Good people are all around us but sometimes, for various reasons, they can be hard to spot. However, you will have no problem spotting them at Colonial Players of Annapolis’ current production of Good People, written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Directed by Edd Miller. You may be familiar with Lindsay-Abaire’s work such as the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning drama Rabbit Hole and the clever and hilarious book for Shrek,
Before Luke Skywalker becomes a man, he started out hanging out with an old man and a pack of ne’r do wells in a crap bar while his dad and more useful sibling were out there ruling the universe. George Lucas snagged a page from Shakespeare and made it his own into the form we know and love today. The Rude Mechanicals have taken this tumultuous two-part history of Henry IV about life,
The fourth act of a play is known as “the sensation scene.” This is the point where the play unites the A-plot with the B-plot, crams the moral of the story down the audience’s throats, and then overwhelms the senses with something spectacular, usually a lot of smoke and flames. But what happens if you’ve not only overwhelmed the senses of your audience but completely shocked and stunned them with an unabashedly forward and unapologetically galvanizing performance charged with racial controversy?
Nothing is ever easy when journeys are involved. Dare you take a journey most chimerical? Most fantastical? Up-worlders beware, darkness is happening: fantastical, phenomenal, hypnotizing darkness that crackles with the electrifying magic of #LondonBelow at Cohesion Theatre Company as they draw their second season to a close with the Baltimore premiere of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Directed by Brad Norris, this ambitious beast of a production ensnares the mind and engulfs the soul for a treacherous trek into a world unseen,
1,122 roles. 37 plays. 154 sonnets. 3 guys. 97 minutes. If that doesn’t make for one hell of a singular theatrical experience, I don’t know what does. Nothing short of Shakespearean shenanigans, Bardian buffoonery, and Stratford-Upon-Avon silliness, The Annapolis Shakespeare Company returns for its fourth annual summer venture into the series they call “Comedy in the Courtyard” and this year they’re bringing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare…Abridged along for the ride.
Love is something you use, not something you fall into. Though should you choose to use your love of theatre to fall into one of the 68 seats inside The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre between now and the 19th of June you may just fall in love with what’s on the stage. Swordplay— of two distinctive varieties, once of which includes actual rapiers— scandal, sin; all of these delicious morsels are yours for the taking if you dare the three-hour theatrical endeavor that is Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Ten actors. Ten plays. Ten minutes. One stage. It’s happening right now in a theatre near you— the Fells Point Corner Theatre, to be exact. Appearing as a new revision to their annual tradition of a 10-minute play festival, this year four directors take ten actors across the course of ten different ten-minute one-act plays. Polished, poignant, and perfectly humorous, this bundle of shorts is perfectly palatable for those who prefer their theatre in quippy clips and devourable morsels.
Donut cannot change. Donut will always be donut. But the Maryland Ensemble Theatre can change up what’s on their mainstage menu as they close out the 2015/2016 season with Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts. A shockingly different production from the original company-written rock musical seen just a month ago upon the boards, Superior Donuts, directed by company member Gené Fouché, is a stellar and touching dramedy that lives up to its titular adjectival description in talent,
They’re your Dreamgirls, they’ll make you happy! You just have to get a ticket to see them at the Tantallon Community Players and you better move hot quick because tickets are moving hotter than a disco inferno! Dreamgirls, produced by Larry Carbaugh and Directed by Christopher Gerkin, will welcome you back to an era of bygone music and the struggle of popular music as African American artists transitioned out of soul,
There is something to be said for comforting fictions. While they may not be the most elucidating tales they provide a certain umbrage from the harshness of reality that accompanies terminal illness. In an evocative rolling world premiere presented in association with the National New Play Network, Forum Theatre closes out its 12th season with Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter. Directed by Michael Dove, this stunning 90-minute tale awash in profoundly polarizing emotions sparks a compelling conversation of perceived realities,
Good memories are all too oft entangled with the bad ones, forcing the mind to shut them all out. Recollection is subjective; you aren’t remembering it wrong but rather remembering how you felt it happened. Debuting the 56th women-empowering script at Venus Theatre, Founding Artistic Director Deborah Randall opens the world premiere of Jayme Kilburn’s Garbage Kids and turns the notion of memory on its ear. A play in two acts, where the first is memory and the second occurring in real-time reality,
What is truth? Satan’s hung out on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, had breakfast with Kant, and now he’s up for a jaunty holiday through Moscow. But will the unexpectedly mortal nature of man be enough to feed his musing folly? Annex Theater has contrived something completely absurd with their production of The Master and Margarita, adapted to the stage by Jacob Budenz from the novel of Mikhail Bulgakov. Budenz, who also serves as the show’s director,
Felicific— adj. “causing or intending to cause happiness.” The Arts Collective at Howard Community College is currently in possession of a most felicific production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, where a splendid time can be guaranteed for all. F-E-L-I-C-I-F-I-C. Directed by Anthony Scimonelli with Musical Direction by Mayumi Baker Griffie, this all-inclusive, heartwarmingly inviting, and enticingly entertaining production has all the feels, talent, and words that any connoisseur of the theatergoing world could hope for.
Magnificent— adj. “very good; excellent.” The Milburn Stone Theatre @ Elkton Station has a magnificent production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee crossing their boards for one weekend only and it would be a real shame if you missed this production! M-A-G-N-I-F-I-C-E-N-T. Directed by Andrew Mitchell with Musical Direction by Anthony Vitalo, the Musical & Lyrics of William Finn and Book of Rachel Sheinkin, this zany musical about young students at the most important event of their pre-high school lives spells out F-U-N for anyone in the area lucky enough to catch one of only four performances!
Picture it! Schlimer, medieval Germany— the roof is made of dirty thatch, there are rats nibbling on stinky cheese, there are feces and rotting vegetables in the streets— okay, maybe don’t picture it. Picture instead two dedicated, earnest, devoted, passionate guys who just want to actualize their dream of writing a big flashy Broadway musical and have it produced by a rich Broadway producer. Turn tables, puppets, helicopters, people who used to be famous,
“Everyone has got a kink, what’s yours?” In kinK, Wolfpack Theatre Company once again invites you to get beyond your immediate gut response to really think about an issue and consider the lives it affects. kinK, an evocative and risqué new work by company founder William Dean Leary, asks what happens when the community’s creed “Safe – Sane – Consensual” encounters the notion of “There are no limits.”
The black box theater of the Greenbelt Arts Center has been transformed into a leather/levi bar.
Well you know what they say, if you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody— then come sit by me! Gossip is no longer reserved strictly for the southern peaches of Miss Truvy’s Beauty Shop in Chinquapin parish! And half of Rosedale will be giving their eye teeth to come and take a whack at this new play written by Baltimore local Davis Gable. Making its world premiere on the Just Off Broadway stage,
Come with me and you’ll see a world of pure imagination. You’ll begin with a spin travelling in the world of their creation and what you see will truly defy explanation! If you want to view paradise, simply come to The Salem Players of Willy Wonka for the most Wonkariffic time you can imagine! There’s singing, dancing, Oompa Loompas, and candy! Directed by Anita Spicer-Lane with Musical Direction by Sterling Gray, this fantastical creation will take you straight to the heart of Roald Dahl’s enchanting tale about a young lad,
It’s just another day, and it’s gonna be good at Silhouette Stages as they live life on a latte and a prayer while getting Next to Normal underway as their final production of the 2015/2016 theatrical season. Featuring the Pulitzer prize-winning Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey and Music by Tom Kitt, this emotionally evocative rock musical has a brilliant score, sensational songs, and a visual concept delivered through projection that drives home the emotional connections of the show’s overarching themes with stunning clarity.
We’ve all got a little more homework to do when it comes to life. Learn not to judge, learn not to label, learn to be yourself! That’s the message that sixteen amazing young performers are preaching at Third Wall Productions and their current presentation of 13: The Musical. Directed by Kali Baklor with Musical Direction by Eliza Van Kan, this up-tempo life lesson of a musical is full of heart and teenage spirit and guaranteed to bring you back to middle school quicker than you can say “popular.”
Middle School nostalgia comes flooding back to the senses with Scenic Designer and Artist Amy Rudai and Set Designer Jordan Hollett,
Tale as old as time, tune as old as song! The timeless Disney classic Beauty & The Beast returns to Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre this spring as a part of the CareFirst Hippodrome Broadway Series. Presented by NETworks Presentations LLC, the classic fairytale musical brings all of your favorite characters home to Charm City for a fantastical night out at the theatre. Directed by Rob Roth, this Disney delight is geared for younger audiences and of course those young at heart,
Wish upon a wishbone! Pluck a four-leaf clover! That you’ll snag tickets and understanding before this production run is over. Closing out the 2015/2016 season at Compass Rose Theater, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd takes to the stage with its beautiful music and curious political statement that burbles just beneath the surface of the overarching allegory of the tale in total. Directed by Lucinda Merry-Browne with Musical Direction by Anita O’Connor,
Is this the place?
Let me check. The map says Baltimore Theatre Project and the ticket says Happenstance Theater— this is the place! The place where imaginative engagement meets clowning around, there place where BrouHaHa happens! A fluid convergence of bodily poetry and auditory movement, this episodic clownesque escapade devised by the ensemble is making its Baltimore debut. Inspired by Samuel Beckett, and a treasury of footage from inspiring films like La Strada and The Seventh Seal as well as Edwardian works and the imagery of refugees escaping on foot,
Crazy is underrated. Normal is an illusion. What’s normal for the spider is a calamity for the fly, and what’s crazy for normal folk is just the basic happenings of everyday life for the crazies, like the gloom and doom inside the mansion in central park. Closing out the 2015/2016 season, The Children’s Playhouse of Maryland delivers a creepy and kooky performance, with all of the iconic Charles Addams’ characters alive in their shades of gray on the lecture hall stage in The Addams Family musical.
Do you really have to lose yourself to love somebody else? Sure, give them a piece of your soul, a piece of your heart, but is a total merger of two people into one person really a necessity when it comes to love and marriage, particularly the latter part? If so, at least when it comes to marriage? You’re doing it wrong. BOOM Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Samantha Allen’s first script,
This is fresh air. A play so horrifically captivating that it fuses your eyeballs to every flicker of movement, melds your eardrums to every shock of sound, and merges your mind to every explosive thought and disruptive emotion as they occur. Dan O’Brien’s The Body of an American seizes audiences of Theater J with captivating force, tumultuously upending their emotional equilibrium in the exploitative journey of a playwright and his relationship with Canadian Photojournalist Paul Watson.
Good evening, Charm City! After a month’s brief pause, the Master of the Macabre, the Navigator of the Netherworld, the Antiquarian of the Insane as returned to WYST (taking up residence at the old Yellow Sign Theatre on Charles Street in Station North) to bewitch your ears for the evening. Yes, oh yes, it’s the May Broadcast edition of Horatio Dark’s Between the Lines! Featuring four new radio plays to entreat the ear (and should you be lucky enough to attend in person— ensnare the eye),
Dreams are the children of idle brain, but let your mind sit still no longer! It is time for your imagination, your mind, your brain, and every other part of one’s thinker that by any other name reasons just as soundly, to engage with the Bard’s most iconic romantic tragedy. Tightened for core efficiency and pared to its essence, Romeo & Juliet is now the two hours’ traffics upon the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s stage.
There sure is a lot of excitement banging into action over at The Woodbrook Players this spring! Presenting the snappy wit of Neil Simon’s Rumors, The Woodbrook Players are in the know when it comes to gossip, stories, and wildly insane tall-tales! Directed by Ron Oaks, this zany madcap comedy puts the stitches in your side with situational humor you just have to see to believe!
Director and Set Designer Ron Oaks paints a pretty picture inside the home of Deputy Mayor Charles &
Astonishing! It’s astonishing how sometimes when you dream your dreams come true in extraordinary ways. And Charm City was dreaming of a musical that would awaken the soul for springtime. Dreams are coming true with Dundalk Community Theatre’s production of Little Women. A remarkably performed, sensationally sung, and overall impressively handled musical Directed and Choreographed by Tom Wyatt with Musical Direction by Nathan Scavilla, this riveting story, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott,