Improv Everywhere is this outrageous group that pulls non-embarassing, awesome pranks in public places. They come up with these skits and recruit members to go undercover and carry them out.
Improv Everywhere lends a healthy dose of the fantastic to the everyday.
Without further ado, I bring you Improv Everywhere’s Food Court Musical (any chance of producing this one?)
I love “Adventures in Babysitting.” I know pretty much know every line. “Hamlet 2″ looks like a pretty funny satire on high school theatre which Elisabeth Shue stars in. Anything with Elisabeth Shue making fun of her career can only be a good thing.
I saw “Glory Days” on Monday. It opened on Tuesday. I really feel bad for this show. It wasn’t particularly good or memorable but I always like the little show to win. I am curious to understand the producers mind frame when they decided to bring this show to Broadway. They had a few things in its favor; a small set, cast and orchestra (so the show can’t possible cost more than $3 million), and small intimate transfers have been all the rage in recent years (see: “Spring Awakening,” “Avenue Q”, “…Spelling Bee,” “Passing Strange,” and “In the Heights”).
Now the shows that have succeeded on Broadway from a transfer from either Off-Broadway or from out of town (see: all above shows) had something different than “Glory Days.” Their move to Broadway was appropriate and they now have a feeling of a Broadway Show. Even “Spelling Bee,” which played in the same theatre as “Glory Days” felt like a Broadway show and had the quality of a Broadway show.
“Glory Days” move to Broadway is, in my opinion (and the opinion of most of the critics) is not appropriate. I look at the show, and I felt that the show should be Off-Broadway. That’s not a bad thing at all but not all shows are made for the Broadway stage. I feel like if “Glory Days” opened in an Off-Broadway house the reaction from both critics and audience members would be very different. I think they would applaud the book writer and composer, who are new to the industry (“Glory Days” marks the debut of both). When “I Love You Because” opened a few years ago (which had the same quality and feel as “Glory Days”) it had warm, mostly positive reviews and critics were looking forward to any future work from the composers. I feel that if it opened on Broadway, it would shutter not soon after (of course, it did shutter soon after its opening Off-Broadway, playing only 110 performances but who is really counting anyway).
It will be interesting to see how long “Glory Days” has to left to live at their home at the Circle in the Square theatre. I think that the creative team does have talent, they are still very young (22 and 23 years old) and they just have to develop their ideas and their identity as song writers. I can’t slam this show. I didn’t hate it, it just isn’t a Broadway show, and there are worse things currently playing on Broadway, with much bigger budgets.
EDIT NOTE: I wrote this entry before they closed the show on May 7, 2008, after one official performance. wow….
This is the best key art I’ve seen in years.
Here is your assignment: Go to the Manhattan Theatre Club site and click to the page for From Up Here and buy your tickets to this amazing show. It’s playwright Liz Flahive’s debut work and it is so, so, so good. I’m already a big fan of Julie White’s ( I thought she was brilliant in The Little Dog Laughed), and was looking forward to seeing her anyway when we booked our tickets.
She was, as I expected, wonderful in the show, but the total of the production so far exceeds the sum of its parts that I can’t even begin to describe it. The plot is certainly the stuff of melodrama: It follows a “typical” suburban family dealing with the aftermath of some very scary behavior of the son’s. It could easily have been a live-action movie of the week, but it’s not. It’s very funny (and only partly in a gallows way), and the characterizations are dead on, from the disaffected teenage boy and his rebellious sister, to the over-achiever Mom, her second husband and her will-o-the whisp sister, back from foreign climes to “make a difference” in the kid’s life.
But it’s not just in the writing: Leigh Silverman’s direction is subtle and nuanced and extremely precise.
Oh, man, I lurved it. Go see it. It’s good.
On Friday, I saw a dance performance at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church. My knowledge and experience with dance can fit on the head of a pin, but I really enjoyed it.
In one of the many short pieces, a striking, strong woman came out on stage. She stood in the center of a spotlight. A sermon started from the speakers.
And she began to dance to it.
When the preacher spoke of the virtues of a good attitude, she held herself a little taller. When he was particularly preachy, she walked around the perimeter of the spotlight circle and wagged her finger at the audience.
But the dance was not limited to interpreting the content of the speech. When the words tumbled out of the speaker’s mouth in a rush, the dancer was a flash of arms, legs, and hair. And when he slowed down to emphasize a point, her flash of movement slowed down to match it.
The piece was short, but quite powerful in demonstrating the beauty in everyday language.
Producer and friend John Pinckard is bringing the critically-acclaimed (and one of my favorite shows of all time) Gutenberg, The Musical to The Royal George in Chicago. Having lived in Chicago for so many years, I can’t be more proud for this awesome new musical to make its debut in one of the best theatre cities in the world!
A brand spankin’-new website will launch soon, so check www.gutenbergthemusical.com
See the viral video with Steve Guttenberg:
Last night, I learned about the creative editing process at the Onion, the uber-popular weekly satirical newspaper. Apparently, every Monday, the team comes in with lots and lots and lots of story ideas. If at least 2 people agree the ideas should be published, the story survives until the next day.
If the story is not up to snuff, it is DOA.
Amazingly, the team can look at 600 story ideas to come up with 20 story ideas that will make it into the final newspaper.
That means there’s a 97% failure rate at the Onion.
That statistic is somehow comforting. The Onion encourages failure — lots and lots of failure — in order to come up with story ideas that will make people grab the paper, read it, and give a little chuckle at headlines like …