Despite its thunderbolt of a title, the focus of this memory play is on the relationship between a self-involved author and his long-suffering agent.
Amid an ongoing strike by Hollywood screenwriters and actors, a play with the nifty title “Pay the Writer” courts applause before anyone has uttered a word. Never mind that its turf is mainly the literary world, not the cinematic one; the author at the center of Tawni O’Dell’s play, Cyrus Holt (Ron Canada), seems to speak for all underpaid writers when he inscribes that feisty injunction in a copy of his book that is being adapted as a movie.
Miami Learning Experience School 501 C3 (MLE) is a special education school for students with different learning abilities in South Miami. Founded 47 years ago to address the needs of individuals with Down Syndrome, today it has expanded and covers all exceptionalities. “Foremost, MLE is a school providing the same experiences for their students that students would experience at any school,” said Kevin Grace, Executive Director at MLE. And with any school curriculum, visual arts and music programs are part of their offering.
South Florida Theatre is undergoing a change… or at least that is what the evolving audience should hope for.
With smaller companies like LakeHouseRanchdotPNG, that change is at its most present. Having just made it to their second season, this small but growing theater company is still making strides in going against the grain that is South Florida theatre. They do this by not only choosing experimental and absurdist plays for their season, but by operating as a playwrights theatre, something you don’t see enough of within the community. All of their work comes from new, exciting, and challenging playwrights – a mission that not only expands the outreach of the community, but in a way might also alienate certain audiences… and maybe that’s okay.
At 26, Area Stage Company of Miami director Giancarlo Rodaz became the youngest director to win a Carbonell Award for creating an immersive theatrical experience in his production of the musical Beauty and the Beast in 2022.
Everything’s coming up musicals nowadays … and no subject is taboo. Almost feels like the more outrageous the premise, the more likely it is to become a huge hit. Take joyfully murderous “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” or Mel Brooks’ Nazi-themed comedy, “The Producers,” featuring “Springtime for Hitler in Germany” as examples. A few weeks ago, even the universally beloved Star Trek brand has seen fit to choreograph an entire episode as a musical. (Check out S2 E9 “Subspace Rhapsody” of the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” series on Paramount+. I consider it both thematically and choreographically out of this world!) In this episode, original musical numbers are weaponized to save the known universe – but not before presenting one of the best and briefest explanations for the art form, i.e., a song reveals the singer’s deepest, true emotions.
Perhaps the fact that I find myself genuinely conflicted as I try to assess David Mamet’s Oleanna is actually something of a mark in its favor. After all, as opposed to the many perfunctory crowd-pleasers that do little to challenge convention, this script offers plenty of food for thought, ensuring an intellectually stimulating experience for practically all audience members regardless of what they come away thinking about the work.
Since the biblical story of Adam and Eve, differences between men and women have been personified in many plays, as South Floridians have seen in recent years with the numerous performances of playwright Rob Becker’s “Defending the Caveman” for many decades.
Many comedians, including actor/comedian Peter Fogel, will tell you that the funniest things that make people laugh are the absurd realities that happen to all of us every day. The veteran 62-year-old Fogel from Delray Beach has struck gold with his recollection of his life as a Jewish middle-aged bachelor who has yet to marry in his one man play “Til Death Do Us Part…You First,” to be performed August 12 at 8 pm at ArtServe in Fort Lauderdale.
New initiative Women of Wilton (WOW)—a project of Ronnie Larsen of Plays of Wilton and Nicole Stodard of Thinking Cap Theatre—is getting off to a great start with a seriously wow-worthy production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. Written during the late 70s and first produced in 1980, this play by openly lesbian playwright Jane Chambers was considered monumental for its time. This is primarily due to the fact that it was one of the first commercially successful works to portray gay women as full-fledged, well-rounded human beings as opposed to tortured by self-hatred or as stereotype-ridden caricatures.
