln&rdqu…
“The Jammer” finds the joy in the small things. The simple story about a common man who follows his dreams of the roller derby doesn’t appear to be much from the outset, bu…
This review comes to you, dear readers, from an exhausted critic. I’ve spent 10 hours listening to the rambling stream-of-consciousness life story of someone I’ve never heard of,…
With the number of rehearsal spaces in New York City dwindling as real estate prices rise, Ripley-Grier Studios is here to help by adding 10 newly constructed audition, rehearsal, and perfor…
Timing can be a bitch. The Amoralists had Lyle Kessler’s new play “Collision” in rehearsal when the Newtown, Conn., massacre occurred. Suddenly, an “incendiary black …
The stagehand strike in Philadelphia continues to rage on. Negotations between the Philadelphia Theatre Company and Local 8 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE…
Playwright and actor Michael Rabe seems to be at a crossroads between inspiration and organization. “The Future Is Not What It Was,” his New York debut in both aforementioned rol…
When you walk into the Barrow Group’s intimate Studio Theatre for Stefanie Zadravec’s “Save Me,” you may feel that you’ve taken a wrong turn into somebody&rsquo…
America Ferrera could sell anything—an American manufactured car, a somewhat unbelievable play, or even herself. In “Bethany,” Laura Marks’ social commentary of a dra…
Those familiar with director Peter Brook’s work over the last decade or so—most recently in New York “The Magic Flute,” “Love Is My Sin,” and the soon-to-…
