Next month, South Florida playwright Luis Roberto Herrera (who also happens to be a frequent contributor to our magazine!) is hoping to take on the world in more ways than one. If he is able to successfully raise the funds to showcase his new semi-autobiographical one man show in the slot to which it has been accepted at the Frigid New York Fringe Festival, Herrera will then quite literally attempt to consume that world as the play’s main character.
Boca Stage kicks open the 2023 segment of its current season with one of its best performances – if not the best – an intense, mind-probing examination of two people trapped in solitary confinement – one by choice, the other by circumstance – and whose lives become increasingly difficult to bear. As they spiral toward a loss of self-existence, a totally unexpected event brings a measure of solace and newfound relief to their painful realities.
The last time I wrote something about Hadestown, in reference to the original Broadway production, it was when I found myself harnessing the show’s themes to attempt to make sense of the pandemic’s earliest, most terrifying days. Thus, I am pleased to report that it is under rather less dire circumstances than I find myself now contemplating the show once more after seeing the touring production of the musical this past Tuesday at the Kravis Center, where it is now playing until this January 8th.
The latest show to take the stage at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse is a new musical creation called Here You Come Again: How Dolly Saved My Life In 12 Easy Songs. The play is written by Bruch Vilanch, Tricia Paoluccio, and Gabriel Barre, the latter two of whom also star in this two-character endeavor.
This is just the beginning of an ongoing conversation.
Theatre is an art that cannot exist without intimacy – and that word has a whole spectrum of life that goes beyond just physical touch between two people. With the development of intimacy direction, actors and creators are not only given more room to explore, but an intimacy director can help tell a story in a way that maybe they had never even considered outside the very obvious route.
Slow Burn Theatre Company’s latest foray into high quality musical theatre is with a production of Footloose. This 1998 musical was based on the well-known 1984 film, which achieved popular success despite being dismissed by many of the time’s major critics as, for instance, “trashy teenage cheese.”
“Family Tree” subverts the genre by portraying a family as dysfunctional as it is loving. The second showing of the play’s world premiere was held on Dec. 11 at Arts Garage in Delray Beach. The audience was confronted with their own biases in a story that playwright and director Danielle Trzcinski says was modeled after her own family.
Based on the 1992 Disney film of the same name, the musical Aladdin follows the titular orphan, who finally gets the chance to transcend his life as a starving “street rat” after ending up in possession of a magical genie and strives to win the heart of the beautiful princess Jasmine, who is being pressured to find a husband by her father but forbidden to marry below her station.
Referred to as a play for the “young and the young at heart,” Thinking Cap Theatre’s original production O Christmas Tree has plenty to offer both constituencies this holiday season. The script, written by Thinking Cap producing artistic director Nicole Stodard and managing director Bree-anna Obst, centers on a Miami family made up of eight year old named Frankie, his mother Claudia, and his paternal grandmother Anne.
