From the Executive Office: Here for You

AMERICAN THEATRE: As our annual season preview issue is going to press, we are in a time of tremendous change in our country, in our theatres, and at TCG. Kelundra Smith has been named director of publications, with advertising, American Theatre, ARTSEARCH, and TCG Books under her purview. We promoted Jerald Raymond Pierce to managing editor and Gabriela Furtado Coutinho to digital editor of American Theatre.

Sennheiser ensures sonic clarity for Peter Maffay's Farewell Tour

TPi: With the We love Rock’n’Roll Farewell Tour, Peter Maffay and his band filled Germany’s biggest open-air arenas in the summer of 2024. Digital and analogue Sennheiser wireless systems ensured excellent sound during the performances. In addition to Sennheiser Digital 6000 systems and other proven wireless solutions, the new Sennheiser EW-DX series was also used for the shows, including the brand-new EW-DX EM 4 DANTE four-channel receiver.

Cal Shakes to close, in harshest blow yet to Bay Area theater

www.sfchronicle.com: California Shakespeare Theater is closing, the company announced Thursday, Oct. 10. Many theaters locally and nationwide have shuttered since the pandemic accelerated the industry’s financial problems, but Cal Shakes is the biggest yet in the Bay Area.

Breaking Rectangles And Digital Dreams

Live Design Online: Lighting designer Michael Stiller of Michael Stiller Design is slated to present a session at LDI 2024: Breaking Rectangles (Let Your Digital Dreams Flee the Screen), in which he will examine the way a number of award-winning projects have created a true immersivity in environments ranging from indoor experience centers to exterior, city-scaled developments.

Putin, Propaganda And Projection: Designing Vladimir

Live Design Online: As 1999 became 2000, Russians were less preoccupied with Y2K worries than the rest of the world. They were riveted on a televised address: President Boris Yeltsin announced he was stepping down and passing the torch to a KGB operative.

grandMA3 drives visuals for Lenny Kravitz’s Blue Electric Light Tour

TPi: Having successfully completed its European run of shows this summer, Lenny Kravitz’s Blue Electric Light Tour is preparing for its Americas leg, which will see the rock legend perform 14 shows during the final quarter of 2024. In this well-earned breathing space, MA spoke to Lighting Designer, Bryan Barancik and programmer Felix Peralta about their use of the grandMA3 for these shows.

SIX's Elena Bonomo Shares Her Journey From Sandwich Artist to Broadway Drummer

Playbill: The international hit musical SIX is celebrating its third anniversary on Broadway this month at the Lena Horne Theatre, and drummer Elena Bonomo has been with the production ever since its October 2021 opening.

Sistine Chapel recreated as an immersive exhibition

www.avinteractive.com: An immersive exhibition in Poland deployed 39 Panasonic projectors to recreate the Sistine Chapel in a tent. The Sistine Chapel: A Legacy presented the famous frescoes by Michelangelo in a space that had the exact dimensions of the chapel – but with a height of 6m, rather than 21m.

Best Music Venues in the US: Epic Concert Venues to See a Show Right Now

Thrillist: There’s no greater feeling of together-as-one unity than being in a packed venue singing along to your favorite artist—and surely your town has a club, theater, or stadium that’s fair to call the best in the area. But sometimes you want to up the ante and travel to a venue that’s special for both an audience and an artist: steeped in history, surrounded by beauty, or embedded in a community known for its live music scene.

‘I could not get through the script without crying’: Adrien Brody talks to the death row survivor who he’s playing on the London stage

Theatre | The Guardian: The rehearsal space for the Donmar Warehouse theatre is a scruffy, gymnasium-scale, subterranean cavern in Covent Garden. Strewn around, on Monday morning last week, are some telltale signs of stressful, long days: scrunched-up packs of bourbon biscuits and custard creams, and scattered pages of heavily inked script; also, intriguingly, four (empty) boxes of heavy-duty handcuffs. Dominating the room is a makeshift stage that looks like a boxing ring without ropes and measures 3.5 metres by 3.2 metres, almost the exact dimensions of a cell on death row.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

Here are the top five comment generating posts of the past week:

Art Shaped as Beer Cans Are Mistaken for Trash by Museum Staff

mymodernmet.com: Many artists have long found inspiration in contemporary, mundane objects. Much like Marcel Duchamp‘s upside-down urinal titled Fountain or Andy Warhol‘s Campbell's Soup Cans paintings, the boundaries between art and item continue to be explored by artists.

Posted by David at 10/11/2024 10:25:00 AM

Joker 2's failure is exposing a major Hollywood hypocrisy

The Mary Sue: This weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux opened in the American box offices with an incredibly lackluster $37.7 million. To put that in perspective, the infamously awful Morbius made $39 million during its opening weekend in 2022. Joker 2‘s box office bomb is even more distinct because it cost Warner Bros. $200 million to make.

Posted by David at 10/10/2024 11:15:00 AM

Five-sided LED cube is 'standout' exhibit at telco's tech hub

www.avinteractive.com: A five-sided LED cube supplied by Alfalite is one of the standout installations at a new technology meets entertainment hub opened by the tech arm of Spanish telephone company Telefónica

Posted by David at 10/11/2024 10:29:00 AM

Sonic Visualization: Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words In Audio?

ProSoundWeb: A graphical depiction can often convey an idea better, and quicker, than a whole bunch of words. This is because our brains are mainly image processors, not word processors; the part of our brain that processes words is actually very small in comparison to the part that processes visual information.

Posted by David at 10/09/2024 10:15:00 AM

CMU Drama prepares for 22nd annual Playground theater festival

The Tartan: Preparations for the 22nd annual Playground theater festival are well underway in Purnell. Playground is a student-created festival that started 22 years ago at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. Participation in the festival is not limited to drama students. The festival is open to people in the Pittsburgh area, regardless of whether they study theater or are a student at Carnegie Mellon.

Posted by David at 10/09/2024 10:12:00 AM

 

Analog Way drives Democratic National Convention screens

www.avinteractive.com: Jason Rudolph, an Emmy Award-winning screens producer with Aeon Point – which conceptualises, designs and produces experiences for live events – was tasked with controlling and operating the screens in Chicago’s United Center, which hosted the four-day event.

Behind the Scenes with Leslie Odom, Jr.

News - Carnegie Mellon University: Leslie Odom, Jr. told current Carnegie Mellon School of Drama students that “Hamilton” provided him the first opportunity to utilize “every bit” of the training he received at CMU. “When you are handed a masterpiece,” he said, “it demands more – and conversely, less – of you. Tricks don’t work. You need to lean on your pure training.”

Five-sided LED cube is 'standout' exhibit at telco's tech hub

www.avinteractive.com: A five-sided LED cube supplied by Alfalite is one of the standout installations at a new technology meets entertainment hub opened by the tech arm of Spanish telephone company Telefónica

Saturday Night Was a Dream Come True For Costume Designer (and 'Late-Night Nerd') Danny Glicker

LateNighter: Danny Glicker thought he was done with the ’70s. The Oscar-nominated costume designer was wrapping up work on HBO’s The Sympathizer—which takes place near the end of the Vietnam War—when he got a call from Jason Reitman that would transport him right back to 1975.

Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council hosts Victorian dress class

www.ktalnews.com: “So I’m gonna teach students and a few of my friends how to sew Victorian costumes.” says Darlene Taylor, a local artist and the class’s instructor, “We’re gonna be doing a top waist and also a underskirt and over skirt.”

Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre rises from the ashes

The Seattle Times: After closing in 2023, Seattle’s venerable Book-It Repertory Theatre, which for 33 years created vibrant theater from works of literature, is slowly rising from the ashes.

Curly-Cue: modeling Afro-textured hair in 3D

Boing Boing: Curly-Cue: Geometric Methods For Highly Coiled Hair is the first paper about Afro-textured hair ever to be presented at a SIGGRAPH conference in all its 50-year history, writes Theodore Kim, one of its authors.

Here’s How Neon Lights Work

TwistedSifter: We might have moved on from our collective obsession with neon lights here in America (though if you have kids, I assure you they have not gotten over it), but they do still have a place and a purpose.

Jimmy Awards will return to Minskoff Theatre in 2025

www.broadwaynews.com: The Broadway League Foundation has revealed a date for the 2025 Jimmy Awards. Formally known as the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, the 16th annual Jimmys will take place on June 23, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre. The awards recognize achievement in high school-level theater.

Art Shaped as Beer Cans Are Mistaken for Trash by Museum Staff

mymodernmet.com: Many artists have long found inspiration in contemporary, mundane objects. Much like Marcel Duchamp‘s upside-down urinal titled Fountain or Andy Warhol‘s Campbell's Soup Cans paintings, the boundaries between art and item continue to be explored by artists.

Disney World and Universal to Reopen After Hurricane Milton Shutdowns

www.hollywoodreporter.com: Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando will reopen on Friday after Hurricane Milton forced a rare shutdown of Florida’s theme parks. The companies previously announced phased closures beginning Wednesday, with plans to remain closed on Thursday. Their hotels remained open to service guests.

New AI Protections Bill Not a 'Silver Bullet,' Top SAG-AFTRA Lawyer Says

www.thewrap.com: AI protections just signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom aren’t a “silver bullet” that will solve all the problems of the rapidly advancing technology, said SAG-AFTRA’s general counsel Jeffrey Bennett at TheGrill conference this week.

Why Madrid Is the Star of Film and TV: Film Office Interview

www.hollywoodreporter.com: The recent fourth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria attracted Spanish- and Portuguese-language content creators and executives from Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. to Spain’s capital, Madrid. Its market featured a range of booths, including one for the Madrid Film Office, whose mission is to promote the city as a filming destination, offer advice to TV, film, and other projects shooting in the city, and support the local industry and stimulate investment.

PreSonus Launches New Studio One Pro 7

ProSoundWeb: PreSonus has announced the launch of Studio One Pro 7, which adds more than 30 new features to its DAW, including AI-powered Stem Separation, Splice Integration, an Integrated Launcher, Global Transpose, a new VSTi named Deep Flight One, improvements on the Impact drum sampler, and more.

Fewer Than 1 in 5 Scripted Productions Are Shot in LA

www.indiewire.com/news: Everyone in the industry wants to forget 2023. Especially everyone in the industry in L.A. A new FilmLA report has found that only 18 percent of the scripted TV and film projects released last year were made in the greater Los Angeles area. That’s down from 22 percent of 2022 releases and 23 percent in 2021.

Joker 2's failure is exposing a major Hollywood hypocrisy

The Mary Sue: This weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux opened in the American box offices with an incredibly lackluster $37.7 million. To put that in perspective, the infamously awful Morbius made $39 million during its opening weekend in 2022. Joker 2‘s box office bomb is even more distinct because it cost Warner Bros. $200 million to make.

SeaWorld Orlando to open new Arctic-themed flying theater in 2025

InPark Magazine: SeaWorld Orlando unveiled plans for its latest attraction planned to open in spring 2025: the Arctic Flying Theater. This new experience invites families to soar over icy landscapes, dive beneath frozen waters and come face-to-face with some of the planet’s most magnificent creatures.

On State Theatres and Minoritarian Theatres: Interview with Andrea Wolfer, Head of the Dramaturgy and PR Department of the German State Theatre in Timișoara, Romania

The Theatre Times: Last year, when Timișoara was the European Capital of Culture, international visitors were very surprised that a German-speaking theatre even exists in this part of Europe. We also stand out because we include performances for children and teenagers. The repertoire is dynamic, in terms of including both classical and contemporary plays, and the actors and the staff have a multiethnic and multifaith background. This openess towards diversity and a fostering of curiosity is there at all levels.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD to Offer $25 Tickets Through Digital Scavenger Hunt

www.broadwayworld.com: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are in the spirit of giving back to fans of the show with a special scavenger hunt and savings. Today, Wednesday, October 9th, the production will host a digital scavenger hunt, in which a handful of $25 tickets will be hidden throughout the show's ticketing site at for performances now through November 21, 2024.

Travels of a Scenic Artist and Scholar: Scenic Artist Nicholas Hinchey and the Normansfield Theatre

Drypigment.net: This post explores the life and career of Nicolas Charles Hinchey (1864-1919), a 19th-century scenic artist who specialized in painted illusion and mechanical effects for scenic spectacles. Hinchey is credited with Normansfield’s extant street scene.

Meet ONG Keng Sen, the Artistic Director of Singapore’s T:>Works and Keynote Speaker at the 2024 Singapore Literature Festival in NYC

The Theatre Times: The 6th biennial Singapore Literature Festival is held in New York City on October 19 and 20, 2024. Under the title “Living Adaptations,” the festival will spotlight writing and directing for the stage and screen.

FilmLA Seeks 'Vast Expansion' of California Tax Credit

variety.com: FilmLA, the quasi-public agency that handles film permits in Los Angeles, called on Wednesday for a “vast expansion” of the California production incentive, citing a 20% drop in local filming last year.

Mozart! The Gem of European Musical Theatre

The Theatre Times: The premiere of the musical Mozart!, based on the life story of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, took place in 1999 at the Theater an der Wien. The main idea of the dramatist and lyricist Michael Kunze and composer Sylvester Levay was to showcase the obvious contradiction between Mozart’s dissolute life and his divine music. They wanted to try and explain the apparent paradox.

Barry White Estate Sues Over 'Like That' But Not Future & Metro Boomin

www.billboard.com: Barry White’s estate is suing over allegations that a prominent sample at the heart of Future and Metro Boomin’s chart-topping “Like That” infringes the copyright to a 1973 song by the legendary singer — but they aren’t accusing the stars of any wrongdoing.

Datapath signals importance of climate change in Oceania

www.avinteractive.com: A multimedia installation that immersed audiences in the issue of climate change and its impact on the communities of the Pacific Ocean deployed Datapath’s Fx4 controllers and a Screenberry media server.

Las Vegas' Smith Center Finds its Harmony with Allen & Heath

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: When The Smith Center for the Performing Arts opened its doors in March of 2012, it became a cultural hub for Southern Nevada. The Smith Center provides three venues for performances: Reynolds Hall, a 2,000-seat theater; Myron's, a 240-seat cabaret jazz club; and Troesh Studio Theater, a black box theater that holds 250 people. Key to the center's success is the sound across each venue, made possible by the recent adoption of Allen & Heath mixing consoles.

Pittsburgh Opera launches its 2024-25 season in style with bloody but nuanced 'Tosca'

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: There’s something magical about grand old opera, sort of like a dusty bottle of top-shelf Italian wine. Some of these older works, many of them more than a century old, continue to draw a crowd no matter how many times a company performs them. These “blue chip” operas are the works with some name recognition today — “Carmen,” “Madama Butterfly,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Magic Flute” — and glorious music that stokes the very fires of the soul.

Behind the Scenes Announces 2024-2025 Free Bystander Intervention Trainings

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Bullying, harassment, and intimidation in the workplace are unfortunately common occurrences in all sectors of the entertainment industry. For many, these are everyday stressors that are well known but rarely addressed.

Wakanda Forever

Style Weekly: Undoubtedly, you’ve seen her work. Carter’s long filmography includes costuming “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” “Amistad,” “The Butler,” “Selma,” “Coming 2 America,” both “Black Panther” movies and the first season of “Yellowstone.” She is the first Black person to be nominated for an Oscar for costume design, the first to win in that category, and the only Black woman to have won two Oscars.

ISE 2025: Connection Restored - Lighting&Sound America Online

News: Registration is now open for Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), the annual tech show for the systems integration and audiovisual industry. Returning to the Fira de Barcelona Gran Vía from 4-7 February, the ISE team is promising a host of new initiatives and features, an expanded and more easily accessible content program, as well as the unveiling of Hall 8.1 accessed via the conveniently located North Access point.

Sonic Visualization: Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words In Audio?

ProSoundWeb: A graphical depiction can often convey an idea better, and quicker, than a whole bunch of words. This is because our brains are mainly image processors, not word processors; the part of our brain that processes words is actually very small in comparison to the part that processes visual information.

‘Agatha All Along’ Costume Designer Daniel Selon Breaks Down the Witchy Wardrobe

Marvel: To clothe the coven of Agatha All Along, Daniel Selon had to tap into his inner witch. As the lead costume designer of Marvel Television’s newest series, Selon was responsible for dressing every witch in the show — from Kathryn Hahn’s scheming sorceress to Patti LuPone’s kooky tarot reader. To prepare, he and his team researched centuries of witch-inspired clothing, and they even incorporated some real-life magic into their workroom.

Designer adjusts set of ‘Lady Day’ until it’s just right

KU News: “I try to focus on ... hidden meanings in the play, and how we can show that to audiences without being so direct,” she said. “I hate it when people try to force-feed an audience something. They can work it through themselves. We don't need to tell them everything.”

Between the Lines: Autodesk University 2024: Your Thrive Guide to AU San Diego

www.btl-blog.com: As the Autodesk sponsored event for design and engineering professionals, Autodesk University (AU) offers an opportunity to learn, network, and be inspired. This year, October 15-17 2024, AU is heading to the sunny shores of San Diego California, a city known for its beautiful beaches, vibrant culture, and innovative spirit. This is the first AU in San Diego.

CMU Drama prepares for 22nd annual Playground theater festival

The Tartan: Preparations for the 22nd annual Playground theater festival are well underway in Purnell. Playground is a student-created festival that started 22 years ago at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. Participation in the festival is not limited to drama students. The festival is open to people in the Pittsburgh area, regardless of whether they study theater or are a student at Carnegie Mellon.

Letters to a Young Playwright: Practical and Impractical Advice on the Art of Playwriting

New York Theater: Adam Szymkowicz, the author of this book offering advice about how to be a playwright, has been a student of such well-known playwrights (and teachers) as Christopher Durang, Marsha Norman, Paula Vogel and some dozen others; he’s taught playwriting himself; he’s written more than thirty published plays, four of them published this year.

Review Roundup: THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE Opens Off-Broadway

www.broadwayworld.com: The Big Gay Jamboree has officially arrived off-Broadway! The new musical is directed and choreographed by Connor Gallagher, with a book by Marla Mindelle and Jonathan Parks-Ramage, and music & lyrics by Mindelle and Philip Drennen.

Pittsburgh Opera's Terrific 'Tosca' Makes A Tasty Treat

Entertainment Central Pittsburgh: One of the delights of opera is that most plots are simple. Classic opera tends toward pure melodrama. The hero rescues his love interest and vanquishes the villain. The formula is to be expected as tradition because it can be as comforting as macaroni and cheese or meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Caili Quan on Making Her First Show for New York City Ballet

Playbill: When Caili Quan listened to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No.1 in A Minor, she knew she had found the inspiration for her first piece for New York City Ballet, which will have its world premiere at the Fall Fashion Gala on October 9. Quan wanted to use a concerto because she was eager to work with a full orchestra—“a rare opportunity,” she says.

Black Theatre United announces new initiatives

www.broadwaynews.com: Black Theatre United (BTU) has announced three new initiatives to support Black artists and create more opportunity for their careers in the theater industry. These include: the Designers Initiative, the Marva Hicks Musical Theatre and the Education Program. BTU founders mentioned these new programs during the organization’s second annual gala, held on Sept. 30 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom. Further details have just been announced.

John Lithgow: ‘The origins of Roald Dahl’s hatred fascinate me’

The Independent: If you’re lucky,” says John Lithgow, “an actor gets to speak a few lines in his career that you just absolutely know are going to have a terrific impact. And in this case I’m afraid it’s Roald Dahl. That’s a line that you cannot unhear.”

The Harm of Teaching Commedia dell’arte to Contemporary Players

HowlRound Theatre Commons: We need safer theatrical spaces and more actor agency. If theatre is to remain a tool for expression, one that moves with us and our descendants into the next century, it must amplify historically disenfranchised voices, and it must not create further harm. This is true for educational, rehearsal, and performance spaces.

Al Hirschfeld Theatre Will Dim its Lights in Honor of Gavin Creel

a href="https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Al-Hirschfeld-Theatre-Will-Dim-its-Lights-in-Honor-of-Gavin-Creel-20241007">www.broadwayworld.com: The Al Hirschfeld Theatre has announced that it will join the theatres dimming their lights in honor of Gavin Creel. It was recently announced that only some Broadway theatres were to dim their lights to honor Creel, who sadly passed away from cancer last week.

WP Theater Reveals 2024-2026 WP Lab Artists

Playbill: WP Theater has announced the group of 15 artists selected for its 2024-2026 WP Lab. The two-year residency provides emerging artists with professional and developmental resources, and culminates in the biennial WP Pipeline Festival.

Review: Barebones Productions of 'Crocodile Fever'

onstagepittsburgh.com: In Crocodile Fever at barebones productions, Irish playwright Meghan Tyler’s two female characters instead do their best to kill their father. They got rid of their sainted “mummy” a few years earlier, an accident, it turns out, but sisters Alannah and Fianna Devlin have suffered untold misery since – and probably before.

“Crocodile Fever” at barebones productions

The Pittsburgh Tatler: “Kitchen – clean.” That, Dear Readers, is the first note I jotted down after taking my seat at barebones’ production of Crocodile Fever on opening night. The kitchen on stage (scenic design by Tony Ferrieri) is really, really clean, clean to an extent that signals some kind of disorder – which, of course, is the point.

And I Think to Myself: How ‘A Wonderful World’ Made Its Way to Broadway

AMERICAN THEATRE: I’m writing this on the morning of Aug. 19, 2024. It’s the official start of Broadway rehearsals for A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Story, a new musical for which I wrote the book. It seems like a good time to reflect on the journey that brought me here. This show had many starts and stops throughout the era of theatre quarantine, reopening, cancellations, and as such offers a case study in the way work has been developed in the midst of these challenges.

Wicked Oscar predictions: Early odds to win Best Costume Design

GoldDerby: Gold Derby’s Oscar predictions in the below-the-line races opened last week, and “Wicked” leads the early odds to win Best Costume Design. That should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen the popular Broadway musical

56th Anniversary Jeff Awards announced

Windy City Times: At the 56th anniversary celebration of Equity theater excellence, the Jeff Awards recognized 44 award recipients selected from among 193 nominees across 34 categories of excellence in theater production in shows from 36 producing entities. The awards show was co-hosted by award-winning Chicago entertainers Lillian Castillo and Kelvin Roston, Jr., with actor Janet Ulrich Brooks as announcer, in a program featuring performances from 10 nominated productions and dozens of local theater artists as presenters.

Arts Education Teaches Empathy, Values Mentorship

News - Carnegie Mellon University: In the dramatic arts, training artists and actors holds as much importance as teaching tools for expression, according to Carnegie Mellon alumni with ties to Broadway. “Arts education allowed me to see that there was not one way to be, not one way to learn, not one way to process information,” said Nate Bertone (CFA 2016), a member of the Tartans on the Rise Class of 2024.

AARVV Vallabhaneni Studios Presents The Biggest Costume and Fashion Awards in India

www.aninews.in/news: The CFA Awards 2024, scheduled for November 30 and December 1 at JRC Conventions, Hyderabad, is set to make history by celebrating the incredible talents in costume and fashion design within Tollywood. This is the first time such a large-scale event will honor the unsung heroes of the Tollywood fashion industry a grand poster launch event for the upcoming Costume & Fashion Awards (CFA) 2024 was held at Trident Hotels, Hyderabad.

Plot Luck: Lightswitch Designs Zaccho In City Hall

Live Design Online: After a challenging yet highly rewarding design process, Lightswitch lit dancers as they explored the iconic architecture of San Francisco’s City Hall. Projection mapping, lighting, and rigging design were used to achieve a temporary visual intervention, striving to tackle how the narrative of classical architecture can be decolonized in civic spaces.