A Letter of Gratitude to Stage Managers

OnStage: Let me let you – the readers of On Stage – in on a little secret: Early on in my college career, I took a Stage Management class, thinking at the time that I wanted to explore as many areas of theatre as possible, and that this might be just one of many career possibilities in this industry that I could realistically end up pursuing. However, after just a month or so of taking that class, I realized right away that while I could ultimately see myself doing many things in theatre after college, this was not one of them.

LA Actors Speak Out Against Union Actions

Footlights: Members of Los Angeles’ “Pro99” movement, including actors Frances Fisher and Alfred Molina, spoke out today about recent attacks leveled by Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional stage actors and stage managers, against its own Los Angeles members who are part of the movement. After ending talks to forestall a lawsuit brought by Los Angeles actors and producers against AEA. the union recently sent emails to its national membership that accused Pro99 of “misinformation and propaganda,” “threats” and “blacklisting.”

Panorama Festival in NYC is the future of live music

Business Insider: I made the trek to Randalls Island in New York City this past weekend for Panorama Festival, the city's newest three-day music festival put together by Goldenvoice, the promoters behind Coachella.

Sennheiser Supports Soundgirls.org Live Sound Camps

Stage Directions: Sennheiser supplied 20 (each) of their professional HD 280 headphones and evolution series microphones for Soundgirls.org to use in their four Live Sound Camps. The camps were held across the U.S. and gave middle and high school-aged girls the opportunity to get hands-on training with professional audio gear.

Watch How Special Effects Made Game of Thrones' Season Finale an Explosive Masterpiece

sploid.gizmodo.com: When I close my eyes at night, I can still hear that beautifully creepy score from Game of Thrones’ season finale, I can see the Great Sept of Baelor and the characters inside, and I can feel that chilly sense of doom. It’s funny how real those emotions are still, especially since so much of what we watched on TV was faked through expert visual effects.

Josh Groban joins ‘Hamilton’ pal on stage

Page Six: Josh Groban made a surprise appearance at “Hamilton” alum Leslie Odom Jr.‘s solo gig in New York on Thursday night. Introducing Groban as “the turtleneck king of Pittsburgh” (as he apparently once owned every type of turtleneck imaginable), Odom Jr. talked of guys’ time together at Carnegie Mellon University

But Wait: Copyright Law Is So Screwed Up, Perhaps The Rolling Stones Are Right That Donald Trump Needed Their Permission

Techdirt: So for years and years and years, every time a musician or a group whined about politicians using their music at an event, we'd point out that they have no legal basis to complain. Assuming either the venue or the campaign (or both) had the proper blanket licenses from ASCAP/BMI/SESAC no other permission was needed. That's actually part of the point of the structure of those blanket performance licenses.

2016 Show Networking Best Practices

Control Geek: For my Networks On Shows and In Venues: What Do You Need to Know? panel yesterday at the North American Theatre Engineering Conference (NATEAC), I assembled a panel of experts and together we came up with John, Kevin, and Peter’s Show Networking Best Practices. That panel was Kevin Loewen, Engineering Manager at the Pathway Connectivity office of Acuity Brands Lighting and Peter Stepniewicz, Principal Show Electronic Engineer, Walt Disney Imagineering. Special thanks also to Kevin Gross, AVA Networks, for giving us feedback on the document.

Environmental Art Project to Light Up Pittsburgh Bridge for the Holidays

The 412 - July 2016: uch has been written about the iconic nature of Pittsburgh's three Sister bridges that connect the North Shore to the Golden Triangle. In addition to helping people cross the Allegheny river, they are integral part of the skyline and serve as gathering places for baseball games and occasional festivals. During the holidays this year, one of them will be turned into a piece of art. - See more at: http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Best-of-the-Burgh-Blogs/The-412/July-2016/Environmental-Art-Project-to-Light-Up-Pittsburgh-Bridge-for-the-Holidays/#sthash.r3LRxbNL.dpuf

Mike Daisey on his latest show, The Trump Card, at Woolly Mammoth

DC Theatre Scene: As we hurl toward an unpredictable and increasingly surreal election in November, Donald Trump’s persona is hard to avoid. Endlessly looped on news broadcasts and grabbing headlines each day with his latest provocations, he has finally achieved the level of ubiquity that many suspect compelled him to join the race just over a year ago. But how much are we really digging into what drives the man – and what his success says about the current state of our political climate?

Research and Remixes the Law Won’t Allow

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Some day, your life may depend on the work of a security researcher. Whether it’s a simple malfunction in a piece of computerized medical equipment or a malicious compromise of your networked car, it’s critically important that people working in security can find and fix the problem before the worst happens.

Intimate Theater, the 99-Seat Plan and Getting Artists Justice

Clyde Fitch Report: I began my career in intimate theater in LA, first as a nonunion actor, then as a member of City Garage Theatre for five years, then as managing director of Watts Village Theater Company (WVTC), co-founded in 1996 by the late Lynn Manning and Quentin Drew. WVTC was created with the vision of bridging gaps within communities of color in South Central LA and the greater LA community. It was born out of a Cornerstone Theater Company residency in Watts, a community that many of you might hesitate to drive through, much less work in every day, due to preconceived notions bestowed by the mainstream news media and pop-culture films, like Boys n the Hood, that persistently characterize communities of color as bastions of poverty and crime.

From Japan, a ‘Chicago’ You Probably Haven’t Seen

The New York Times: On any given night outside a theater in central Tokyo, hundreds of women can be found waiting in neat phalanxes, dressed in matching T-shirts or sporting identical colored handkerchiefs — the uniform of what may be the most rabidly loyal fans in Japanese entertainment.

A Film Company Pleads Guilty to Breaking Harrison Ford's Leg

io9.gizmodo.com: Back in 2014, the news that Harrison Ford had broken his leg on the set of The Force Awakens shook us all to the core. In February of this year, the UK government brought charges against a British production company for violating workplace health and safety laws. And now our nightmare is finally over, as Foodles Production has pleaded guilty.

DeWalt Experience 2016 – With A Side Of Stanley, B&D, Proto, Porter-Cable and DIYZ

Home Fixated: In late June, the tool team with the yellow shirts gathered up an assortment of their newest products. They rented an airplane hangar to showcase it (there were a LOT of new products), and invited over 100 members of the tool press to Baltimore to check it all out at the DeWalt Experience. The highlight of the event was the rollout of the DeWalt FlexVolt battery platform, which we covered in a previous post, but the 2016 DeWalt Experience featured a slew of other new products, from Accessories to Zip tools. Here’s a quick peek at a sampling of DeWalt products available now or in the near future, along with a bonus look at what’s new at their affiliated brands – including a brand-NEW brand!

How Theaters Should Handle a Social Media Crisis

Selling Out: Recently, Southwest Airlines had to cancel almost 2,000 flights because of a massive technology failure, which rendered huge portions of their computer systems inoperable for more than 12 hours, reports Convince & Convert. This, of course, led to some 250,000 angry passengers flooding Southwest’s customer service, social media and operations teams.

Opera a la Cart Shows Another Way the Arts Can Go Mobile

Selling Out: Now in Portland, a city filled with food trucks and food carts, comes “Opera a la Cart.” As OregonLive.com reports, it’s just what it sounds like: A mobile cart with a stage, a handful of props and a cast of opera singers ready to perform songs to order. The songs are mostly well-known selections that even opera newbies would recognize.

NY Public Library's Rosenberg Curator of Exhibitions Barbara Cohen-Stratyner on Stage Design by Ming Cho Lee

www.broadwayworld.com: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts welcomes visitors and researchers to discover our collections. And sometimes, we send exhibitions out so to be discovered - around the country or even further. One of most traveled exhibitions, which has been installed in Taiwan and China, is currently in New York. But it isn't here at Lincoln Center, it is on view downtown, in residence at the Museum of Chinese in America. Stage Design by Ming Cho Lee is the 5th iteration of the exhibition since it debuted at The Library for the Performing Arts in 1995. Since then, he has continued to design scenery for theater, dance and opera so that the current exhibit represents productions from over forty years. It fills both temporary galleries in the beautiful Maya Lin-designed facility.

Lisa Peterson New Associate Director at Berkeley Rep

Stage Directions: Berkeley Repertory Theatre named two-time Obie-award winning director Lisa Peterson as associate director. Peterson will direct the season opener for Berkeley Rep (a new adaption of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here) as well as participate in The Ground Floor, Berkeley Rep’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work.

TechShop Shake-Up: Mark Hatch Resigns as CEO

makezine.com: Since it opened its doors almost a decade ago, TechShop has become one of the most well-known and widespread makerspaces in the country. Today, Founder and Chairmain Jim Newton made a big announcement about CEO Mark Hatch’s resignation.

Former Pittsburgh Ballet artistic director Wilde to enter national Dance Hall of Fame

TribLIVE: Former Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre artistic director Patricia Wilde will be inducted into the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame during the organization's annual gala on Aug. 13 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Previous honorees include George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, Jerome Robbins, Rudolf Nureyev and Mark Morris.

James M. Nederlander Dead: One of Broadway’s Impresario Titans

Variety: James M. Nederlander, the impresario who was the chairman of Broadway’s Nederlander Organization, died July 25 at 94, it was announced by his son, James L. Nederlander.

As the head of a company that is one Broadway’s major theater owners — and the one with the largest holdings around world, with nine venues on Broadway, three on the West End and 17 around the U.S. — Nederlander was a longtime titan of the theater industry. He was also the patriarch of what remains a family business, which began with the clan’s ownership of theaters in Detroit (purchased by his father David T. Nederlander) and, in the 1960, pushed into New York City under his leadership.

The 10 great Broadway songs that made me love musicals

www.timeout.com: Growing up a straight white boy in small-town New Hampshire, I wasn’t exactly destined to care about Broadway musicals, much less love them and write essays about how we may be living in a new Golden Age. My parents didn’t collect cast albums and we lived 300 miles from New York in a village that didn’t even have a bar. We never watched the Tony Awards.

Work of Art

www.cmu.edu/news: While Cuba and the U.S. are renewing relations, Carnegie Mellon University faculty and students are working on a revival.

Cuba's National Arts Schools, known as the Instituto Superior de Arte, was conceived in 1960 by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara after the Cuban Revolution. The campus, which was to include five new schools on the grounds of the former Havana Country Club, was created to support and nurture Cuban artists and performers in drama, art, music, ballet and modern dance. But it never came to full fruition.

Where Do Giant Robots, Modified Lawnmowers, Adaptive Art Tools, and Thereminists Go?

makezine.com: Maker Faire Detroit, of course. One of the longest-running Maker Faires in the world, Maker Faire Detroit takes place for the seventh year in a row this weekend, July 30 and 31, at The Henry Ford. With nearly 25,000 folks coming out last year to learn, share, and celebrate all forms of making, community support is clearly strong in the area. And what better host than The Henry Ford, which has been recognizing, preserving, and promoting American ingenuity and innovation for decades.

Ingrid Michaelson Hell No Music Video: Deaf Actors Perform Sign Language

People.com: Ingrid Michaelson got particularly hands-on for her latest music video. The indie pop artist released the official clip of her new breakup single "Hell No" in April, and it was the first music video completely filmed on Snapchat. But after seeing the Deaf West theater company's Spring Awakening cast perform on the Tony Awards last month, she was inspired to recreate the music video for a wider range of viewers.

“Are you really going to major in theatre?” : The dreaded question that us dream chasers face

OnStage: Whether you’re preparing to chase that Broadway spotlight or planning on operating it, most of us who choose to pursue a theatre degree in college have been pestered with that one dreaded query: “Are you sure you want to do that?!” As an upcoming B.F.A. theatre arts student at Catawba College, this question has presented itself much more frequently as summer begins to draw to an end. It’s annoying and unfair (I mean, how many pre-meds get asked this, I’d like to know!), but can we really blame the asker for their ignorance? I don’t think we can.

Quick Tips for Sculpting Custom Shapes with Styrofoam

makezine.com: In the custom drone community, there are fun body modifications made of styrofoam called “foamies.” These are shaped, lightweight bodies that slips over your drone to give it a stylized appearance. We’ve seen everything from imaginative one-off aircraft to crazy recreations of ships from Star Wars.

Evan Rachel Wood On Biphobia and Pay Disparity

The Mary Sue: In a candid interview with Motto, Evan Rachel Wood discussed working with Ellen Page in Into the Forest, the importance of sharing stories in the LGBT community, biphobia, pay disparity, and representation. Earlier this year, the actress critiqued the media’s rampant biphobia in responses to Amber Heard on Twitter. Wood elaborates on the coverage in this interview, calling it “bullshit” and “unfair.”

30-year-old Black man buys historic Regal Theater in Chicago

Rolling Out: Rolling out interviewed Jerald Gary, the new owner of the New Regal Theater. The 30-year-old talked about his memories of the Regal and how he came to acquire this historic building on the South Side of Chicago.

Ten Questions about ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Answered

Variety: The two-part stage play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” opens officially on Saturday at the Palace Theater in London’s West End, but previews have been running since June 7, and press reviews appeared Tuesday. Variety answers 10 questions conjured up by this latest addition to author J.K. Rowling’s highly popular, highly creative and highly lucrative wizarding world.

Best Podcasts: Online Radio Shows for College Students

collegecandy.com: Perhaps you clicked on this article expecting a list of podcasts that will help you ace finals or study more efficiently, or how to make a 4.5-page paper into 5 pages by pure paragraph manipulation. Sorry – this is not that article.

Guthrie production chief takes on backstage color barrier

Minnesota Public Radio News: A play opening at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis Friday night deals with racial politics. The story revolves around a Pakistani-American lawyer, and most of the cast members are people of color. Backstage, though, the people helping to stage the show are white.

Watch Usher, Sheryl Crow Tell Politicians 'Stop Using Our Songs'

Rolling Stone: Donald Trump has used a number of recognizable classic rock songs during his campaign by Queen, the Rolling Stones and R.E.M. On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, a team of high-profile musicians – Usher, Sheryl Crow, Heart, Michael Bolton, John Mellencamp, Cyndi Lauper, Josh Groban and Imagine Dragons' Dan Reynolds – united to deliver a clear message to politicians: stop using our songs without permission.

The Character Shop creates an Animatronic Slimer for GHOSTBUSTERS!

www.character-shop.com: What actor likes to react to a chrome-and-silver ball in these days of overly CGI-ed event films? They'd prefer to act with something real and present. Director Paul Feig had this in mind when he chose Rick Lazzarini and TCS to create a couple of very cool animatronic creations for the 2016 reboot of "Ghostbusters". Paul had worked with Rick and renowned puppeteer Ronald Binion on a Ford campaign together, and when it was announced that Feig was going to reboot one of the most iconic films in recent history, Lazzarini reminded him that he'd created several ghosts for "Ghostbusters 2" and would love to be involved. Feig responded that while it was early, Rick was "at the top of my list!".

Performing Arts Patron Reflects

Wenger: Longtime performing arts patron Anne Melvin of Columbus, Ohio, considers her own personal history when choosing which organizations to support. She also credits Woody Hayes, the legendary football coach, for inspiration. While Anne never played football growing up, attending a music conservatory after she graduated from Smith College taught her that aspiring musicians also undergo rigorous training. “Once I left the conservatory, I told myself my job was to help other classical musicians make a living wage – that was very important to me,” she says.

The Mr. Robot VR experience isn't a gimmick — it's true storytelling

The Verge: Mr. Robot mastermind Sam Esmail has made a point of taking on nearly every creative role possible on his show, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when the idea came up for a virtual reality tie-in, he took the same hands-on approach. Debuting at Comic-Con, Mr. Robot VR is a 13-minute narrative experience written and directed by the auteur that takes viewers on a flashback journey with lead character Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) as he remembers an early encounter with his dealer-turned-love-interest Shayla (Frankie Shaw). The result isn’t simply a VR technical demo; it’s a legitimate storytelling experience that captures the atmosphere and sensibilities of the show and brings it into an entirely new medium — and then pushes into territory that television would never allow.

Lighting Designer Reflects: Part 1 of 2

www.wengercorp.com: “I think the performing arts should move the audience to think differently or see the world in a different way,” says lighting designer Robert Wierzel, who has achieved acclaim for his work in theatre, dance, opera, music and museums. “Art should express the times in which it was created.” He believes the performing arts are unlike a painting, sculpture, or even today’s video arts, which represent a moment in time, whether 300 years ago or last week.

Take A 'Jaunt' Around Pittsburgh With New Architecture App

90.5 WESA: Pittsburgh architecture, modern and contemporary, is highlighted as part of a new app called Jaunt. The program derives from a partnership between Boston-based architecture firm Over. Under and Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture and is designed to educate users about a little over 100 buildings located in Pittsburgh.

Alumni Hope They're Binge-Worthy in Amazon Pilots

www.cmu.edu/news: Television is a brave new world, and CMU alumni are helping to blaze the frontier. While networks crank out hit weekly shows, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon are releasing full seasons to content-hungry viewers for "binge-watching." Amazon Studios released several new pilots in June starring three Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama alumni.

How Not To Ace A Job Interview

Come Recommended: I once showed up to a job interview with the Australian Stock Exchange armed with enough pieces of paper to compile a small book. They probably thought I had taken the wrong turn and was supposed to be in the ‘launch a public company’ department. I wasn’t. I was actually there for a fairly routine job interview as a project manager.

6 Ways Night Owls Can Thrive in a 9-to-5 Work World

www.learnvest.com: Crack-of-dawn conference calls, breakfast meetings or even the fact that the office coffee maker is always turned off by noon are just a few examples of how the work world really is designed for early risers. You know the type—those perky folks who leap out of bed with the sun and begin winding down as evening falls.

Dems go flatter, draw on 'rule of three' for convention set design

www.newscaststudio.com: With the Republican National Convention wrapped up, the Democrats have completed installing their stage set in Philadelphia and where the Republican’s set design was shiny, bold, intimidating and even a bit top heavy, the Democratic National Convention has taken a flatter approach that also uses the “rule of three” effectively.

The Challenges and Rewards of Designing a VR World

makezine.com: I was in a small room at a game convention last year the moment I first understood the power of virtual reality. It was my first time trying a social VR experience, my first time in a virtual space that I shared with another person. Despite my cohabitant being represented as just a wireframe rendering of a head and hands, the experience was transformative.

'Ghostbusters': Your Complete Guide to New Tech Gizmos

Rolling Stone: It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools — but even so, a Ghostbuster is only as good as her gadgets. Director Paul Feig and his fleet of technical wizards were faced with a daunting challenge upon accepting the job of rebooting Ghostbusters for a modern audience, and not just due to the much-clucked-about gender-swap. For production designer Jefferson Sage, a previous collaborator with Feig on The Heat and Spy, and prop master Kirk Corwin (currently at work on a Marvel production he's not permitted to name), it was all about striking a balance between homage and innovation.

Playing with Fire: Pyrotechnics & Music

Wenger | J.R. Clancy: This holiday weekend in the U.S., many of the largest public fireworks displays will feature pyrotechnics choreographed to music – either live or recorded. In Nashville, for example, the Nashville Symphony will perform an original medley of songs in a “perfectly choreographed fireworks spectacular.” We thought that learning about the technology behind these patriotic spectacles might make them even more memorable.

Get the first consumer-grade 3D printer on the market at a must-have price

Boing Boing: 3D printers are hot, but they're also pricey. While the prospect of cranking out everything we can dream up is enticing, cost is often one factor that keeps us from jumping onto the 3D printing train.

5 Things I’ve Learned About Creativity

The Creativity Post: I never planned to be a writer. In fact, it was something I actively avoided. As a publishing CEO, I felt it was important to steer clear of the creative process. When business side people start inserting themselves into creative work, it usually leads to trouble. So I focused on supporting other people’s creativity rather than pursuing my own.

Pittsburgh Teens Paint Murals to Condemn Gun Violence

The 412 - July 2016: A group of Pittsburgh teenagers is using paintbrushes to deliver their message on gun violence. The Moving Lives of Kids Mural Project (MLK) has been working recently in Homewood to paint an anti-gun violence mural at the corner of Homewood Avenue and Idlewild Street. The mural is one of 10 the group has painted across a number of Pittsburgh neighborhoods as part of their “Paint All Over Pittsburgh Project.”

Western Europe Meets Eastern Europe: Yasmina Reza’s Bella Figura in Zagreb, Croatia

HowlRound: French playwright Yasmina Reza is no stranger to Croatian audiences, which already had the privilege of seeing Conversations After a Burial (Osijek), Life x 3 (at Mala scena inZagreb), God of Carnage (Theatre Rugantino, Zagreb), Art ( at Theatre Aplauz in Zagreb), and finally Bella Figura, originally written for the Schaubühne ensemble and directed and translated by Thomas Ostermeier (with co-translator Florian Borchmeyer). The Croatian production of Bella Figura, directed by Boris Liješević and performed by the Croatian National Theatre (CNT) in Zagreb, came hot on the heels of the Berlin production.

6 Myths About Wood Finishing

www.popularwoodworking.com: The time and cost of materials you invest in any woodworking project can make the final finishing stage a nerve-racking one. You want to get it right, and there are a lot of wild ideas out there concerning finishing. Below you’ll find a few common wood finishing myths and the actual facts excerpted from Bob Flexner’s expert text on the subject, “Understanding Wood Finishing.”

Meet the Man Artists Call When They Need Help Getting the Job Done

The Creators Project: When Rudolf Stingel wants to nickel-plate Celotex panels, or Evan Gruzis wants to recreate a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses in marble, or Richard Hughes wants to make a bronze cast of an old mattress, there’s one person they call. Jan Eugster’s been working in the art-foundry world for nearly 20 years, working with artists when they need help creating cast work, sculpture design, and more. Eugster, calling in from his studios in Switzerland, gave The Creators Project insight into his history as a foundry technician, helping artists on projects, and what it’s like to work with Urs Fischer creating a giant gray hole.

Planning Projects - One Maker's Workflow to Making Anything

homefixated.com: The making of things is a part us all and certainly a part of what makes us human. From the time of monkeys with sharp rocks we have imagined “what else” could be done with simple things and have incrementally managed to make things more complex and function better in the process. The human imagination is truly endless and awesome, and that imagination has carved perfect human shapes from solid marble and complex beauty in simple form.

What happens at the Illuminati Ball

Business Insider: Mystery shrouds the Illuminati, a legendary group of the rich, powerful, and extremely secretive. The original Bavarian Illuminati was a secret society that was rumored to control world affairs in the 1700s, including the French Revolution. More modern-day interpretations of the cult are thought to control much of pop culture. I recently got a peek into this mysterious world during the immersive theater performance known as The Illuminati Ball, which took place at a majestic estate in the woods of Connecticut. Although I've been sworn to secrecy by a man wearing a mouse mask, who held a sword against the palm of my hands while I was blindfolded, I can tell you that it was a night I won't soon forget.

Top 10 Plays Adapted from Novels

Breaking Character: Some stories can be adapted from one form to another and, in doing so, introduce an entirely new perspective. Adaptations can open our minds to ideas we’d never considered and reach new audiences. Stage adaptions of literature, though, hold the unique power to bring our favorite stories to life by bridging two of society’s major cultural platforms. We’ve gathered a list of titles that best exemplify the strength of theatre as a medium for the adaptation of novels.

Should You Quit Your Job To Go Make Video Games?

kotaku.com: Your boss just pulled you into another surprise meeting. You’ve got a case of the Mondays. And your raise got rejected. Why not leave it all behind and roll the dice on a new career in video games? Aside from the design, art, and programming jobs we often think of, the “games industry” includes everything from grips setting up motion capture studios to psychologists studying microtransactions.

Knowing How to Fall: How & When to Use Fall Protection

Your Performance Partners: You may have heard a rise the in amount of Fall Protection talk at trade shows and in your theatre. Sometimes what is required and when it is required can be a little confusing. Here’s a quick reference sheet with some tips and links that will hopefully help you when determining your Fall Protection needs. Remember that help is only a phone call away and there are specialists who can help you design, install, and equip a Fall Protection system.

Revisiting the Tenors

Breaking Character: Not long ago, I wrote a companion piece to my 1989 comedy Lend Me A Tenor and called it A Comedy of Tenors, and it recently received its world premiere in a co-production of the McCarter Theatre and the Cleveland Play House. I have referred to the new play elsewhere as a “sequel,” but I have to confess, I’m not fond of the word. In fact, the new play has turned out to be totally independent of the first, and the theater-goer does not need to know anything at all about Lend Me A Tenor in order to enjoy A Comedy of Tenors. They are their own plays set in their own worlds, and each play stands on its own.

8 Tricks to Take Better Photos With Your Phone

fieldguide.gizmodo.com: In the never-ending quest for great mobile photos, it can be tempting to ditch the camera app that comes with your phone for something far more advanced and exotic. However, if you know what you’re doing, you can get some high-quality results from the default camera app on your iPhone or Android device—and here’s how.

Lifetime TV to offer peeks behind the Broadway curtain

New Pittsburgh Courier: Lifetime TV’s “The Balancing Act” will feature several Broadway productions this summer, including behind-the-curtain peeks on “An American in Paris,” ”Finding Neverland” and “The King and I.”

13 Diverse Musicals Hamilton Fans Need Now

The Mary Sue: When Lin-Manuel Miranda departs Hamilton tonight, it will mark something of the end of an era for the groundbreaking Broadway musical. Though the show will run for many years to come—including a sit-down production in Chicago—it will do so without its creator at the helm. In honor of how dramatically Miranda’s show has changed the game for Broadway diversity, here are 13 lesser-known musicals from the past 20 years that helped paved the way.

Keynote: Mixed Reality and the Theatre of the Future

HowlRound: Let me start by saying that I’m not a theatremaker. But I am honored to be here, and I’m very happy to be invited to do this lecture, but at the same time very anxious because I am not a professional in the sense that I make theatre myself. Actually, I am a mixed reality designer and researcher. I am also a lecturer at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, where I teach master and bachelor courses embedded in education and research.

Why Queen & George Harrison’s Estate Probably Can’t Sue Over Having Their Songs Played At RNC

Consumerist: Regardless of your political leanings, you’ve probably heard this week that a number of prominent bands were unhappy to find out their music had been used without their permission at the Republican National Convention. However much these artists may not like having their famous tunes used for political purposes, they may not be able to do much about it.

What’s the buzz – A review of “Jesus Christ Superstar"

'Burgh Vivant: It is the last days of Jesus Christ (Jeff Way) as told by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in their rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and things are grim in Jerusalem. It’s just days before the execution of the so-called King of the Jews. Christ is racked with guilt, anger and frustration. It’s not his most godly moment. Hosanna in the lowest.

Grants to help fund 12 Pittsburgh professional artists

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: In the art world, as in most places, $10,000 can’t do everything. But it can do a lot. It can help fund a multidisciplinary opera. Or, help fund a collection of historic neighborhood images to be posted along an ugly chain-link fence bordering a highway that split the community years ago. It can also support an experimental documentary about a under-recognized poet or a live mock sports draft highlighting black Pittsburghers, former and current, in various professions.

Fruit of the Spirit: Developing Self-Control

ChurchProduction.com: Have you ever lost your cool? Have you ever exploded when you shouldn't have? Maybe your worship leader of a church member asked you something and you blew them off because you were in a hurry to do something else?

Paid Internships Lead To More Job Offers Than Unpaid Internships

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: Those highly coveted paid internship positions may have a value beyond the small salaries they purport to pay college students. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that paid internships are more likely to lead to a job offer and a higher salary than internships that didn’t pay.

How should TV shows and movies depict texting?

The Verge: How do you translate our increasingly digital lives into compelling, dynamic on-screen action? It’s one of the biggest questions facing the people making 21st century film and TV, and it remains largely unresolved. Some directors are setting their entire movies within the contexts of desktop screens and captured webcam footage; others are sticking with traditional conversations and analog characters, even if it means their show-worlds are more and more distant from the way we actually talk and live. Others still are trying to find a middle ground between convention and realism, with mixed results.

Shaping the Indie Opera Scene

NEA: There is modern dance and modern art, indie rock and experimental theater. Within the opera world however, tradition has maintained a firmer grip, and most of us still expect the grand themes, grand scale, and grand voices of the art form’s original 16th-century roots.

Local Theatre Costumers are Criminally Underappreciated

OnStage: We all know the most central creative roles in any theatrical production. There is the playwright, who is the prime artist responsible for creating a show to produce. There is the director, who – after reading the script and interpreting it – creates his or her own unique vision for the show, and then is responsible for executing it. Finally, there are the actors, who bring the show to life through the characters – some of which may be vastly different from their real life personas – that they each portray during the performance.

Make Up Designers: The Artists Who Create Character

OnStage: The word artist is ever-so-apt when it comes to stage makeup. An ordinary person sits down in the chair and succumbs to a metamorphosis at the hands of the make up artist. Working within a very small space with harsh lights and impatient people only too willing to interrupt their thoughts, these clever people remain calm on the outside whilst they transform.

Behold the World's Most Famous Eyewear

Daily Infographic: Before you enlarge the image, see how many pairs of specs you can match with the person or personality who wore them. How many did you get right? I didn’t fare too well, but at least I got Elton John, Geordi LaForge, and Cyclops. Those would have been embarrassing to miss. I didn’t guess Mr. Peanut and, appropriately, Waldo completely escaped me.

Night Caps

Pittsburgh in the Round: As Opera Theater of Pittsburgh’s “SummerFest” performances draw to a close, Night Caps, a series of five mini-operas that – combined – run for but an hour or so, received the first of only two performances last night in the Hilda Willis Room of Winchester Thurston. All with text written by Rob Handel, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s dramatic writing program, the five comic and dramatic “suites” are accompanied by the music of as many composers, and received a good deal of acclaim when the first four debuted in the first “SummerFest” in 2012, and when the fifth was first heard the following year. The setting of the action is a hotel managed by Miss Darlington (Kelly Lynch), with the assistance of Rudy, her bellhop (Elizabeth Bouk), both of whom make appearances in all five of the suites.

Lillias White to Star in MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, Directed by Phylicia Rashad

Breaking Character: Phylicia Rashad, who directed Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Taper in 2013, will direct this third installment of the playwright’s Century Cycle, which depicts the racism and exploitation in the music industry through a 1927 recording session in Chicago with a legendary blues singer.

What "Bunk Beds" have to do with the future of Broadway

The Producer's Perspective: A Bunk Bed show is a show that comes into a space for less than eight times a week, and does those shows on top of another show that’s in the same space. They share the space, with the show doing the most number of shows, or whoever was in the theater first, gets priority.

Shanghai: Asian Attractions Expo booms, new Disney park shines and TEA helps drive the conversation

TEA: For the Asia Pacific Division of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) the Asian Attractions Expo organized by IAAPA is the biggest event of the year - and the 2016 event June 14-16 in Shanghai was no exception. Reflecting a professional camaraderie of many years' standing between the two associations, TEA is a regular participant in IAAPA expos held annually in Europe and the US as well as Asia.

The Monologue Parity Project: How and Why I Decided to Tackle the Issue of Parity in Modern Theatre

HowlRound: I distinctly remember the experience of searching for my first monologue. I was fourteen and a freshman in high school, desperately looking for the first solo piece I would ever perform. It had to be perfect and truly me—an exciting hunt that triggered the familiar palm-tingling sensation I experienced whenever I had the distinct feeling of possibility. I call it my sixth sense for the theatrical world. My palms start to tingle whenever I see the curtain rise on a new play, and I know it’s a good one if they still tingle after it ends.

Mountain Playhouse's 'Cooks' races through madcap tale

TribLIVE: Mountain Playhouse in Jennerstown will be serving laughs and madcap farce July 19 to 31 in “Too Many Cooks.” “It is wild and funny,” says Guy Stroman, director of the comedic farce by Douglas E. Hughes and Marcia Kash. “The actors are eight of the funniest people I could've asked for. That is so important in farce. ... The timing is so important for the entrances and exits and deliveries of madcap decisions.”

Chicago Dramatists Adjusts to a New Generation

AMERICAN THEATRE: “Playwrights are far more nomadic now than they’ve ever been before,” says Chicago Dramatists artistic director Meghan Beals. But that’s not stopping Beals and her staff from doing a little spring cleaning. Last week the company, which has been developing and producing new work by emerging playwrights since it was founded in 1979 by the late Russ Tutterow, announced a complete overhaul, starting with adding a subtitle to its name.

Should there be an Independent Broadway Producer's League?

The Producer's Perspective: several years ago a group of Independent Touring Presenters (the people who bring National Tours of Broadway shows to a theater near you) saw a shift in their business, as a large corporate player started eating up a majority of the playing weeks on the road. They found it harder to get product, and therefore harder to survive. So to protect their interests, they banded together to form the Independent Presenter’s Network

How To Train Your Brain to Push Past Perfectionism

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: The fear of failure greatly impedes performance. That’s why most successful people are less likely to be perfectionists. After all, think about all of the quick, important decisions high-level people need to make every day. They can’t be plagued with the fear that every decision is a possible mistake. If surgeons waited until they felt absolutely sure that they were making the correct decision in life-threatening instances, they probably wouldn’t be saving many lives.

How Replicas Could Save Threatened Artworks

Conservation Lab | The Creators Project: The European company Factum Arte really knows how to fake it—with the best of intentions. In 2014, they unveiled a replica of Caravaggio’s Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence where the original painting once stood, before it was stolen in 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo. After digitally reconstructing the painting based on available photographic evidence, the team worked towards a “re-materialization” of the work: On a canvas coated with animal glue, pigment, and calcium carbonate (the type of ground Caravaggio would have used), the painting was digitally printed in several layers, retouched by hand to add texture, then stretched, varnished, and hung in its frame. It may only be an optical illusion, but visitors to the church can now forget, if only for a moment, what the space has lost.

The Tragedy of Mario and Juliet

DC Theatre Scene: Think you’ve seen all the Shakespeare you need to see? Think there is nothing more we can tap from this century’s old well of tales?? Can you possibly be even THINKING that we don’t need another retelling of R&J, but this time set in America at a confusingly vague time period?! You’re probably right.

7 Steps to Choosing Right Audience Seating

www.wengercorp.com: We don’t mean street-corner scalping or queuing in the rush line. On the day before the VenueConnect trade show opens in Minneapolis, we’re focused on buying the right audience seating for your venue, whether that’s a performing arts center, auditorium or historic theatre. We tapped our expert – Andrew Forsberg of Wenger – for his seven steps to successful seats

Are You Losing Money on Your Online Ticket Sales?

Selling Out: From a confusing layout to abandoned carts, there are plenty of ways you could lose ticket sales on your website. To help fix a few of these potential issues, check out this infographic from MarketingProfs. Not all of it applies to live entertainment (we’re not typically shipping actual products), but plenty of it can be used to create a better buying experience and bridge the convenience gap.

How Sansa's Development Is Mirrored in Her Fashion Throughout Game of Thrones

io9.gizmodo.com: Game of Thrones isn’t just a pricey show because of all those CGI dragons, British actors, and exotic locales. It also has some of the most thoughtful creatives building props, sets, and costumes. Especially costumes.

Redditor fusionesque has already done an comprehensive examinations of the costuming choices for Tyrion, Cersei, Jorah, and Daenerys, and now they’ve turned their focus to one of the show’s other most dynamic characters, Sansa.

A Brief History of Project Management

Visual.ly

Giant Spider Roams The Streets

Hackaday: There is a giant spider the size of a house stretching its massive, delicate legs as it parades through the French city of Nantes. Is the Arthropod Apocalypse upon us? Fortunately not, for this arachnid is the latest in a series of performance pieces by a French theatre company, La Machine.

Horrific Casting Notice Proof that Body Shaming Still Exists in Broadway Casting

OnStage: Recently New York City Center Encores! released their audition notices for their 2016-17 season. In addition to the show information, character descriptions and vocal ranges they were looking for, they also included the types of actresses they wanted to see. And when I say "type", I'm talking about their size.

DEWALT's New FLEXVOLT™ Battery Platform

Tool Box Buzz Tool Box Buzz: The insanely paced evolution of cordless batteries took another giant step forward last week when DEWALT introduced the World’s First convertible battery pack with their FLEXVOLT™ system. This unique new battery pack automatically switches between 20V Max and 60V Max (18 volt and 54 volt nominal) depending on the cordless tool that it’s connected to.

Accessibility in Theatre: Live Streaming

OnStage: Recently the off-Broadway play “Daddy Long Legs” live streamed a production. Playbill, via Facebook, streamed the song “Never Can Say Goodbye” from the musical “Disaster”. “She Loves Me” was streamed from Studio 54 in its entirety making history as the first Broadway show to be live streamed thanks to broadwayhd.com. The phenomenon “Hamilton” was recently filmed also, although there is no word on when or where this footage will be used. As it was stated in the pre-show introduction of “She Loves Me” Broadway is live every time eight times a week, and this trend could lead to something incredible. Theatres could use live streaming to increase accessibility, not only for those who cannot afford to travel to New York City, but for those who need assistance once they arrive in the building.

Bill Introduced To Create Copyright Small Claims Court... Which Copyright Trolls Are Going To Love

Techdirt: For a while now, some in the copyright community have been pushing for a copyright "small claims court" as an alternative to filing a federal lawsuit over copyright law. It's true that, especially for small copyright holders, the cost of filing a lawsuit may appear to be rather prohibitive. But it's not clear that a small claims court is the answer. A few years ago, we wrote about some potential concerns with such an approach, but have also admitted that if set up right, it could have some advantages. But that requires it be set up right.

The Beatles-Themed ‘Love’ Gets a ‘Refresh’

Variety: “Love” — as the Beatles told us in 1967, it’s pretty much all you need. And over the past 10 years, through more than 4,500 performances of Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas show of the same name, inspired by — and featuring — the music of the Fab Four, close to 8 million people have gotten what they need. But as it enters its 11th year, fans are getting a new look.

A Fan's Case For Putting Batman & Superman In The Public Domain

Techdirt: Let me start by saying it's obvious that this isn't going to happen. Nevertheless, let's consider the idea: should DC put its flagship superheroes in the public domain? Alex Schmidt over at Cracked (the comedy site that has caught our attention with its understanding of these kinds of topics before) makes the compelling case that they should

The Conjuring 2: Costume Q&A with Kristin Burke

Clothes on Film: It was late November, 2016 when I visited the set of The Conjuring 2 (directed by James Wan). The reason I never wrote about it for Clothes on Film or anywhere else was because of my official role on the day: I was playing an extra (or background artist if you like) during the film’s Maida Vale pub scene. Specifically this is the moment when real life husband and wife paranormal investigator team, Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) meet with noted experts in their field to discuss the validity of their current case, aka the Enfield poltergeist. I made the finished cut, by the skin of my teeth I imagine. If you are so inclined, look out for a lightly moustachioed fella with curly hair sitting at the bar. Yes, that’s me. Costume point of note: I was wearing my own vintage Levi jeans, seventies leather jacket and two-tone stack heel shoes. So my everyday look, really.

Why the Future of Movie Theaters May Look Wildly Different

Movie News | Movies.com: When Star Trek Beyond hits theaters this weekend, a handful of theaters will screen the movie in a multi-screen panoramic format called Barco Escape, featuring 20 minutes of footage created specifically for the format in conjunction with producer J.J. Abrams and director Justin Lin.

The Stage Where It Happens

Power Transmission Engineering June 2016: Although David Korins had an impressive resume of Broadway, film, television and music credits, the New York-based production designer had something to prove when interviewing for the pop culture phenomenon Hamilton. “I prepped for the interview like crazy, sketching out my ideas, presenting a scene breakdown, basically doing everything I could short of begging for the job,” Korins said. “Lin Manuel Miranda (the show’s creator and star) had developed an incredibly effective blueprint. I just wanted the opportunity to help tell his story.”

Theater Notes: What's next for CMU alums Odom, Goldsberry and 'Hamilton' co-stars

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Hamilton” said farewell this week to its leading players — creator-star Lin-Manuel Miranda, Phillipa Soo and Leslie Odom Jr., the Carnegie Mellon University grad who won best actor in a musical in June. Soon, the blockbuster Broadway show that has a top-ticket price of more than $800 will lose two more stars. It was reported Wednesday that two more Tony winners, Daveed Diggs and CMU alumna Renee Goldsberry, will be leaving at a date TBA. Ms. Goldsberry has been cast in a starring role in the new Netflix sci-fi drama “Altered Carbon,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

'renegade' is the pen that recycles plastic bottles into 3D printed sculptures

www.designboom.com: ‘renegade’ was born with the aim of being the perfect solid tool to eliminate overpriced 3D printing filaments and to save the environment by directly recycling and reusing household plastic waste for 3D printing. the sustainable technology specializes in one thing, and one thing only — it prints models by recycling plastic bottles, files, and bags. it does this providing a great 3D printing experience with no compromises.

The Math Behind the Perfect Climbing Rope

gizmodo.com: Rock and mountain climbers rely on strong, yet elastic ropes to keep them safe should they happen to fall. Now mathematicians at the University of Utah have come up with an equation to design an ideal climbing rope—one that would be safer and more durable. They described this perfect rope, and a promising class of materials that might be used to make it, in a recent paper in the Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology.

The Razor's Edge

Dimmer Beach: "On the razor’s edge": idiom, In a difficult or precarious position. If you work in our industry and never heard that phrase before, you will never forget it now. You know all too well that it is the nature of our business to work either balancing on the edge, or to be the one making decisions that put others on a tightrope.

Emmy’s Diversity: People of Color Represent 25% of Acting Nominations

Variety: For the second year in a row, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences can laugh at movies’ #OscarsSoWhite problem. Actors of color nabbed 18 of the major 73 acting nominations in the categories of lead and supporting performers in drama, comedy, and limited series. That’s just shy of 25%, and even an improvement over last year’s historic Emmys, where 16 actors of color were among the 75 nominees.

wysiwyg R37 Available Now

ZioGiorgio.com: Following six months of feature development and feedback from an intensive beta testing period, CAST Software announces wysiwyg Release 37. This major update delivers many impactful features to complement the very successful R36 that introduced a major change on User Interface with a new design, look and feel.

Diversity Only Possible When We See It As an Advantage

The Mary Sue: For all that people are talking about the importance of diversity across all fields, it seems that there are always those willing to pay the idea lip service while remaining apathetic and short-sighted. What’s sad is that it’s the people that are supposedly the most creative and imaginative that are guilty of being the most myopic.

‘Love’ Requires Eclectic Performers, Demanding Schedules

Variety: Cirque du Soleil’s “Love,” now celebrating its 10th anniversary at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, is an imaginative depiction of the fantasy behind the music of the Beatles. And the faces of those fantasies are those of the 68 performance artists who appear twice nightly in the show, five days a week, 476 shows a year. “The artists are the key,” says show director Dominic Champagne. “They are the link between the Beatles and the people in the seats.”

Director Pulls ‘Hamlet’ From Theater for a New Audience

The New York Times: It seemed to be a coup for Theater for a New Audience: Its first summer Shakespeare production would be “Hamlet,” with the much-lauded Tony-winning director Sam Gold at the helm, and the rising Hollywood star Oscar Isaac in the title role. The play, announced in April and scheduled to open next June at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, had been in the works since 2014. Tickets were sold to subscribers, and a creative team was assembled. But the production has fallen apart.

Theater Review: Small Mouth Sounds

Vulture: Aside from an occasional unicorn like The Humans, Off and Off–Off Broadway plays almost never dare transfer to Broadway anymore, which means that New Yorkers who miss them in their original limited runs don’t get a second chance. Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds seemed to be one such play: Despite rave reviews for its premiere in March of last year, it closed as scheduled after six weeks and basically disappeared. How many people saw it in Ars Nova’s 99-seat space? Perhaps 5,000.

Theatre artists: a liveable wage is our right and our responsibility

DC Theatre Scene: In her interview, “The Untenable Career of a Successful Philadelphia Theater Artist”, she candidly laid out the economic pitfalls of being a working artist: relying on grants or sponsors for funding, putting in 60+ hour weeks for scant pay, working tirelessly on increasingly successful projects only to struggle, still, with filling the calendar with work to pay rent. She felt that between the funders rejecting her grant requests for “doing it wrong” and an increasingly expensive environment, there was just no benefit to remaining a full-time artist.

Axanar: The $1 Million Star Trek Fan Film CBS Wants to Stop

Hit & Run : Reason.com: Since its launch in 1966, Star Trek has inspired intense devotion from generations of fans with five live-action television series spanning 50 years and a sixth set to launch in 2017. And this month's release of Star Trek Beyond, helmed by Fast and Furious director Justin Lin, will mark the franchise's 13th feature film.

The Unlikely Tool Filmmakers Are Using that Many VR Experiences Lack

The Creators Project: Virtual reality still has a long way to go, but as film directors and game developers continue to experiment with the technology, many think that the secret to take virtual experiences forward lies in theater. Much like VR, immersive theater—where audiences become active participants in the performance—creates escapist worlds, often replicating experiences where a user can take on a role as another. Hoping to become a player on the VR scene, the National Theatre (NT) in Longon has recently established an Immersive Storytelling Studio, a collaborative space for the creative industry, looking to experiment with dramatic storytelling using 360 and VR technologies, whether you are a filmmaker, writer, or theatrical director for fiction or nonfiction.

Hollywood Bowl Concert Breathes Fresh Magic Into Original Harry Potter

Variety: It’s hard to believe that it’s been 15 years since the first Harry Potter movie, since author J.K. Rowling’s literary creation crystallized into the form audiences followed over the course of the next decade on-screen. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” director Chris Columbus deserves credit for making that experience so iconic, of course, as do actor Daniel Radcliffe and the rest of the cast, though a unique summer-night cine-concert at the Hollywood Bowl reminds just how important John Williams’ contributions were in bringing the character to life.

JFilm partners with Pittsburgh Filmmakers to produce Three Rivers Film Festival

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: JFilm: The Pittsburgh Jewish Film Forum and Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts announced today that they are partnering to produce the Three Rivers Film Festival presented by Dollar Bank. The annual festival, in its 35th year and held each fall, is the oldest and largest in the region and had previously been produced by Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

If You Can Only Spare 15 Minutes A Week For LinkedIn, Do This

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: July is here and I bet your dance card’s pretty full. Barbecues, weddings, camping trips—who has time for LinkedIn? You, my friend. At least, you do if you don’t want all your brand-building work to fizzle. In the time it takes a pot of water to boil, you can reinforce your reputation and network. You don’t have to sacrifice progress for picnics. Just follow this minute-by-minute guide.

Here's How Those Big Signs Showing Bus Destinations Are Made

sploid.gizmodo.com: The iconic buses in London are red, big-ass double-deckers that use roller blinds to show the destination stop rather than the typical LED display. I think the blinds look a lot better than the digital displays. Here’s how McKenna Brothers makes them, from the cutting of the letters, to the making of the negative, to the actual printing process, to the rolling into the display unit, and everything in between.

This web instrument will compose your next low-budget sci-fi movie score

The Verge: The Musical Chord Progression Arpeggiator is a web experiment by Jake Albaugh that allows you to generate different musical scores based on a variety of different inputs. This tool allows users to create a series of arpeggios in a chord progression, resulting in a cycle of haunting, looping notes that rise and fall endlessly.

2016 Emmy Nominations: Beyonce Among Few Female Directing Contenders

Variety: A funny thing happened this year with the Emmy nominations for directing a comedy series: Most of the nods went to writers. Meanwhile, female directors are few and far between in the top series races. One notable entrant is Beyonce, who earned a mention, shared with Kahlil Joseph, for variety special for the hourlong avant-garde film that premiered on HBO in tandem with the release of her album “Lemonade” in April. Also in the mix this year is Danish helmer Susanne Bier, up for limited series for her work as the sole director of AMC’s six-hour limited series “The Night Manager.”

In A Maryland County, Taxing Student Actors In Pay To Play Plan

Arts Integrity Initiative: In an era of constrained school budgets, it is not all that unusual – albeit quite problematic in terms of diversity and equity – to find schools charging students and their parents “activity fees” to offset certain expenses, particularly in extracurricular pursuits, notably athletics. When the Board of Education of the Harford County Public Schools in Maryland voted on June 13 to impose a $100 per student activity fee on extracurricular drama programs in area high schools, and raised the fee charged to sports participants to the same rate (having previously been $50), it wasn’t, at a glance, necessarily seen as a targeted attack on the arts.

Uzo Aduba's Advice for Her 18-Year-Old Self

The Mary Sue: Eighteen is a bit of a messy time, but it can also be a really exciting time that’s filled with growing and learning. If you could write a letter to your 18-year-old self, what would you say? Y’know, aside from lottery numbers and stuff. Teen Vogue’s “letter to yourself at 18” series with stars like Emilia Clarke and Kerry Washington features stars talking to their adult-ish selves about things they’ve learned.

Helping an Audience Collaborate with One Another

HowlRound: The first immersive play I ever created was a short devised piece exploring the nightmares that mothers have when they are pregnant. In the third act of our four-act structure, we created a moment where the audience had to work together to solve a children’s jigsaw puzzle. We gave each audience member a single jigsaw piece at the top of the show, and when the time came, our main character pulled the puzzle board out from a part of the set and placed it before the crowd.

Behind the Tech of LOVE

www.cirquefascination.com: It is not just changes to choreography that have given “Love” a refreshed look and feel. Key changes to the show’s technical elements have given the show a new look. While video projection has always been part of “Love,” it was mainly seen in two panoramic projection surfaces on either side of the theater, as well as sporadic special surfaces, courtesy of 24 Christie 20k digital projectors. For the 10th anniversary refresh, show director Dominic Champagne and his team decided to add more.

Life of the Party

NFPA Journal: IN THE WEE HOURS of Sunday, May 29, Nancy Bermudez received a horrifying call from a social worker at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida. Katie, Bermudez’s 21-year-old daughter, was in the hospital and the outlook was dire. When Bermudez arrived, according to the Tampa Bay Times, she found her daughter unconscious and clinging to life with help from tubes and machines. “Katie, you have to fight,” Bermudez whispered to her. The next day Katie was dead.

The 10 Loudest Speakers and Subwoofers in the World

TheRichest: How do you measure sound? Experts say that the standard unit of measurement for sound levels is the dB scale. The scale, however, is much more complicated than you think. A dB level that is merely three notches higher is actually already twice as powerful.

On the Road to On-Demand 3D Printing

Top Stories | New Equipment Digest: We live in an on-demand society. Feel like a movie? Turn on Netflix and browse through thousands of movies your significant other doesn’t feel like watching. Hitting the clubs is more your thing? Order an Uber to have a stranger chauffeur you and your drunken friends around. But what about when you get to work and have to find a prudent (cheap) and expedient way to produce 1,000 complex thingamadoos, but your regular Chinese supplier just jacked up the price because its workers Googled what a fair living wage is.

Branson's former Icon theatre becomes a Dream

Branson Tri-Lakes News News Free: The hotbed of activity at the corner of Gretna Road and 76 Country Boulevard continued this week as producers of a new Branson show, “Dreams: A Classic Rock Fantasy,” began moving into the Dream Theatre, formerly known as the Icon Theatre, which is in the process of being remodeled. According to producers, they’re shooting for “the 19th or 20th” for a soft open.

Workers fall ill on set of new WWE movie

www.theprovince.com: The knockouts were all too real on the set of a wrestling movie filming in the Lower Mainland last month. A worker on WWE Studio’s The Marine 5: Battleground fell unconscious from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning during a shoot in an underground parkade, according to a recent WorkSafeBC incident report.

Multiracial women show Straight White Men the way in new State Theatre Company of SA play

Adelaide Now: BEHIND the world of the hit play Straight White Men are a group of very racially, socially and culturally diverse women — none more so than hip-hop DJ and soundtrack composer Busty Beatz.

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS Completes Its Journey

Breaking Character: A project nearly two years in the planning comes to full fruition later this month as Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy, The Norman Conquests, concludes a unique three-theatre collaboration in Vermont. An idea proposed by Dorset Theatre Festival Artistic Director Dina Janis to Weston Playhouse Theatre Company’s Steve Stettler was soon embraced by Northern Stage’s Carol Dunne, and the three companies were off and running.

Pushkin and Chekhov stagings to be shown in U.S. and Canada cinemas

Russia Beyond The Headlines: Productions of Moscow's leading theaters will be shown in cinemas all over the U.S. and Canada beginning in September 2016. The series, which will include eight productions, will run until June 2017. Two iconic plays – Vakhtangov Theater’s Eugene Onegin and the Moscow Art Theater's Cherry Orchard – have been selected as the first performances to be screened as part of the Stage Russia HD project.

Amtrak Announces 2016-17 Residency Writers

AMERICAN THEATRE: Amtrak has announced its 2016-17 Residency Program writers, which includes six playwrights. The program, now in its second year, sponsors a group of writers to work on their writing while on board long-distance trains.

NATEAC Presents Session on Automated Scenery in Older Broadway Theatres

Stage Directions: Reps from IATSE Local One, Theatre Consultants Collaboratives and Hudson Scenic will present a session at the upcoming NATEAC show titled “Teaching the Old House New Tricks or Modern Engineering in Old Broadway Theatres.” The session will focus on how small Broadway theatres actually are, and the challenges with putting modern-day, heavily automated shows into such spaces.

Who's Using The iPad Pro At Work? Tattoo Artists

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: It's 9:30 on a drizzly morning in San Francisco's SOMA district, and the day is just getting going at Seventh Son Tattoo. As I sit on a leather couch at the front of the studio with tattoo artist David Robinson, staffers are coming in, coffee is being brewed, and floors are being swept.

Pennsylvania film tax credit to increase, unused credits to be recycled due to new legislation

Pittsburgh Business Times: The budget deliberations in Harrisburg has achieved a modest increase in the value of the Pennsylvania Film Tax Credit that would nonetheless be the first increase in years, although it won't come until next fiscal year.

Don't turn students into consumers – the US proves it's a recipe for disaster

Higher Education Network | The Guardian: The UK government wants to bring market-based reform to the country’s universities. The idea is that higher education is like any other industry. There are inputs, such as students, subsidies, tuition revenue streams and philanthropic support. There are outputs, such as graduates, increased social mobility and higher standards of living. And there are external forces that regulate the industry’s behaviour, such as government agencies and accreditation groups.

Arts Center, I Choose You!

Butts In the Seats: I was walking in to work on Saturday and met a woman who has offices in the arts center who told me that there was a Pokemon in the fountain in front of the building. Sure enough, as part of the new augmented reality game Pokemon Go, when she pointed her phone at the fountain, the virtual map overlay showed a Pokemon in the fountain. She then lamented that someone else was battling to capture it. I assume it was the kid standing on the sidewalk just south of the fountain.

Complexes Cirque – The Peel Project

www.cirquefascination.com: A few years ago, at the dawn of our 100th issue, we took a fascinating look back at a number of the quotes, blurbs, and past announcements of new products, venues, or avenues Cirque du Soleil announced it would be exploring (that we then published), wondering what had come of them, as many had quietly disappeared or were shelved, never to be heard from again. We uncovered several in our search through our news archives and then spun our discoveries – or re-discoveries as it were – into a three-part series for Fascination, entitled: “Cirque’s Dreams of the Past: A What If?”

Grace and the Messy Tech

ChurchProduction.com: Here is a reminder for you; It’s all about Grace. Everything that we do in our service is about Grace. Yes, we get distracted by the excitement of working with technology to create experiences. We use technology that most people don’t know anything about and we use it to learn, create, express, and serve. But at the end of the day, everything that we do is about experiencing, sharing, and introducing people to God’s grace. We need it every day and everywhere because we as people are messy, and of our own accord, we are lost.

A Grammy Winner, A Circus Master, And An Apple Veteran On Career Reinvention

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: I grew up in Cupertino, California, before Apple ever existed. Later, I spent 12 years leading the company's music and entertainment business. My office at the time sat right where I'd picked apricots as a kid.

Leaving Apple to set out on a new career path wasn't easy. But as a Silicon Valley native, I found the entrepreneurial spirit I needed to reinvent myself was pretty close at hand.

Theater notes: National award for CMU’s John Clay

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Carnegie Mellon University rising senior John Clay III recently took first place and a $12,000 prize at the National Society of Arts and Letters musical theater competition. In annoucing the winners from the contest in Phoenix, the organization that has supported young performers since 1944 wrote of Mr. Clay:

“What he loves about theater is the storytelling aspect and how it draws people together under one roof. To be in theater and to change the political climate is an incredible endeavor. He is grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and continues to thank his mother for her patience in raising a stubborn lost boy.”

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Set Super Detailed

The Mary Sue: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child set designer Christine Jones took Pottermore behind the scenes to give a look at how the set of the play was put together. The Harry Potter Play Twitter states that the Thomas Wolfe quote, “Few buildings are vast enough to hold the sound of time” inspired the set, which suggests a lot of symbolism hidden in the imagery.

From Street Performer to Boho Billionaire: Meet Guy Laliberté

www.cirquefascination.com: The first time Guy Laliberté, 56, visited Ibiza, in the late 1970s, he paid his way as a busker, stilts walker, and fire-eater. Back then, the idyllic Spanish island was a hippie enclave frequented by nudists, out-of-favor aristos, and pedigreed thrill seekers on the hunt for mind-altering, round-the-clock bacchanalia. These days, Laliberté owns Can Soleil, a 64-acre spread on Ibiza’s northwest coast, purchased from the art collector and Mercedes-Benz heir Friedrich Christian “Mick” Flick, and he arrives via either his own plane or his 178-foot yacht, the Tiara. While the intervening years have seen the street performer–turned–Cirque du Soleil cofounder become a billionaire, they have done little to diminish his flair for seeing possibility in unlikely places.

Albany's Palace Theatre plans $65 million expansion

Times Union: The Palace Theatre is poised to undergo a $65 million transformation that if fully realized would include a new, smaller theater along North Pearl Street, an expansion of the historic original theater's lobby and stagehouse and a state-of-the-art video post-production facility that would be the only of its kind between Manhattan and Montreal.

Watch Industrial Light & Magic's VR team discuss the immersive future of Star Wars

The Verge: Lucasfilm has pushed Star Wars far beyond just movies and novelizations, and today at Star Wars Celebration the team at Industrial Light & Magic's xLab will be discussing how they're using virtual reality and augmented reality to create tools and immersive experience unlike anything seen before.

angus muir turns wellington cable car tunnel into a luminous LED landscape

www.designboom.com: n the capital of new zealand, designer angus muir has installed a permanent LED lighting installation inside a wellington tram tunnel. forming an arched configuration overhead, a sequence of curved luminaries are programmed to change in duration and hue, creating an ever-evolving landscape of color and light.

Any Way You Slice It – FoamCoat Is The Best Choice For Coating A Foam Sculpture

Rosco Spectrum: Josh Kigner, a freelance theatrical designer, was hired by Fort Point Theatre Channel to design scenery and props for a new play that was debuting at Boston Playwrights Theatre. The script called for a large Greek plaster sculpture of a man that was low on cost, could be easily carried on stage, had a rigged arm that could break on cue. This eliminated the choice of finding a rental, so Josh worked his magic with 1/4″Insulation foam and turned to Rosco for the rest.

Tony-Winning FUN HOME to Perform Benefit Concert at Dr. Phillips Center for Equality Florida

Showbiz Chicago: Fun Home, the Tony® Award-winning Best Musical, will play a one-night-only benefit concert performance at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando on Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 7 p.m, the show’s producers announced today. This performance will be a concert version of the groundbreaking musical to raise money for Equality Florida and the LGBTQ community of Orlando. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10 a.m.

An Experimental Puppet Show Teaches the Key to Communication

The Creators Project: Plenty of talk gets flung around the world of The Creatures of Yes, but is anyone really listening? In the premiere of the newest episode of Jacob Graham’s experimental, retro-inspired puppet show, premiering today on The Creators Project, the Creatures have all sorts of conversations with one another. “The idea behind the video,” says Graham, “is about people who are talking to one another but not really communicating. One person says something and then the other person says ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and then says something completely different.”

Women of NYMF 2016

THE INTERVAL: Throughout July we’ll be featuring women involved in this year’s New York Musical Festival. NYMF’s goal is to support the development of new and diverse works of musical theatre, and over the coming weeks we’ll be spotlighting a mix of the women involved: from actresses to directors, from Tony nominees to those just beginning their careers. The shows they’re a part of represent a range of styles and subject matters, and are all at different stages of development. We visited them at rehearsal studios throughout Manhattan to find out about their shows and their thoughts on the theatre.

Life is a Dream: Feminist Surrealist Theatre Art

OnStage: Lauren Hlubny is an emerging experimental theatre director and choreographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Hlubny has a background in classical ballet, art history, anthropological research, and theatre. These, along with basic training in music and circus arts, give Hlubny a unique and informed hold on conducting creative rehearsals and shaping cohesive productions where people can speak completely different artistic “languages” while pushing the boundaries of contemporary performance and multi-disciplinary art. Some highlights of Hlubny’s work include a 40-minute surrealist dance-theatre work (DALI) a conversation between a cellist, ballerina, and actor (This Is Not A Table For Three), and a science-dance-theatre piece created in conjunction with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Neuroscience Department

What it Took to Win “America’s Greatest Makers”

makezine.com: Anubha Sacheti, 39, a pediatric dentist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a member of Team Grush, which beat out 23 other teams to win this year’s “America’s Greatest Makers” $1 million funding prize, awarded at the end of the Intel-sponsored TBS television series’ first season.

A Field Where Working Moms Aren’t Punished

The Atlantic: There’s a question that still, however unfairly, haunts many working women: whether marriage and children are bad career moves. While the size of the gender pay gap is often disputed, there is one gulf that appears to be pretty indisputable: Gender pay disparities are the most dire for married women.

The Monologue Parity Project: How and Why I Decided to Tackle the Issue of Parity in Modern Theatre

HowlRound: I distinctly remember the experience of searching for my first monologue. I was fourteen and a freshman in high school, desperately looking for the first solo piece I would ever perform. It had to be perfect and truly me—an exciting hunt that triggered the familiar palm-tingling sensation I experienced whenever I had the distinct feeling of possibility. I call it my sixth sense for the theatrical world. My palms start to tingle whenever I see the curtain rise on a new play, and I know it’s a good one if they still tingle after it ends.

Arts Participation: It's the Experience, Stupid.

Clyde Fitch Report: “They didn’t come for the quality, they came for the experience.” This was the conclusion that a colleague and I independently reached regarding a series of sold-out evenings of traditional opera populated by enthusiastic audiences of young people at LoftOpera in Gowanus. We had each joined some 500 people, a pretty diverse group, who willingly sat on concrete (or uncomfortable portable seating) throughout a full evening of music, acting and singing, mixed with socializing, cheap or free booze, and a real scene.

Study Says 95 Percent of Disabled Characters Are Played by Able-Bodied Actors

jezebel.com: A new study revealed what we probably all would have guessed about how disabilities are represented in media: Rarely, and usually not by people actually living with those disabilities.

Learn Resin Casting Techniques: Cold Casting

Hackaday: Sometimes we need the look, feel, and weight of a metal part in a project, but not the metal itself. Maybe you’re going for that retro look. Maybe you’re restoring an old radio and you have one brass piece but not another. It’s possible to get a very metal like part without all of the expense and heat required in casting or the long hours in the metal fabrication shop.

Top 10 Teen Collections

Breaking Character: Theatre and the performing arts are increasingly popular activities among many teens and young adults. More plays written specifically for teen actors are being created every year through festivals, competitions and programs across the country that promote the critical engagement of teenagers and young adults in the arts.

A Giant Illuminated ‘Castle in the Sky’ Ship Built for the Studio Ghibli Exhibition in Tokyo

Colossal: Perched in the sky fifty-two stories above Tokyo, a new exhibition celebrates a 30-year retrospective of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio famous for anime films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. The centerpiece of the Studio Ghibli Expo is a room filled with various airships from several Ghibli films, specifically a sizeable illuminated replica of a ship from Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky that rises and falls as if airborne, complete with dozens of whirring propellers.

The Cirque and Competitive Sports

www.cirquefascination.com: On Thursday, June 23rd, we Cirque fans got the shock of our lives (well, to be honest, the next in a long line of shocks…), and all it took was an article in the New York Times announcing a new project Cirque was undertaking. We didn’t even have to look past the first sentence before clutching our chests, our hearts palpitating (it’s the big one, Elizabeth!): “Cirque du Soleil, known for breathtaking acrobatics, and the NFL, known for bone-crushing hits, today announced plans for an NFL attraction in Times Square, a first-of-its-kind attraction in the heart of New York City.” WAIT. SAY WHAT?

#63 Around the World with Lindsay Jones

in 1: the podcast: This week we welcome back the very first guest to ever sit down for an interview, it’s the return of Sound Designer Lindsay Jones! But this is no ordinary episode. Lindsay is the undisputed king of travel tips, tricks, hacks, secrets, and every other solution to making life on the road as stress free as possible and he joins us today to share with us his wealth of knowledge and experience.

Preserving Passion in the Face of Rejection

HowlRound: In the prologue of his book Audition, Michael Shurtleff posits: “for every actor who gets hired for a part, fifty or a hundred or two hundred do not.” He claims that “an actor is forever getting rejected” and concludes that it’s incredible that actors persevere in the face of such overwhelmingly negative odds. Indeed, actors, as well as playwrights, directors, and designers all face rejection throughout their careers. Coping with rejection and remaining resolute in your artistic goals can be challenging; however, by understanding rejection, we can begin to positively impact our craft and preserve our passion.

7 Things You Need To Do The Moment You Lose Your Job

www.lifehack.org: If you’ve ever lost your job you can probably relate to the initial shock and disbelief that’s often followed closely by such feelings as confusion and anger. When you lose your job, particularly if it was unexpected, it can be confusing to know exactly what to do next. These tips will set you up to get back into the workforce as soon as possible.

We go inside the escape-room phenomenon

Art Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: We nearly escaped. My friend and I were trying to decipher the final riddle of an ancient Egyptian tomb before our oxygen supply ran out. We had discovered secrets, solved brain-teasers and connected clues regarding an intrepid explorer’s lasting mystery, surrounded by artifacts and hieroglyphics. But time had expired. Then the co-founder of Escape Room Pittsburgh entered and told us we didn’t make it out of Tomb Explorer.

Kit Harington: Prejudice against 'responsive' audiences threatens to kill theatre

News | The Stage: Doctor Faustus star Kit Harington has leapt to the defence of young theatregoers, claiming that prejudice against “energised and responsive” audiences could kill theatre for good.

The actor hit back against producer Richard Jordan, who complained in The Stage that audience behaviour at a recent performance of Doctor Faustus left him “despairing”.

'The Bikinis' Return to the Long Wharf - An Interview with Ray Roderick

OnStage: After two years, the Long Wharf Theater welcomes back “The Bikinis” on July 13-31, a fun, coming-of-age musical story of four young women growing up on the Jersey shore. Overnight, they become a singing girl group sensation of the 1960s and then a one-hit-wonder looking to fit in a country with growing pains of its own. One of the show’s creators, Ray Roderick, was nice enough to take time out to talk with OnStage about their show, “The Bikinis,” his upcoming shows, jukebox musicals, and his many hats.

3D-printing pen turns bottles and bags into statues and spaceships

www.gizmag.com: 3D-printing pens change plastic filaments into a gel that hardens when it hits the air, allowing users to create sculptures freehand. A new company thinks that using all that plastic is expensive and wasteful, and is aiming to create a new kind of 3D pen that does its thing using old plastic bottles, bags and even folders. It's called the Renegade and it's seeking backers on Kickstarter now.

Jim Digby Joins Behind the Scenes’ Board

Stage Directions: The founder and chairman of the Event Safety Alliance, Jim Digby, accepted an invitation from Behind the Scenes Foundation to join their board of directors. Digby has more than 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry.

Convention Center, stagehands' union investigate payroll practices

philly-archives: With the Democratic National Convention less than three weeks away, both the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the stagehands' union are investigating an alleged overbilling scheme by some of the union's top officers. Michael Barnes, who leads Local 8 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), has ousted Anthony Tortorice Sr., vice president of Local 8, and his son, Jonathan Tortorice, the secretary-treasurer, a union source said.

Hitchhiker’s Guide | Basics of AutoCAD Modifying

blogs.autodesk.com: The majority of operations you perform in AutoCAD will likely modify existing objects: Erase, move, copy, offset, and so on. The basics of AutoCAD modifying offer you several powerful methods for selecting individual and multiple objects. Duplicating or mirroring collections of objects is an easy and efficient way to work.

Alumni Dive Into Pixar Storytelling

www.cmu.edu/news: When a fish swims on the big screen, it usually takes a school to get it there. "Finding Dory," which opened June 17, is the latest Pixar Animation Studios film to have Carnegie Mellon University alumni working behind the scenes. In this instance, it's Freddie Sulit and Aaron Lo, graduates of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), which is part of CMU's Integrative Design, Arts & Technology (IDeATe) Network.

Podcast Episode 80 - Tony Award-Winning Producers, Sue Frost and Randy Adams

The Producer's Perspective: In 2016, finding a good business partner may be harder than finding a good life partner. Unfortunately, there’s no Tinder for business (hmmmm, new app idea anyone?). And in an industry like ours, which can be more frustrating than trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube in the dark after someone has peeled off all the colored stickers, a great partner can help get you much further than you can get on your own . . . and faster.

Cirque du Soleil, Wowing the World

www.cirquefascination.com: Many of you will have witnessed the incredible acrobatics, death defying gymnastics and mind blowing circus and theatre that is Cirque du Soleil. The company which employs over 4,000 people from over 40 countries helps to bring aspects of our sport to a huge audience in numerous shows spanning the globe. Look closely the next time you watch a show and you could recognize some of the acts and support staff.

Meet the Chemist Who Accidentally Created a New Blue Pigment

The Creators Project: Synthetic shades of blue have been sought after since Antiquity, with varying successes along the way. Now the world’s newest blue pigment, YInMn (so called because it’s made up of Yttrium, Indium and Manganese) was cooked up by accident by a team of chemists led by Mas Subramanian at Oregon State University in 2009. They were conducting experiments to study the electronic properties of manganese oxide, but what they got instead is a whole new pigment.

Buy Khaleesi-Worthy Jewelry from <i>Game of Thrones</i>' Costume Designer Herself

The Creators Project: Game of Thrones' stellar costume design never fails to amaze: take the unforgettable moment in Season 6 where the various elites of King's Landing got dressed up for the big trials, for example. Now, that level of expertise can turn your own daily drudgery into a Khaleesi-worthy fit, thanks to a new line of jewelry designed by the HBO series' own costume designer, Michele Clapton. MEY Designs is a collaboration between Clapton and jewelry designers Yunus Ascott and Eliza Higginbottom, gliding onto the scene with an epic dragon necklace á la Daenerys Targaryen.

Stage review: Veteran actors tackle Beckett for TACT theater

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Summertime, and the theater is easy . . . except that it isn’t always, not when it’s Samuel Beckett. Welcome a young theater, TACT, offering a double bill of the master’s solo shows, “Krapp’s Last Tape” and “Not I,” for just two weekends, through Saturday. It’s about 80 minutes in all, about half of it wordless and a good part of the rest stuffed with words racing by.

Valley Theatre Awards Names 2016 Winners

Stage Directions: The Las Vegas theatre world gathered at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts on Monday, July 11 to honor and celebrate the stand out productions, performances and designs of the year. The Nether from Cockroach Theatre won Best Play; Heathers from Off-Strip Productions won Best Musical; and A Summons from the Tinker to Assemble the Membership in Secret at the Usual Place won the Audience Choice Award.

How a Podcast Created the Must-Attend Event of the Summer

OnStage: Summer in New York City is a special time of the year. Every day feels like there is something special going on here. For Braodway fans, it's a great time of the year as well. There are outdoor concerts in Bryant Park, Shakespeare in Central Park and theatre festivals all around 42nd St.

But one event is providing theatre fans an up close and personal experience with some of their favorite Broadway stars, at the fraction of the cost of seeing a Broadway show. And it's become the must-attend event of the summer.

Elizabeth Bruce's Theatrical Journey, arts in the community

DC Theatre Scene: A phone rings. The voice on the other end reports that there’s an emergency: a teddy bear has broken its leg and needs to see a doctor right away. Thankfully, the phone was answered by teaching artist Elizabeth Bruce and her young students are now on the case.

Giant Slip-and-Slides Coming to Chicago This Month

NBC Chicago: What's better than a slip-and-slide in the middle of summer? Three giant, 300-foot slip-and-slides in the middle of Montrose Beach. "Slide the City," known for bringing blocks-long slicked slides to cities across the country, lays down three padded slip-and-slides on July 30 on Cricket Hill at the North Side beach in Chicago.

NAMT 2016 Festival: ‘Benny & Joon’ Musical Among Projects on Slate

Variety: A musical adaptation of the 1993 Johnny Depp movie “Benny & Joon” is among the projects on tap for the National Alliance for Musical Theater’s 2016 Festival of New Musicals, the annual industry showcase that has yielded Broadway titles including “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “The Drowsy Chaperone” and the upcoming “Come from Away.”

Another FBI-themed TV series will film in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh will soon be crawling with more fake FBI agents: In addition to Netflix’s currently-filming FBI profiler drama “Mindhunter,” soon Discovery Channel’s scripted, eight-hour limited drama series “Manifesto” will begin filming in Western Pennsylvania. A Lionsgate production from executive producers Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti (“House of Cards”), “Manifesto” follows FBI profiler Jim “Fitz” Fitzgerald as he gathers intelligence to ultimately bring to justice Ted Kaczynski, aka “the Unabomber.”

How to Generate a Color Scheme From Any Photo

www.makeuseof.com: A quick search on Pinterest for color swatches reveals a wide array of gorgeous color combinations that are taken from beautiful photographs. Many of these swatches come from sites like Design Seeds and In Color Balance, but did you know you can just as easily create these types of swatches yourself?