It’s now time to experience The Shirelles in BABY IT’S YOU!
BABY IT’S YOU! is the original Broadway musical inspired by the true story of Florence Greenberg, a suburban housewife from New Jersey, who discovered one of the greatest girl groups of all time, The Shirelles, and created Scepter Records, becoming the music industry’s first female powerhouse.
Lady Gaga's release of "Born This Way" has sparked international attention and we in the LGBT community are thankful for our ally; our friend. However, I would like to introduce you to Asford & Simpson's version, which features Broadway performer Terry Lavell, currently starring as Mercedes in Broadway's La Cage Aux Folles. We have a new Gay Anthem on the rise...
"Born This Way" because "I am what I am..." My new Anthem..this is the Torch Song! Loving the vocals, loving the lyrics...bringing back that disco feel with a contemporary twist. This song is evoking the memories, the struggles, and the joys of our LGBT ancestors, and the journey we continue to brave today. THANK YOU Ashford & Simpson and THANK YOU Terry Lavell!
Broadway's Young Star, 11-year-old Shannon Skye Tavarez (Young Nala in The Lion King on Broadway), was laid to rest on Monday November 8, 2010. We will miss our Fierce young star, but her legacy will live on. One of Shannon's final request was to help save other kid's lives, like herself, who suffered from AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). Keep Shannon's Legacy alive by visiting www.matchshannon.com...Support the cause and help save lives.
Rest Peacefully Shannon...You rocked it her on Earth! Until we meet Again...
Anthony Wayne, once again, returns to the Triad Theatre to bring forth and evening of Joy, Passion, Regret, Love Gained, Love Lost, Healing and Forgiveness with Lee Summers' "Just A Piano" Concert Series. Backed by Brian Whitted on the Piano and a Live Percussionist, Mr. Wayne will guide you on a Journey of Moments that we all can relate too by Utilizing the POWER of Words and Music. Come out and Enjoy this Exciting Evening. Don't let this "moment" pass you by.
My spidy sense is tickling… and not in a good way.I like the idea; but, very worried on what this is going to look like.Please note, I said the same thing when I heard that, The Color Purple, The Addams Familyand Legally Blond what heading to the Great White Way.
However, the new musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has only been in previews for a few days, but the media attention it’s gotten has been massive, for a number of reasons.
It has a $60 million budget, making it the most expensive musical in history, and runs more than three hours. U2′s Bono and the Edge are the show’s composers. The Sunday night preview was plagued with problems. A heckler said she felt like a guinea pig. The theater’s general manager is already looking for someone new to lease the space. Yet, it has raked in a wad of cash.
Anecdotally, we’ve heard that some are willing to check it out to see what all that production money buys. But the ticket price, the glitches, and the constant talk about these things could be the show’s downfall if theater-goers ultimately decide it’s not worth it. Broadway shows only have a small window to prove themselves, so any dip in ticket sales could sweep the show off the stage quickly.
No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931. Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left.
Fast forward to Fall 2010, in their two most famous works, Cabaret and Chicago, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb used popular forms of entertainment as metaphors for our tainted world. A resigned Sally Bowles insisted that “life is a cabaret,” while cocksure Billy Flynn asserted that “it's all a circus … the whole world, all show business.”
The Scottsboro Boys, Kander and Ebb's troubling new musical, begins with a slightly less definitive pronouncement. “Everyone's a minstrel tonight,” sings the Interlocutor (Tony Award winner John Cullum, the only Caucasian in the cast) at the start of this show that repurposes the trappings of minstrelsy to revisit a racial injustice from the not-so-distant past.
Now getting its Broadway premiere in a powerful and unsettling production by Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys is in fact the final collaboration between Kander and Ebb, assuming the former doesn't have any unfinished shows hiding away in a drawer somewhere. (Ebb died in 2004.)
Under the command of the Interlocutor, a company of dynamic African-American performers perform the true story of the Scottsboro boys with a little help – and hindrance – from the sadistic stock minstrel characters Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones (the formidable caricaturists Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo),
As the illiterate Haywood Patterson, who eventually learned to write and penned a book in prison, Winnipeg-born Joshua Henry gives a tremendous lead performance. Throughout his incarceration, Haywood remains defiant and tells the truth even when, in a cruel paradox, a lie would set him free. Henry plays him with a quivering, furious integrity, but also enough flawed humanity that he never turns into a symbol.
While Henry showed off his tank of a body in Green Day's American Idiot earlier this year, he now gets to prove what kind of dramatic ammunition he is packing in numbers like Nothin', in which, stuck in an impossible situation, Haywood performs a brutally slow, mocking shuck-and-jive.
Kander's catchy music – a mix of ragtime and American folk song – is effectively undercut by Ebb's lyrics. A song like Southern Days is beautiful, even as its ironic lyrics aim to wring all the nostalgia out of standards like My Old Kentucky Home that owe their origins to minstrel shows.
Stroman, who showed that nothing succeeds like excess with The Producers, here directs with impressive economy. With a few quick movements, the cast transforms the simple set of chairs and wooden planks into, for instance, a train chugging out of Chattanooga with tambourines for wheels.
Her most chilling staging comes during Electric Chair, a dream tap ballet in which the youngest of the boys (the naturally talented Jeremy Gumbs) has a nightmare about his upcoming execution that turns into what seems like a mad Mickey Mouse cartoon (Mickey being one of the few remaining pop-culture icons still to bear the traces of minstrelsy and blackface).
While Stroman's choreography and the energetic performances keep tempting you to enjoy The Scottsboro Boys's spectacle, the form the show takes never allows you to do so with a clear conscience.
The minstrelsy aspects – including a scene in blackface – have proved controversial, with small protests organized outside the show on recent weekends. But the cast's twisted portrayal of the women who made the accusations and the boys' Jewish lawyer are more potentially offensive than anything involving the African-American characters, whose side the show takes unequivocally.
Happy A.A+W Wednesday Guys: So I need to Repost this again...Keep our Youth in Prayer. There have been more tragedies in the LGBT Community, with the recent Suicide of NYC Activist, Joseph Jefferson....KEEP OUR YOUTH LIFTED...KEEP EACH OTHER LIFTED.
Sending my best out to everyone this A.A+Wsome Wednesday. I want take time this week to reflect on Bullying and Hate Crimes, which has taken a huge toll in the LGBT community over the past few weeks, primarily amongst our gay youth.
I am deeply saddened by this, however, it is not shocking news to me. For years I have been documenting numerous hate-crimes and suicides that has taken place within the LGBT community. Sadly...but finally, this serious matter is making national headlines. For a while it seemed as if the world did not care about us, and more importantly our gay youth. Today, tomorrow, and forever, I pause to remember the lives lost and the lives almost lost. With love I remember: Raymond, Tyler, Seth, Billy, Asher, and Carl Joseph by inviting you to listen to my special message and poem below:
Following two sneak peek performances Sept. 8-9, Grammy Award winner Patti LaBelle officially steps into the role of Fela's mother, Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti, in Broadway's Fela! Sept. 14.LaBelle succeeds Tony winner Lillias White, who played her final performance Sept. 12. The acclaimed singer will stay with the production through its closing on Jan. 2, 2011.
"After seeing the show, I was struck by the choreography and work of Bill T. Jones, and the passion and joy that overflows from the stage," LaBelle said in a previous statement. "Fela's mother, Funmilayo, was a strong, truly inspiring woman, and I am so privileged to be able to pay tribute to her on the Broadway stage."
LaBelle — who played Matron Mama Morton for a limited run in a Los Angeles stint of Chicago — is known for her Grammy Award-winning rhythm and blues songs, which include "On My Own" and "New Attitude." The one-time lead member of the group Labelle also sang on the group's biggest hit "Lady Marmalade." The singer has appeared on Broadway in three self-titled concerts and appeared in the 1982 revival of Your Arms Too Short to Box With God.
Fela!, the new musical based on the life and music of groundbreaking African composer, plays the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.After an acclaimed run Off-Broadway in 2008, Fela! began previews on Broadway Oct. 19, 2009. Sahr Ngaujah, who headlined the Off-Broadway premiere, alternates in the role of the late African musical figure, with Kevin Mambo (Ruined).
Tony-winning Spring Awakening choreographer Bill T. Jones directs and choreographs the production that features a book by Jones and Jim Lewis and utilizes Anikulapo-Kuti's own music. Lewis, a Tony nominee for Chronicle of a Death Foretold, also penned additional lyrics. The musical was conceived by Bill T. Jones, Jim Lewis and Stephen Hendel.The production incorporates the Afrobeat orchestra Antibalas and other members of the NYC Afrobeat community, under the direction of Aaron Johnson, who perform Kuti's music live onstage.
In Fela!, according to production notes, "audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), [the musical] explores Kuti's controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician."
The design team includes scenic and costume designer Marina Draghici, lighting designer Rob Wierzel, sound designer Rob Kaplowitz and projection designer Peter Nigrini. Aaron Johnson and Jordan McLean will provide musical arrangements.The musical, which earned the 2008 Lucille Lortel honor for Best Musical, played an acclaimed engagement at the now-closed 37 Arts in 2008. 37 Arts was also the birthplace of the Tony-winning musical In the Heights.
Fela! is produced by Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, Will & Jada Pinkett Smith, Ruth & Stephen Hendel, Roy Gabay, Edward Tyler Nahem, Slava Smolokowski, Chip Meyrelles/Ken Greiner, Steve Semlitz/Cathy Glazer, Daryl Roth/True Love Productions, Knitting Factory Entertainment and Susan Dietz. In association with Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson.Fela! won three 2010 Tony Awards: Best Costume Design, Best Sound Design and Best Choreography. Visit FelaonBroadway.com.
