CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 10, 2026

First Impressions: TrueFrame Joist

Journal of Light Construction: Sean Collinsgru of Premier Outdoor Living first encountered ProWood’s TrueFrame Joist pressure-treated framing lumber at the 2025 Deck Expo in Las Vegas. He was intrigued, so the southern New Jersey deck designer and builder decided to try it on a 600-square-foot deck that December.

Step Up This Season: Behind the Scenes Spring & Summer Mental Health Trainings

Live Design Online: This spring and beyond, the Behind the Scenes Mental Health Initiative is offering a fresh schedule of virtual trainings, giving industry professionals renewed opportunities to build skills that support safer, healthier workplaces. These virtual sessions equip participants to recognize and respond when colleagues are facing mental health or substance use challenges or experiencing bullying and harassment.

▶️ Meyer Sound Celebrates 40-Year Partnership As Montreux Jazz Festival Turns 60

Live Design Online: When Claude Nobs met John and Helen Meyer in Switzerland in the 1970s, he was already a decade into building what would become one of the world’s great music festivals. John was directing the acoustics laboratory at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies; Nobs had built Montreux Jazz around the conviction that sound was as central to the experience as the music itself.

Custom Exhibit Fabrication Process: Sketch To Show Floor

exhibitstudios.com: Behind every successful exhibit is more than a great design. The custom exhibit fabrication process is where precise craftsmanship, structural engineering, and strategic production planning transform concepts into show-ready environments.

The Hand & The Eye: Opening Date, tickets and a look inside the $50M magic mansion

www.timeout.com: The Hand & The Eye, a 36,000-square-foot sanctuary for the all things magic, officially opens its doors on Saturday, April 18. Anchored inside the legendary McCormick Mansion at Ontario and Rush (100 E Ontario St), the venue sits just steps from the Magnificent Mile, transforming a Gilded Age icon into what is being hailed as the world’s most ambitious home for modern magic.

The Fabulous Engineering and Design of Duct Tape

kottke.org: Controlling the stickiness of tape is of utmost importance. In fact, a key element of engineering tape is controlling its stickiness — and only by doing that can tape be wound into a useful roll. If the tape sticks too tightly to itself, we could not use it.

AI Infiltration Into The Arts Has Fans Seeing Slop Everywhere

www.forbes.com: The rise of AI-generated imagery and videos has turned the commercial art and production industries upside down, but one of its most insidious effects has been to cast doubt on the provenance of any work, whether or not it was created by humans. Now one creator is offering a modest idea for humans to affirm their place in the creative process.

Live Nation Antitrust Case Narrows as Plaintiffs Drop Standalone Exclusive-Dealing Claim

TicketNews: The federal antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster narrowed again Tuesday, as the plaintiffs agreed to dismiss one of the claims that had survived Judge Arun Subramanian’s pretrial winnowing of the case, trimming the issues further as the trial moves toward its endgame.

Synchronicity Theatre to Seek New Home

AMERICAN THEATRE: Synchronicity Theatre has announced it will transition away from its current venue at Peachtree Pointe, a mixed-use office space in Midtown Atlanta. Synchronicity’s landlord has chosen not to renew the lease, prompting the organization to embark on a search for a new permanent home that reflects its artistic vision and its deep roots in the Atlanta community.

80th Annual Theatre World Awards Set For June

www.broadwayworld.com: The 80th Annual Theatre World Awards Ceremony will take place on Tuesday afternoon, June 2, 2026 beginning at 2:00PM. The 2026 Honorees for the Theatre World Award for an Outstanding Debut Performance in a Broadway or Off-Broadway Production, the landmark 17th Annual Dorothy Loudon Award for Excellence in the Theater, the 13th Annual John Willis Award, and theatre venue, will be announced soon.

We're Off to See 'The Wizard of Oz' Costumes at Little Lake

onstagepittsburgh.com: At age 23, costume designer, wardrobe supervisor and entrepreneur Dylan A. Blussick’s resume reads like an accomplished retiree’s. The well-traveled Washington County native boasts extensive National Tour experience that will soon include the Tony Award-winning The Outsiders. But just now, he is proving the Ozian adage that there’s no place like home.

A sofa that deserves gawping at: The de Sede Terrazza sofa in film

Film and Furniture: Designed by Ubald Klug for De Sede in 1972, the DS-1025 Terrazza is less a sofa and more a landscape. Its stepped, modular form invites you to sit, recline, sprawl, or simply occupy it like a piece of terrain.

Thursday, April 09, 2026

What is a stepper motor, and how is it used in industrial applications?

Control Design: Control systems use stepper motors in various applications, and controls engineers might have to replace a stepper motor in the field. Understanding how a stepper motor works and how it causes motion can be advantageous if the controls engineer needs to specify a motor for replacement or specify one for an application.

70 years ago, Anna Sokolow predicted our epidemic of loneliness

forward.com: When the dance begins, they are all onstage together. But they are each very much alone. In the opening vignette of Anna Sokolow’s “Rooms,” there are eight chairs scattered across the stage and eight performers who inhabit them — like city apartments squished so close together yet keeping their occupants apart.

Chicago Theaters Cut Ties With Jeff Awards After Director Accused Of Abuse Honored

blockclubchicago.org: More than a dozen Chicago theaters are cutting ties with a prestigious group that has recognized local productions with recommendations and awards since the 1960s, after it honored an artistic director accused of emotionally abusing and harassing an actor during rehearsals years ago.

Nikolas Weinstein Studios’ Glass Sculpture Enters Guinness Book of World Records with Autodesk Fusion

Fusion Blog: The jaw-dropping Mangrove glass sculpture is one for the books—quite literally. It was recently named the world’s largest glass tube installation by the definitive recordkeepers at the Guinness Book of World Records.

The 16 Best Musical Theater Colleges in the U.S.

Backstage: For aspiring musical theater actors, college is often the first step. If you’re hoping to be cast in a Broadway show someday, it’s important that you pick an undergraduate program tailored to your career goals. Here’s our list of some of the best musical theater programs in the U.S.

Jonathan Majors suffers fall on-set situation prompt crew to walk out

www.indulgexpress.com: American Jonathan Majors was shooting for an action movie when he suffered an accident onset. The actor, along with his co-star, JC Kilcoyne fell through a window on set while filming a stunt.

5 Things Home Builders Should Know About AI Agents

Builder Magazine: Home builders have spent the last year getting comfortable with artificial intelligence (AI) search and chat tools—systems that answer questions, summarize documents, or help draft emails. AI agents are the next step: software that can read, decide, and act across defined workflows. Over time, this can reshape builder operations, from options management to purchasing controls and back-office approvals.

From Cultural Diplomacy to Creative Cities: A History of International Theatre Festival

Arts Management and Technology Lab: Festivals have existed for more than 4,000 years and have been closely associated with theatrical events for over 3,500 years. In the post-World War II period, international theatre festivals emerged as a distinct category within an ever-expanding festival landscape, bringing together performances from multiple cultural contexts in a limited timeframe. As their names suggest, these international theatre festivals foreground cross-cultural collisions, connections, and collaborations more explicitly than other types of festivals and theatres do (Fleury, 2026).

Q&A: How a new Calgary performance venue aims to energize the city’s indie theatre scene

Intermission Magazine: While on my usual running route late last summer, I was derailed by the discovery of signs for something called “the theatre” just one block away from my apartment. Plastered on the first-floor windows of a typical residential building in Calgary’s Beltline, the signage was simple yet compelling: black-and-white type and snappy playscript quotes, all stylized in lowercase. Just like its name, the typographic design for the theatre felt bold yet ambiguous, and the mystique of this imagery had me curious.

Pittsburgh theater tries mergers, camps to weather change

www.publicsource.org: Pittsburgh actor Tim Hartman has watched those changes closely during more than four decades performing with companies including Pittsburgh Public Theater, City Theatre Company and Pittsburgh CLO. Since his professional debut at the 1983 Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival he said, the theater community has had to adapt to shifting audiences, rising production costs and a more uncertain economic landscape.

Pure entertainment now streaming in Women’s Storytelling Festival

DC Theater Arts: Storytelling has been around for thousands of years. The art form can serve many purposes — conveying history, teaching a lesson, entertaining — and is thought to have co-evolved with language, likely as the driving force to satisfy the human need for interaction and connection. So it comes as no surprise that storytelling exists today in expansive forms of varied media and formats. But the simple form of a single person crafting a tale for a group of people, using only their words and bodies to convey their message, is beautifully intimate.

In Uptown, TimeLine Theatre moves into its new home, nearly a decade in the making

Chicago Sun-Times: Mica Cole stood on the stage, with tears in her eyes. The occasion was TimeLine Theatre’s first public showing of its brand-new building — the culmination of years of near-constant fundraising, nomadic productions, unexpected delays and stress-inducing construction woes.

Wednesday, April 08, 2026

The house that streaming built: Inside Netflix House Dallas

www.creativereview.co.uk: In the newly opened Netflix House Dallas, the passive engagement of streaming is replaced by active participation. There’s no algorithm at work here; no autoplay or second-screen scrolling. Instead, this live experience represents an expansion into relatively new territory for the brand: specifically, a free-to-enter, 100,000-square-foot experiment in immersive, IRL storytelling.

5 Cheaper Impact Drivers That Outperform Milwaukee

www.slashgear.com: There are two types of tool owners in the world: those who know how invaluable an impact driver can be, and those who think a cordless drill/driver is all they need. Of course, the specific driver you're using is also critical. Not only do many major and no-name brands offer an impact driver, but several have multiple models themselves, adding to the wide range of choices out there.

AI Fluency Is the New Career Moat (And How to Build It)

Asian Efficiency: A college senior asked me recently how to stand out when he graduates. His name is Jacob. He is about to start a construction internship — his first real job. He has been learning AI tools. He wanted to know whether it would actually make a difference. I told him the honest answer: yes, but not in the way most people think.

NAB Show 2026 Preview: Trends, AI, Exhibitors & What to See

www.productionhub.com: Every year around this time, I find myself asking the same question: What’s going to happen at NAB this year? So I reach out to friends and industry colleagues and ask a few tough questions: What’s your favorite part of NAB? What keeps you coming back year after year?

Seats Left Empty on Smithsonian Board as Strain With White House Persists

The New York Times: A month after the terms of two Smithsonian trustees ended, their replacements have yet to be named as the traditional process of filling its governing Board of Regents has slowed in the wake of President Trump’s efforts to gain control of the institution. John Fahey and the board’s chairwoman, Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey, left the 17-member panel on March 2,

100 Years of Martha Graham in Dance Magazine

dancemagazine.com: In 1926, the pioneering modern choreographer Martha Graham founded her eponymous dance company. One year later, Dance Magazine (originally called The American Dancer) published its first issue. The two institutions’ histories are twined together. Over the following decades, the Martha Graham Dance Company became a profoundly influential force in a dance world that was rapidly evolving; Dance Magazine became that world’s foremost chronicler.

See Works from Inside SHOWSTOPPERS: THE ART OF STAGE AND SCREEN Exhibition at Helicline Fine Art

www.broadwayworld.com: Helicline Fine Art is now presenting Showstoppers: The Art of Stage and Screen, a dynamic new exhibition celebrating nearly a century of performance as seen through the eyes of some of the most influential artists and designers of the 20th century. On view through May 10, 2026, the exhibition brings together more than three dozen works that capture the spectacle, emotion, and cultural impact of live theatre, film, dance, opera, and popular entertainment.

'Company Retreat': How the Hidden Cameras Worked

www.indiewire.com: Production design is always an exercise in worldbuilding. Everything we see on screen was put there by the art team for a very specific reason to tell us something. Colors, textures, shapes, styles; grounded or heightened realism. They’re all an invisible (or not-so-invisible) part of visual storytelling. But rarely is that exercise as much about hidden cameras as it is for “Company Retreat,” the second season of “Jury Duty.”

Fifty metre monument mapping calibrated in 15 minutes

AV Magazine: To mark Bulgaria’s National Holiday on 3 March, MP-Studio delivered a large-scale projection mapping installation titled “Memory” at the Defenders of Stara Zagora Memorial Complex. The 50-metre monument—featuring sculptural elements including the Samara Flag and figures representing the defenders of Stara Zagora—was transformed into a dynamic audiovisual narrative, where content appeared to emerge directly from the structure itself.

Yionoulis named next dean of David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

Yale News: Yionoulis — a Yale alumna, Obie Award-winning director, and former David Geffen School of Drama faculty member — is now dean and director of The Juilliard School’s drama division. She assumes the Yale role July 1, succeeding James Bundy, who has been dean for nearly 25 years.

Review Roundup: Teatro La Plaza's HAMLET Off-Broadway

www.broadwayworld.com: Theatre For a New Audience is currently presenting Teatro La Plaza's Hamlet through April 4. In this adaptation, Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari intertwines the text of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the lived experiences of a young ensemble of eight actors with Down syndrome.

In ‘Burnout Paradise,’ Running on Treadmills Is Only the Half of It

The New York Times: One night last month at Astor Place Theater, audience members hurriedly hustled onto and off the stage to help four sweat-drenched, exhausted performers jogging on treadmills complete various tasks: shave one actor’s neck, solve a Rubik’s Cube and whip up a pasta dinner from scratch for two audience members to feast on and rate.

Tuesday, April 07, 2026

Follow-Me announces sales partnership with Kariotis in Greece and Cyprus

LightSoundJournal.com: Follow-Me, leader in performer tracking solutions, has agreed a strategic sales partnership with Kariotis Audio & Lighting, a prominent provider of audiovisual integration solutions serving Greece and Cyprus. The arrangement encompasses the full Follow-Me product range, and marks a significant step in expanding access to advanced performer tracking technology across the Greek and Cypriot markets.

Grizzly launches two lines of premium circular saw blades

Woodworking Network: With 21 specialized blade options, the new Grizzly PRO and Extreme Series lineups bring professional-grade performance to projects of any scale. Each blade is engineered to deliver smoother cuts with significantly reduced material waste. From the jobsite to the industrial shop, these blades are designed to compete with the industry’s top brands on longevity, durability, and price.

VTuber Awards: How To Build A Virtual Stage The Audience Will Believe

Live Design Online: Virtual stages aren’t new, but people still mix up what they really are. When people say “virtual stage,” they often mean LED panels or a 3D background that simply decorates a physical set. That can work, but for me as a stage director, the key point is different: the line between the physical and the virtual stage should be invisible.

Black women take center stage at Harriet Tubman museum event

AFRO American Newspapers: The Harriet Tubman Spirit Awards honored local leaders March 21 at the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum in Annapolis during a two-part program that also featured an artist discussion on history, memory and Black women’s stories.

Water for Elephants: A Feast for the Senses

onstagepittsburgh.com: Water for Elephants is a no-doubt true showstopper, and I find it hard to select a single aspect to praise because there are so many stunners throughout the performance. First premiered in the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta) in 2023, then as a Broadway musical in 2024, it has been on its national tour since 2025 and is now performing in Pittsburgh as part of the Cultural Trust’s PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series.

As sweeping layoffs diminish WaPo theater coverage, critics reckon with what’s being lost

DC Theater Arts: In 2015, leaders of children’s theaters across DC rose to decry The Washington Post’s decision to stop reviewing theater for young audiences. At the time, it felt like an isolated crisis within the larger ecosystem of arts coverage.

The LRLR Raise Funds for Behind the Scenes at USITT Raffle

Behind the Scenes: The Long Reach Long Riders (LRLR) celebrated their upcoming ride with a raffle and live auction benefiting Behind the Scenes during the USITT Stage Expo in Long Beach, California. Sales of raffle tickets and auction items raised $5,000 for the charity. The LRLR 2026 ride, dubbed “Backroads to the Brickyard”, begins June 19th in Athens, Ohio. Riders cover all their own expenses, ensuring that every dollar raised goes directly to Behind the Scenes.

Wireless PA kit extends audio across Dream Ride Experience

AV Magazine: The RF PA Extension Kit system provided by TMP Pro proved quick to deploy and highly adaptable to the event’s dynamic requirements. “It was very straightforward,” said Connell. “If you’ve installed a wireless microphone receiver, you can install the PA Extension Kit.” The team used the RF PA Extension Kit to wirelessly feed powered satellite speakers from front-of-house and remote I/O locations. In the field, the set-up delivered long-range, stable signals, with audio quality indistinguishable from a wired connection.

Chekhov Plays for an Un-Chekhov Time

The New York Times: When we think of Anton Chekhov — doctor, humanist, short story writer, playwright — we don’t often think of a political fire starter. His closely observed, often delicately comic work does deal with revolutions, but the hidden and eternal ones, like the hope that turns, season by slow season, into regret. No regime or attitude has successfully claimed him. In Russia, his work was beloved under the czar; it was beloved by Stalin. And it’s beloved now.

David Yazbek: The Master of Adapting Films into Musicals. An Exclusive Interview

The Theatre Times: David Yazbek burst onto Broadway a quarter century ago with the musical “The Full Monty” and immediately gained recognition as a composer, writer, musician and lyricist. All of his subsequent musicals, such as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (2004), “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (2010), “The Band’s Visit” (2017), “Tootsie” (2019), and “Dead Outlaw” (2025), have earned Tony and Grammy Awards. The musical “Dead Outlaw,” which opened last year, was nominated for seven Tony Awards.

Props Workers at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre Join IATSE Local 63

IATSE: The Manitoba Labour Board has officially certified the prop workers’ union at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (RMTC), with workers voting unanimously to join IATSE Local 63. The three-member unit, comprised of the Head of Props, Assistant Head of Props/Props Buyer, and Props Builder, voted 3 to 0 in favor of union representation.

You Can’t Have It All: The Impossible Demands of the Modern Museum

Architect Magazine: Is a museum a place for a community to come together around art that both grounds and opens perceptions about the world around them? Is it a monument to our collective cultural achievements and aspirations? A storehouse for those treasures that amaze us?

Monday, April 06, 2026

Billy Porter: Dignity, Defiance, and the Art of Being Seen

evanjsegal.substack.com: Billy Porter stands in a powerful lineage of Pittsburgh storytellers who learned to use the stage as both sanctuary and bullhorn. Taylor Allderdice High School, with its unassuming hallways and scrappy theater tradition, helped shape a young Billy who was already testing the limits of what performance could hold—joy, pain, and a fierce insistence on being fully seen.

GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN To Have World Premiere At Pittsburgh Playhouse

www.broadwayworld.com: The world premiere production of Girls Just Want To Have Fun, a new musical inspired by the cult-classic film written by Amy Spies and featuring a score of 1980s chart-toppers, will play Pittsburgh Playhouse’s PNC Theatre from November 11-22, 2026.

Tony Robbins to unleash a powerful immersive experience

AV Magazine: Imagine the scene. You walk into the first of five zones of a new 90-minute Breakthrough immersive experience in Miami next year. You are greeted by a huge volumetric video installation of Tony Robbins, the personal development leader, who guides you and everyone else present through a “priming” session.

The Phantom of the Opera and the Legacy of Its Iconic Wardrobe

Vogue Australia: The year was 1986. Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End was buzzing with anticipation as audiences gathered beneath its ornate nearly 100-year-old ceilings, unaware they were about to bear witness to the beginnings of a cultural phenomenon. For composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was about to debut his newest musical to the world—an adaptation of a modestly successful novel by French author Gaston Leroux about an outcast living beneath the bowels of the Palais Garnier in the 1880s.

Sorry-Grateful: 2 New Books Show the Many Sides of Sondheim

AMERICAN THEATRE: Don’t meet your heroes, goes a popular axiom. In the case of Stephen Sondheim, the composer/lyricist who redefined the possibilities if not the sound of American musical theatre, the wisdom of that advice might depend on when you caught him: in his early years, when he was learning at the feet of Oscar Hammerstein II while cannily maneuvering among peers and collaborators and chafing at the era’s, and his medium’s, restraints; in his ascendant 1970s period, when his struggle to assert his unique voice gave him a short-tempered, even manic aspect; or in his later éminence grise phase, when he mellowed into a kind of encouraging father figure for younger generations.

POC Arts Nonprofits Face Severe Staffing Challenges, Survey Finds

hyperallergic.com: How do you operate a museum or cultural center without any full-time staff? The nonprofit Museum Hue surveyed institutions founded and led by people of color (POC) across the Northeastern states and found that over a third of respondents lacked a single full-time employee.

Costume designers collaborate to clothe ‘The Birds’

News | oudaily.com: OU University Theatre will open “The Birds” Friday, where actors will debut their performance and costume designers will showcase their creations. The play is an Indigenous adaptation of a Greek comedy by Aristophanes by the same name. The play, written by Yvette Nolan, follows two characters who leave the modern world seeking freedom and find the utopian land of the birds.

In Uptown, TimeLine Theatre moves into its new home, nearly a decade in the making

WBEZ Chicago: Mica Cole stood on the stage, with tears in her eyes. The occasion was TimeLine Theatre’s first public showing of its brand-new building — the culmination of years of near-constant fundraising, nomadic productions, unexpected delays and stress-inducing construction woes.

Monica Barbaro: ‘Yesterday I went home thinking I’m a terrible actor and they’re finding out’

Theatre | The Guardian: “I feel like I’m imitating an American accent, but it really is mine,” Monica Barbaro jokes. The actor has spent the morning rehearsing in an English accent for her stage debut in the National Theatre’s revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. During interviews, she says, she switches back. “I feel it’s best to use my own voice.”

Guest Review: ‘10 Out of 12': Immersive Theater Done Right

onstagepittsburgh.com: Theater is an art form that continues to expand humanity’s understanding of reality through many different formats. We’ve seen the changes that theater has gone through and continues to do so, adapting to encapsulate the reality of modern times and tell stories that grab attention and bring us, the audience, into the world. Quantum Theatre’s production of 10 Out of 12 does exactly this.

ANNY 12: the new 12" battery-powered by LD Systems

LightSoundJournal.com: With the ANNY 12, LD Systems introduces a 12″ battery-powered, 2-way full-range mobile PA system, designed to combine the convenience of a Bluetooth speaker with the performance, sound quality, and connectivity typical of a professional PA system. The goal is to offer a versatile and easily transportable solution for all those situations where powerful sound is needed without the availability of a power outlet.

Review: Quantum Theatre's '10 Out of 12' Experience Is an Unconventional Love Letter to Theatermakers

onstagepittsburgh.com: Tech rehearsal in theater is the crew’s time to sync to a show’s rhythms and iron out the wrinkles that develop with hundreds of light and sound cues, entrances and exits, performers hitting their marks, wardrobe and set changes ,,, it’s where it all comes together. Or it doesn’t. No matter. The show must go on.

Sunday, April 05, 2026

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

Theater Tickets Are Cheaper in London Than New York. What Gives?

The New York Times: The hottest celebrity on the London stage is a four-foot-tall bear with a fondness for marmalade. Tickets to “Paddington: The Musical” are hard to come by — the show is consistently sold out — and costly, by British standards: The best seats, when bought directly from the show itself, are 250 pounds, which is about $330.

You Can Now Explore Over 100 Objects From the Met in 3D

mymodernmet.com: As part of its Open Access initiative, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has published more than 100 high-definition 3D scans of art historical objects. These models have been carefully curated from the museum’s collection, which encompasses some 1.5 million works across media such as sculpture, painting, textiles, jewelry, calligraphy, and more.

Traits that make a fab shop employee stand out

www.thefabricator.com: What makes a good shop employee? That’s a question that sounds simple on the surface, but if you’ve spent any amount of time in a fabrication shop, you know there’s a lot more to it than just showing up and punching a clock. Every shop may have its own flavor, with different equipment, products, and expectations, but for the most part, we’re all looking for the same core qualities in an employee. You can teach someone how to run a machine, but it’s a lot harder to teach them how to care.

In Conversation With Hanna Puley, The Costume Designer Behind 'Heated Rivalry'

elle.in/fashion: If you haven’t stumbled upon the HeatedRivalry frenzy over the past few months, you must be living under a rock, or, at the very least, offline. Ever since the series first aired earlier last year, it has spiralled into a full-blown obsession. And now, with the show officially streaming in India on Lionsgate Play, a whole new audience is catching up, and catching feelings.

Broadway Meets Wall Street As One Show Finances Another

www.forbes.com: Broadway has become more like Wall Street. Similar to how Ford Motor Company invested in Rivian Automotive, the upcoming musical Chimney Town has invested in the Broadway musical Cats: The Jellicle Ball. As a co-producer of the Broadway show, the future show is billed alongside other producers above the title and a few sentences about it are printed in the programs distributed at each performance.

 

Friday, April 03, 2026

Performers in Wichita need more than Century II. Is a new center still possible?

klcjournal.com: As the Wichita Symphony Orchestra rehearsed “Rhapsody in Red, White, and Blue” last month, some musicians on stage were wearing coats and gloves. Because doors elsewhere in Century II had been opened for an RV show, the building’s heating system couldn’t keep up. Had the temperature in the Concert Hall gone much lower, rehearsal would have had to be called off.

Anolis enjoys Light + Building Expo

LightSoundJournal.com: LED lighting manufacturer Anolis enjoyed a busy and positive Light + Building 2026 expo in Frankfurt, Germany, where it launched two new products – Calumma Arts in collaboration with French Light and Calumma UN (Ultra Narrow) – and engaged with a host of visitors from across Europe and around the world.

Six Flags Great America 50th Anniversary Celebration Announced for 2026

Coaster101: Six Flags Great America will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026 with a special Six Flags Great America 50th Anniversary Celebration event featuring new entertainment as well as numerous limited-time offerings and throwback guest experiences.

Sonia Friedman: Ambition and risk-taking suffer when production costs increase

www.thestage.co.uk: Sonia Friedman has warned that rising production costs are denting ambition and resulting in ‘fewer risks’ being taken

‘Curated chaos’: Danny Boyle on the ‘pop culture spectacular’ he is bringing to London’s Southbank Centre

Theatre | The Guardian: Out of chaos come great cultural movements, according to the director and producer Danny Boyle, who will inflict a little curated chaos on London’s Southbank Centre with what has been described as an “epic, one-off pop culture spectacular”.

Sweetwater Expands Again

Church Production Magazine: The nation’s largest music store — located on the Sweetwater campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana — is getting even bigger. Sweetwater is unveiling a significant update to its retail store, which includes two new dedicated home audio listening rooms.

A Simpler Approach to Distributed Audio: The BZBGear BG-AMP150WD with DSP and Dante

Church Production Magazine: In church production, small pieces of infrastructure often do the most invisible—and most critical—work. Distributed audio systems rarely get the spotlight, yet they shape first impressions before a single worship note is played. From parking lots and outdoor walkways to lobbies, cafés, and restrooms, these systems are responsible for creating a welcoming environment that feels intentional, polished, and consistent.

Yiwen Yu Advances Narrative-Driven Costume Design Across Global Short-Form Productions

FinancialContent: Costume design is increasingly being recognized as a core storytelling mechanism within short-form screen productions, as cross-cultural methodologies introduce new levels of visual precision and narrative clarity. Work developed by costume designer and fashion art director Yiwen Yu reflects this shift, positioning wardrobe as an integrated narrative system shaped by character development, cultural context, and audience interpretation.

Traits that make a fab shop employee stand out

www.thefabricator.com: What makes a good shop employee? That’s a question that sounds simple on the surface, but if you’ve spent any amount of time in a fabrication shop, you know there’s a lot more to it than just showing up and punching a clock. Every shop may have its own flavor, with different equipment, products, and expectations, but for the most part, we’re all looking for the same core qualities in an employee. You can teach someone how to run a machine, but it’s a lot harder to teach them how to care.

Laserworld has officially unveiled the new Cube Series

LightSoundJournal.com: Laserworld has officially unveiled the new Cube Series, a completely new product line of compact and versatile show lasers designed for the modern pro-lighting and entertainment industry. Available in four power configurations—Cube 1, Cube 1.5, Cube 3, and Cube 7—this series sets a new standard for mobile DJs, indoor events, and small to medium-sized clubs.

YESCO Restores, Modernizes Iconic Gateway Signs in Encinitas, California

Sign Builder Illustrated, The How-To Sign Industry Magazine: YESCO, the 106-year-old company known for creating, repairing and maintaining internationally recognizable signs, announces it has completed restoration and modernization of the iconic Encinitas Gateway Sign spanning Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas, Calif. The project revitalized one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks, preserving its historic character while introducing energy-efficient LED technology designed to ensure the sign’s longevity for decades to come.

Pittsburgh Opera Announces 2026/2027 Season: General Director Christopher Hahn Previews the Program Before Retirement

onstagepittsburgh.com: On April 2, Pittsburgh Opera announced its 2026/2027 season. The upcoming season comprises five carefully curated productions in order: Rigoletto, Orpheus & Eurydice, Partenope, Working for the Macbeths (World Premiere), and Romeo & Juliet. As announced by Pittsburgh Opera in March 2025, Christopher Hahn, who has led the company as General Director since 2008 and served as Artistic Director since 2000, is set to retire in May 2026.