1) Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris continues at Alliance Theatre.
2) Candler Park hosts day 2 of the Sweetwater 420 Fest.
3) The Fox Theatre screens Gone with the Wind for a 70th anniversary celebration.
4) Hermon Hitson plays Smith’s Olde Bar.
5) Durham Stories: Not Hell but You Can See It from Here continues at Composition Gallery.
(Photo by Greg Mooney)
Outkast’s André Benjamin remains the headmaster of “Class of 3000,” even though Cartoon Network ceased production of the animated school daze comedy after 26 episodes. “Class of 3000” is transferring to a new medium, however, as the Alliance Children’s Theatre presents the world premiere stage adaptation beginning Fri., March 6. Benjamin, the show’s creator, executive producer and vocal star as the inspirational Willy Wonka-esque music teacher Sunny Bridges, discusses the TV series’ origins and its transition to the stage.
Did you ever have an inspirational teacher like Sunny?
I’ve had a few in my lifetime. What inspired the character (played by Atlanta’s Sinatra Onyewuchi at the Alliance) was the fact that I wouldn’t want to be Andre 3000 forever. I’d eventually want to leave the stage. I never thought about being a music teacher, though. I wanted to be an art teacher, because I also draw and paint, and I remember art teachers who were like Sunny. My guitar teacher right now, Zaza, he’s a teacher like that, too. He’s a fun time, and I can enjoy that, even though I’m 33 years old.
How did you originate “Class of 3000?“
I was approached by Cartoon Network first. Once they gave me an offer, they wanted to see what show I wanted to create. Originally it was going to be an Adult Swim show, but the more I got into it, I started shaping it into a mainstream, prime-time kind of thing.
You provided a new song for every episode, five of which appear in the stage play. Was it different writing songs for a young audience, compared to your usual audience?
I wasn’t trying to water down the music aspect of the show just because it was for kids. You watch old “Peanuts” or “Fat Albert” shows, they weren’t necessarily kids’ songs. On “Peanuts,” you’re listening to jazz by Vince Guaraldi. I want to make sure that kids had something to listen to that wasn’t teeny bopper songs — although we would do those, too, if they fit into the story. I wanted to give them a little jazz, ragtime, blues, funk music, with the hope that if kids heard those kinds of music later, they’d say, “Hey, I remember this kind of song!” I thought that was fitting, since I play a music teacher. I also wanted to show how different kinds of songs, like classical music, could be reinterpreted in new ways, which is what I like to do with my other kinds of music.
Citing the current economic climate, the Alliance Theatre has announced the cancellation of the world premiere musical iSOndheim. The new multimedia musical revue of musical theater legend Stephen Sondheim would have closed out the theater’s 40th season. I’ll let the press release explain what went wrong:
The production was cancelled because of difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project, the Frankel/Viertel/Baruch/Routh group, in raising the necessary funds for the multi-media musical revue of Sondheim’s life and career.
A representative of the group said, “The show’s extensive technical requirements for film and multi-media projection required raising, what proved to be, an extraordinarily large amount of additional money; millions, actually, which was simply unavailable for a non-commercial production in the current economic climate. We regret the situation as the Alliance Theatre was ready, willing and able to fulfill their commitments for financing and infrastructure to stage this production. We intend to produce the show at another date.”
MASTER-PEACE OUT: From the High Museum:
The last day to view Johannes Vermeer’s painting “The Astronomer” at the High Museum of Art is Sunday, February 15. This painting, on view as part of “The Louvre and the Masterpiece” exhibition, had never been seen in the southeastern United States before coming to Atlanta in October 2008. George de la Tour’s “The Card Sharp” painting will replace the Vermeer in the exhibition beginning February 17, and remain on view through September 6, 2009.
LANGUAGE CITY: From the Alliance Theatre:
Atlanta’s nationally acclaimed Alliance Theatre has been awarded a $1.1 million 2008 Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant from the U.S. Department of Education through its Office of Innovation and Improvement. The grant money will be distributed over a four-year period and will be used in planning, researching and implementing programs to introduce young English Language Learners (ELL) to the theatre art form and build verbal communication abilities. There were 74 applicants for the grant nation wide. The Alliance ranked first out of 15 awardees.
SUPPORT SYSTEM: Eight local artists have been tapped for grants from the Charles Loridans Foundation. The Loridans Arts Medal comes with $15,000 and will be awarded to Dwight Coleman, head of the Georgia State University School of Music; Klimchak, local a performer and composer; Larry Larson, local actor and playwright (who can currently be seen in Smart Cookie at the Alliance Theatre); and Juan Ramirez-Hernandez, a first violinist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
The Loridans Encouragement will be awarded to photographer Sheila Pree Bright ($10,000); Actors and founders of Out-of-Hand Theater Ariel de Man and Maia Knispel, ($15,000-$7,500 each); and the Center for Puppetry Arts’ Jason von Hinezmeyer ($10,000).
MEET AND GREETS: CUMANANA opens tonight at Saltworks from 7-9 p.m. followed by an artist’s talk Sat., Feb. 14 at noon with William Cordova, Gene Moreno, Glexis Novoa and Ernesto Oroza. Atlanta Pecha Kucha opens its spring series at Octane Sun., Feb. 15, 7 p.m. with talks from Louise E. Shaw on “AIDS in the Eighties,” Alex West on “WonderRoot is Cool,” William Boling and Corinne Vionnet on their Opal Gallery exhibit “Complete Desire,” among others. Caterina Verde discusses her solo exhibition of video installation, photography and drawings, “All You Can’t Eat and Other Tales of Waiting,” at Wm Turner Gallery, Sat., Feb. 14 at noon. SCAD’s Ivy Hall Lecture Series presents Walter O. Evans, “a distinguished surgeon and bibliophile, is widely regarded as one of the foremost collectors of African American art in the United States,” for the lecture Great Collectors: The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, Sun., Feb. 15, 3 p.m. at Ivy Hall.
KNEADY WOMAN: Courtenay Collins (front) as Cookie
If the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition serves as the Alliance Theatre’s Research and Development Department, then its latest world premiere production, Julia Brownell’s Smart Cookie, may represent an alteration in the secret formula.
Inaugurated in 2003 and endowed by the Kendeda Foundation the following year, the program invites students of 30 graduate playwriting programs across country to submit their work. The winning play receives a full production on the Hertz Stage, finalists get high-profile staged readings, and the Alliance helps discover and cultivate some of the country’s most impressive new writers. This commitment to new work probably helped the Alliance secure its Regional Theater Tony Award in 2007.
Previous winners of the Kendeda competition have not lacked for ambition, touching on such heavyweight historical subjects as the French-Algerian War and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Plays don’t even have to win to make a splash: In 2006, Actor’s Express produced Megan Gogerty’s controversial Love Jerry, a musical with themes of pedophilia, after the play became a Kendeda finalist. To date, the reach of the plays has exceeded the grasp of several of the winners, as if the judges prefer to honor ambition and thematic breadth while excusing some clunky construction.
Smart Cookie, the fifth Kendeda winner, feels like a 180-degree turn from the others, and not just because it’s a comedy set in contemporary America. Compared to the avant-garde flourishes of last year’s In the Red and Brown Water, Smart Cookie proves almost aggressively conventional — the kind of script that could make the transition to film or television with only cosmetic re-writes. But who ever said that a sturdy narrative structure and funny one-liners were bad things? (more…)
Our boys from Outkast are no stranger to side projects. Nearly a year after Big Boi tore up the Fox with his collaboration on the hip-hop ballet big, his partner in crime André 3000 drops in a few blocks up Peachtree at the Alliance with the world premiere of Class of 3000 LIVE.
The production, as the title states, is a live version of the Emmy award-winning animated series “Class of 3000,” which Benjamin created for Cartoon Network with Tommy Lynch. The live show will also include original music by Benjamin.
In “Class,” international music superstar Sunny Bridges pulls a Dave Chappelle and up and ditches his hot-shot celebrity lifestyle. Instead of Africa, Sunny ends up in Atlanta teaching at the Westley School for the Performing Arts to try rediscovering life before all the hype. The story follows Sunny and his gang of students as they help the A-lister get his feet back on the ground, while he helps the kids tap into their talents.
If big is any measure of the energy and creativity we can expect from Class of 3000 LIVE, it should be another theater-crashing blow-out. No pressure, though.
The show runs March 7-29.
(Photo courtesy www.tomlynchco.com)
CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chat about Alliance Theatre’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL. (Through Feb. 22)
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To coincide with this week’s world premiere of Smart Cookie by Julia Brownell, the Alliance Theatre will present stage readings of the finalists of the 2008 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition on Feb. 2 and 3. This marks the fifth year in the Alliance’s competition to find and showcase promising new writers, and even the readings can be a big deal: the reading of Megan Gogerty’s Love Jerry lead to Jasson Minadakis’ decision to program the controversial musical at Actor’s Express in 2006. The readings are free and feature some of Atlanta’s best actors and directors, so they’re a great deal. Here’s the line-up:
The Near East by Alex Lewin
Directed by Rachel May (Feb. 2 at 2 p.m.)
An American archaeologist teams up with an Arab activist to unearth the “Mother of Books,” the oldest scripture, from its resting place in the desert between Mecca and Medina. But their controversial mission affects a number of other characters, including a secretly gay Arab radical, a British spy and the ghost of a precocious 13-year-old boy.
Fair Use by Sarah Gubbins
Directed by Freddie Ashley (Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m.)
Sy and her law partner Chris have worked on some tough cases but have always worked out their competition over drinks and commiserating about dating – since his perfect woman is nothing like her perfect woman. All that changes when a client accused of plagiarism causes them to call on a hot-to-trot legal eagle. They discover that claims of intellectual property and claims of the heart are difficult to defend.
HAND OUTS: Followers beg Jesus (Darius de Haas, center) for healing.
Devout apostles of musical theater should flock to the Alliance Theatre for Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL as soon as possible. Watching Darius de Haas’ performance as Jesus, particularly his solo of “Gethsemane,” offers such breathtaking thrills, it’s like being present at the creation.
“Gethsemane” finds Jesus on the eve of his execution, confronting God with fear and rage: “Take this cup away from me.” Anxiety, indignation and other emotions seem to ripple across his features, while he raises a voice that seems capable of shaking heaven’s foundations. It may be a miracle if de Haas can sustain the song’s power throughout the show’s entire run, providing justification to make haste to the Alliance. (more…)
Broadway and film composer and music director Louis St. Louis may be best known for his treatments of 1950s and 1960s rock ’n’ roll with Smokey Joe’s Café, Grease and Grease 2. (He even hints that his real name appears somewhere in Grease 2.) For the Alliance Theatre’s Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL (opening Jan. 21), he received permission from hit-making composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to reinterpret the rock opera through the prism of contemporary black gospel music.
You’re credited as the music supervisor, dance arranger and conceiver of the show. How did you get the idea to “gospelize” the material? It seems like a natural fit.
That’s what everything seems to think, but no one ever did it. I was conducting a concert for the New York League of Theatres in 2002 called Broadway Rocks. All of the women wanted to do “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar. Generally, if I can up come up with a new slant on something in a half hour, I’m excited about it. We gave the song a gospel treatment, with an African-American singer on one side of the stage and a white one on the other. It was plugged in the center of an 80-minute concert and brought the house down. The next morning, I had the revelation that I could do the whole show that way. I wrote a letter to Andrew asking permission in intentionally the worst Shakespearean language I could muster: “I beseech thee on bended knee, my lord…” Someone told me that when Sir Andrew heard about my idea, he said “None of you a-holes ever knew what to do with the old material. Who is this?”
How well did you know the material?
Jesus Christ Superstar has always been my favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber piece, and I can honestly say that I like all his work. In 1971, I auditioned 12 times for Judas on Broadway, but after awhile they started saying “You should come back for Herod.”
(more…)
1) A Christmas Carol closes at Alliance Theatre.
2) School House to White House continues at the Jimmy Carter Library & Museum.
3) Synchronicity Performance Group’s The Snow Queen continues at Actor’s Express.
4) I’ve Loved You So Long continues at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.
5) The Sound of Music continues at Center Stage Theatre.
(Photo by Greg Mooney)
NO NUN SENSE: Philip Seymour Hoffman (left) as Father Flynn
In John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, a hard-line nun suspects a progressive young priest of committing improprieties with an altar boy. Their close quarters, cat-and-mouse confrontations and rich, pertinent discussions about the flaws of blind faith helped earn Doubt the Pulitzer for Best Play.
Many of the traits that make Doubt a great play inhibit it from becoming a great movie. Shanley directs his own adaptation to mixed results. Doubt’s setting, a Bronx church and middle school in 1964, looks exactly the way theater-goers would’ve imagined it. Shanley clearly has his dream cast, including Meryl Streep as old school Sister Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman as passionate but enigmatic Father Flynn and Amy Adams as the naïve young nun who vacillates between them. (more…)
The Alliance Theatre won or shared 13 of the 20 prizes for Atlanta theater excellence bestowed at last night’s Fourth Annual Suzi Bass Awards ceremony at the Fox Theatre’s Egyptian Ballroom. The sublime musical revue Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris won five awards, but the big story may be the four earned by In the Red and Brown Water, a world premiere drama from the Alliance’s Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. The honors for Tarell Alvin McRaney’s haunting drama suggests that the Alliance (and Atlanta theater in general) isn’t just staging excellent productions, but developing excellent new plays as well.
The Suzi Awards ceremony paid tribute to its founder, the late Gene-Gabriel Moore, and presented the Spirit of Suzi Bass award to actress Carol Mitchell-Leon, who was unable to receive it in person due to a lingering illness. The Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award went to Pearl Cleage for A Song for Coretta. (Overall, Actor’s Express proved a surprising shut-out.) A complete list of awards follows, while the Suzi Bass Awards official site contains the full list of nominees.
Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman discussing the Alliance Theatre’s new comedy Managing Maxine.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Subscribe to the Air Loaf feed to download every new episode automatically.
When it comes to laughing with Atlanta — or is that laughing at? — Chicagoans know what they’re doing. The Alliance Theatre is extending The Second City: Too Busy to Hate… Too Hard to Commute, a sketch-based revue spoofing Atlanta, developed by the Alliance and Chicago’s famed comedy troupe, The Second City. Co-writer and Second City veteran T.J. Shanoff explained that he and Ed Furman visited Atlanta for June 5-8 to soak up local color as comedic material for the show. As Shanoff says:
About 60 percent was written expressly for the show, the other 40 percent is classic Second City material retrofitted for Atlanta, or strong enough to stand on its own. There’s about five songs in the show. For the most part, it’s stayed pretty much the same since we submitted the material. We had Atlanta natives verify and validate the decisions we made.
Could out-of-towners get to know our city well enough in a weekend to crack jokes that Atlantans would laugh at? The answer turns out to be “Yes, pretty much.” A few sketches seem out of date or too obvious: A spoof that tailors the “When You’re a Jet” song from West Side Story to University of Georgia football fans could be rewritten for any team from any city. But the show has much more hits than misses, particularly the R&B-style “sexy lady” song about Shirley Franklin, in which Ric Davis puts soul behind such lyrics as “You’re the first black female mayor in a major Southern city!”
The Second City: Too Busy to Hate… Too Hard to Commute plays through Nov. 2.
Speaking of extensions, Dad’s Garage Theatre is holding over Cannibal! The Musical through Nov. 11, suggesting that Atlantans like their cannibalism, too.
(Photo of Anthony Irons and Amy Roeder by Greg Mooney)
Earlier this year, the Alliance Theatre had to backtrack a little when it rescheduled its intriguing-sounding world premiere musical, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County by Stephen King and John Mellencamp. The Alliance has found a high profile replacement for the horror novelist and rock ‘n’ roller, however in acclaimed musical writer-director James Lapine, who will develop a world premiere musical dedicated to the 79 year-old Stephen Sondheim, one of the greatest talents in American theater.
From April 15-May 10, the Tony-winning playhouse will present iSondheim: aMusical Revue. The funky punctuation signals that, according to the press release:
Unlike other previous Sondheim revues, this spectacular multi-media production will feature original and archival commentary from the legendary composer.
Lapine last visited the Alliance to direct The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to launch its 2006 national tour. Lapine is a longtime collaborator with Sondheim, having directed and wrote the books for the acclaimed Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. Young filmgoers may know Sondheim best as the originator of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (pictured). For a handy recap of Sonheim’s career and importance, check out this “Primer” from The Onion A.V. Club.
Incidentally, I suspect that Alliance Theatre Associate Artistic Director Kent Gash is particularly excited. He directed the Alliance’s lovely 2003 revival of Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, and is a Sondheim fan from way back.
(Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)
Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chatting about the Alliance Theatre’s August Wilson Full Circle, featuring both The Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf in repertory through Sept. 28.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Which is worth more, a bucket of nails or a multimillion-dollar development project? Watch the two plays of the Alliance Theatre’s August Wilson Full Circle, a theatrical event more than 20 years in the making, and you’ll discover they have equal value: Each may be precisely worth the life of an African-American man.
Full Circle stages the Atlanta debuts of the final two plays in playwright August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” of heavyweight dramas. Also called “the Pittsburgh Cycle,” Wilson’s landmark project consists of 10 plays, mostly set in Pittsburgh’s African-American Hill District, with each script representing a different decade of the 20th century.
The Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904, takes place in a house on Pittsburgh’s Wylie Street, and involves two men whose fates hinge on a seemingly trivial theft from an oppressive mill. In Radio Golf, ambitious developer Harmond Wilks sets his fortune on a 1997 land deal that will launch his mayoral campaign and revitalize the Hill District, unless questions over that same Wylie Street house demolish his plans.
The Gem of the Ocean/Radio Golf twofer, playing on alternate nights and featuring the same actors doubling up, would be must-see theater based on the strength of the shows alone. August Wilson Full Circle proves even bigger than the sum of its parts. It marks the beginning of the Alliance Theatre’s 40th anniversary season, caps off the late playwright’s epic decalogue of American theater, and provides a kind of personal culmination and homecoming for director Kenny Leon, former artistic director of the Alliance.
Read the rest of this article here.
(Photo by Greg Mooney)
Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman giving a round up of the upcoming fall 2008 theater season, featuring Theatrical Outfit’s Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Sept. 10-Oct. 5), Horizon Theatre’s Altar Boyz (Sept. 12-Nov. 16), 7 Stages’ The Little Prince (Sept. 27-Oct. 26) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Oct. 18-Nov. 2), and Full Circle, the Alliance Theatre’s two-play/one-cast repertory of August Wilson’s The Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
(Image courtesy of Cartoon Network)It seemed like it was only yesterday (actually, it was Tuesday) that I said “Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf are the two plays of August Wilson’s 20th-century play cycle that have not yet received Atlanta productions.” Turns out that both plays will receive high-profile productions during the Alliance Theatre’s newly announced 2008-2009 season.
The big world-premiere musical of the Alliance Theatre’s 2008-2009 season will mark a collaboration between a pair of all-American icons, rock star John Mellencamp and horror novelist Stephen King. Ghost Brothers of Darkland County takes place in 1957 Mississippi and dramatizes an old legend about the deaths of two brothers and a young girl. The Alliance Theatre officially announces the rest of its season Feb. 29.
