Tony Mazzo: Masterminding the Complex 30-ft Lift of a Broadway Theater in New York City

Engineering News-Record: When the project team for TSX Broadway—a partial demolition and significant renovation and rebuild of a theater district tower in New York City—wanted to perform a truly challenging feat of engineering, it called in Tony Mazzo at Urban Foundation/Engineering. Project developer L&L Holding Company had a vision for the 110-year-old landmark Palace Theater that required it to be elevated 30 ft within the renovated tower’s footprint to create space for new street-level retail.

Vyjayanthimala to Rekha to ‘Kasturba’: Bhanu Athaiya marked before-after in Indian costume design

theprint.in/features: What is common between the iconic orange-coloured, glittery ‘Amrapali saree’ worn by Vyjayanthimala for the 1966 movie and the starched, cotton sarees worn by Rohini Hattangadi as Kasturba Gandhi in Gandhi (1982)? It’s Bhanu Athaiya whose nimble hands envisaged, designed and made the sarees iconic. The work of India’s first Oscar winner, in costume design category, is on display at Bikaner House in New Delhi. At the exhibition titled The Legacy of Bhanu Athaiya, the Amrapali saree reminds visitors how it is both a work of art and an iconic moment in the fashion history of 1960s Bollywood.

Learn How to Safely Intervene If You See Bullying or Harassment in Your Workplace

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Do you know how to safely intervene if you see a co-worker being bullied or intimidated? Did you know there are different ways to intervene to match your comfort level? In just 90 minutes you will learn five easily accessible tools, illustrated by relevant scenarios, for use in any workplace to safely intervene without the worry of retaliation. The next free Behind the Scenes webinar is on Monday, February 6 at 7pm EST. Additional webinars will be offered on April 30 and July 17.

For Some Russian Dissident Theatremakers, the Future Is Unclear

HowlRound Theatre Commons: On the Georgian coast of the Black Sea, the resort town of Batumi finds itself awash with visitors from abroad this winter. The town is usually reduced to only the local population during the chillier months, but this year thousands of displaced Russian men, sometimes termed draft-dodgers, occupy the glittering hotels and high-rise condominiums that sprawl across the rocky coastline.

Theatre Washington announces 2022 Helen Hayes nominations

DC Theater Arts: At a celebration on January 30, 2023, honoring theater excellence on stages across the Washington, DC, area, theater artists, administrators, patrons, and special guests gathered in the National Theatre’s Helen Hayes Gallery for Theatre Washington’s announcement of nominees for the 37th Helen Hayes Awards, which will be presented on Monday, May 22, at an event at the Anthem.

Award-Winning Design Team Set For Broadway-Bound ‘The Wiz’

Deadline: The Wiz is getting ready for the road to Broadway with an award-winning design team, including Oscar-winning Black Panther production designer Hannah Beachler and Emmy-winning Watchmen costume designer Sharen Davis.

Sustainable Lighting Design: 5 Ways to Go Circular Through Design for Disassembly (DfD)

LightFair Blog: Improving sustainability in lighting design requires making small changes, applying them consistently, and designing products with the end in mind. This is called Design for Disassembly (DfD) and in this article we’ll outline five ways you can use DfD to build sustainability right into your products.

Why You Can't Stream Broadway Shows

Playbill: These days, it seems like you can get anything on demand: food, toilet paper, any movie or TV show ever made. The only thing that you can’t get whenever you want? Broadway shows. You might be flipping through the streaming services Broadway HD or Disney+ and wonder: why can’t I stream the shows running on Broadway now?

Artists Rep Names Lava Alapai Associate Artistic Director

AMERICAN THEATRE: Artists Repertory Theatre (ART) has named Lava Alapai to be their new associate artistic director. Alapai, a resident artist at the theatre, will participate in a one-year leadership residency with artistic director Jeanette Harrison as part of Artists Rep’s DNA: Oxygen program.

Hayley Finn Named Theater J Artistic Director

AMERICAN THEATRE: Theater J, a program of the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center (EDCJCC), has announced that Hayley Finn will become its new artistic director on Feb. 1. Finn will lead the theatre alongside managing director David Lloyd Olson. Finn served for 16 years as associate artistic director at Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. She succeeds previous artistic director Adam Immerwahr, who left last summer.

Industry Coalition Asks Congress to Break Up LN/Ticketmaster

www.ticketnews.com: A consortium of music-industry groups issued a lengthy statement in the wake of last week’s Senate hearing looking at competition concerns with Live Nation/Ticketmaster and the industry as a whole – and they are asking that steps be taken to break up the industry giant. The joint statement, issued by the Future of Music Coalition, Artist Rights Alliance, American Association of Independent Music, Music Workers Alliance, and Union of Musicians & Allied Workers, focuses on the industry side of the dominating nature of the Live Nation Entertainment/Ticketmaster business, and how that negatively impacts others in the space.

Students Behind Cancelled High School Production of Indecent Frightened of Hateful Attacks

Playbill: On January 5, a high school production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent was cancelled in Jacksonville, Florida, in what students believed was an act of antisemitic and homophobic censorship. Playbill initially reported on the then-unfolding story at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts shortly after student Madeline Scotti posted an Instagram video announcing the production’s cancellation, citing Florida’s recent “Don’t Say Gay” law as the culprit.

The Diary of Anne Frank's Broadway premiere

The Forward: The Diary of Anne Frank’s premiere at the Cort Theatre in autumn of 1955 was a typical Broadway opening. Until it wasn’t. The play had just completed an out-of-town tryout at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and the reviews had been good. “It was a big deal; it went very well,” Eva Rubinstein, who played the role of Margot Frank, told me of the Philadelphia run. “They made some minor changes, but not a lot, and the same cast came to New York.” Even so, the cast was nervous.

What Can We Learn From Broadway Musicals?

AMERICAN THEATRE: From a 21st-century perspective, the template Oscar Hammerstein II helped set for the Broadway musical, integrating story, song, and dance, can seem old-fashioned. So, too, his depiction of the social order, with critiques of prejudice embedded in narratives in which love conquers (almost) all.

It might be scary but making phone calls can be good for young people's wellbeing

theconversation.com: Some people might remember the days of coming back from school eager to call a friend, sometimes sitting for hours talking about anything and everything. However, today most young people rarely call each other. The very idea of calling someone or receiving a call seems to cause anxiety in many.

Is the Musical Progressive?

AMERICAN THEATRE: As in many subcultures, musical theatre lovers have secret handshakes that allow us to recognize each other. Say you are speaking to a group and out slips the phrase, “And things being as they are…” If, before you can utter another syllable, someone emphatically interjects, “The back of the police station is out!”, you know you are with your people.

‘How to Dance in Ohio’ producers offer free day of accessibility education to industry professionals

Broadway News: Producers Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Rudin, also known as P3 Productions, are offering a free day of professional development on anti-ableism and inclusivity called Accessibility Day. Scheduled for Jan. 31, the event’s programming will center around disability awareness and education that emerged from the team’s musical-in-development “How to Dance in Ohio.”

The Pittsburgh Symphony, along with the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, perform the score to 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'

onstagepittsburgh.com: As conductor Moon Doh takes the stage with a Harry Potter wand in hand, you get the feeling that something, dare I say…magical is about to occur. Doh introduces the evening’s performance as a “journey from film to life” as the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh are set to perform the score to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

IATSE DEI Committee Statement on Tyre Nichols

IATSE: A message from the IATSE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee in response to the recently released police footage of the murder of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police

Sunset Boulevard Is the 'Grand Prize' Of Theatre, According to Stephanie J. Block

Playbill: Stephanie J. Block feels that after spending almost four decades in the theatre industry, it's time for her to take a turn as Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber-penned Hollywood tale of Sunset Boulevard.

Theater Alliance's passage to India: A personal account

DC Theater Arts: In August of 2022, I was contacted by Raymond Caldwell, the artistic director of Theater Alliance, asking if I was interested in joining a few other actors on a three-week U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to India to create work around diversity. I didn’t even think to ask what exactly the work would entail before agreeing to go. Unbeknownst to me, this had been a project years in the making and would truly become a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The Theatre of Images: The Early Years

AMERICAN THEATRE: “The Theatre of Images”—a term coined in the early 1970s by Michel Guy, director of the Avignon Festival in France, and popularized by Bonnie Marranca in Performing Arts Journal—was, along with performance art, the major development in the live arts of the ’70s.

Review: Dynamic Dixon Empowers Love-Hate Relationship with the Constitution

onstagepittsburgh.com: Humorous and harrowing are descriptions that don’t usually go hand in hand, but that’s the thing about What the Constitution Means to Me. It defies … no, it amends expectations of what a play can be.

Theater About the Holocaust, from The Diary of Anne Frank to Leopoldstadt

New York Theater: On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day – designated by the United Nations every January 27th, because that was the date in 1945 when Soviet soldiers liberated the 6,000 remaining prisoners at Auschwitz, the Nazis’ largest death camp – it’s worth pointing to the continuing role of theater in keeping the public aware and the lessons of the Holocaust alive.

Actors' Equity Condemns Political Attacks Against Drag and Trans Performers

Playbill: Theatrical union Actors' Equity, which represents actors and stage managers on Broadway and other professional stages across the country, has released a statement condemning recent political attacks aimed at trans and drag performers.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

What Makes Little Shop of Horrors Such a Fan Favorite?

TheaterMania: I have always had an affinity for Little Shop of Horrors. Maybe it's Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's score. Maybe it's because my birthday is on the 21st day of September. Whatever the reason, I've never attended as many productions of Little Shop as I did in the last year and a half

Posted by David at 1/27/2023 10:39:00 AM

All the Times Phantom of the Opera Made History on Broadway

Playbill: Thirty-five years ago, a new musical took the Broadway stage on the heels of its smash-hit success on the West End. The cultural response, both in London and New York was described as "Phantom-mania," with theatregoers around the nation buzzing about the spectacle-filled melodrama full of mystery, suspense, and romance.

Posted by David at 1/26/2023 11:56:00 AM

Stage Manage on Broadway

Dramatics Magazine Online: Jereme Kyle Lewis has been stage managing on Broadway for 10 years. He says, “The work is hard. The road to get [to Broadway] is hard. But the payoff to be living my dreams and to be a working artist is worth all the late nights, all the times I was told no or when I didn’t get the gig.”

Posted by David at 1/27/2023 10:38:00 AM

Surprising No One, Three People Needed Medical Treatment on ‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Set

The Mary Sue: In fact, real life Squid Game is antithetical to the very THESIS of Squid Game: society itself is a rat race game with rules made by the elite, and we need to all collectively STOP RUNNING and rise up against them. Sounds a bit like a Communist revolution, right? Well, that seems to be the reality that Squid Game is hinting at with regards to the future of the show.

Posted by David at 1/27/2023 10:35:00 AM

Why aren’t there any legal protections for the children of influencers?

Salon.com: When it comes to sharing content of children on social media – particularly via sponsored posts and brand deals – what's legal isn't always what's ethical. Influencer Brittany Dawn, who initially gained a following for her fitness workouts before pivoting to religious content, recently came under fire for monetizing her foster child on social media.

Posted by David at 1/23/2023 10:20:00 AM

House of Stones delivers Black-led narrative about four brothers and a funeral

Pittsburgh City Paper: House of Stones started with Black Pittsburgh artists contemplating what a story that came from their authentic experiences as Black men in the city would look like. As these conversations progressed, the narrative came into focus: the relationship between Black men and their fathers.

The United Ukrainian Ballet Company will perform Giselle at the Kennedy Center

NPR: Some 60 Ukrainian dancers are preparing to travel from The Hague, Netherlands, to Washington, D.C., where they will perform Giselle, with choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, at the Kennedy Center.

NY Lawmakers, AG Warn MSG Over its Continued Ban of Lawyers

www.ticketnews.com: Madison Square Garden and its CEO James Dolan continued to defy growing calls for it to stand down with its policy banning lawyers representing clients in litigation against it, despite new pressure from lawmakers and state Attorney General Letitia James this week.

What Makes Little Shop of Horrors Such a Fan Favorite?

TheaterMania: I have always had an affinity for Little Shop of Horrors. Maybe it's Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's score. Maybe it's because my birthday is on the 21st day of September. Whatever the reason, I've never attended as many productions of Little Shop as I did in the last year and a half

Pittsburgh duo slowdanger continues dance series with memory 7: farthest field

Pittsburgh City Paper: The Pittsburgh duo slowdanger has, over the past several years, unfolded a story through movement. The latest chapter of that story, titled the memory series, will play out at The Space Upstairs.

Stage Manage on Broadway

Dramatics Magazine Online: Jereme Kyle Lewis has been stage managing on Broadway for 10 years. He says, “The work is hard. The road to get [to Broadway] is hard. But the payoff to be living my dreams and to be a working artist is worth all the late nights, all the times I was told no or when I didn’t get the gig.”

International Association of Venue Managers Oak View Group Forms National Theater Alliance -

blog.iavm.org: Oak View Group has announced the creation of a national Theater Alliance with an initial roster of venues in markets across North America that will benefit from collective buying power, routing of non-traditional content, sponsorship opportunities, industry best practices and resources, as well as shared proceeds from an annual fundraising gala.

For a Pioneering Artist, the Joy of Having Done the Work His Way

The New York Times: If you keep a musician friend for over 50 years, as the experimental director Ping Chong has done with Meredith Monk, just maybe at your retirement celebration, that friend will sing you a song. And so on Wednesday night at the performance space Chelsea Factory, a luminous Monk sat down at a keyboard, reminisced about Chong when she first knew him — as a pony-tailed student in her dance class, wearing bell-bottom jeans — and played “Gotham Lullaby.”

THE PIANO LESSON to be Filmed for the Lincoln Center Theatre on Film and Tape Archives

www.broadwayworld.com: The Broadway revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson will be filmed tonight for the Lincoln Center Theatre on Film and Tape Archives, therefore providing all theatre professionals a chance to watch the most successful Wilson production in Broadway history.

Surprising No One, Three People Needed Medical Treatment on ‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Set

The Mary Sue: In fact, real life Squid Game is antithetical to the very THESIS of Squid Game: society itself is a rat race game with rules made by the elite, and we need to all collectively STOP RUNNING and rise up against them. Sounds a bit like a Communist revolution, right? Well, that seems to be the reality that Squid Game is hinting at with regards to the future of the show.

Meyer Sound Introduces 2100-LFC Low-Frequency Control Element

LightSoundJournal.com: Meyer Sound announces the 2100-LFC low-frequency control element, a powerful new loudspeaker that extends the advanced technology of the PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeaker down to the lowest limits of audibility.

Fanny Soulard | Your Interviews

Women in Lighting: I’ve been exploring and learning about lighting design with a transversal itinerary through the industry – working successively for an Italian manufacturer, Mexican architects’ studios, a French electrical material supplier, French, Vietnamese and Australian lighting studios, and currently an Australian engineering company. These opportunities brought me the past fifteen years to different locations, including Argentina, Mexico, Spain, France, Australia and my ultimate setup - Vietnam.

Bay Area arts leader Debbie Chinn explores her Chinese immigrant family history through memoir

Datebook: Long before Debbie Chinn was named the new executive director of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley last November, she made her debut as a hula dancer at her departed parents’ restaurant on New York’s Long Island.

'Rust' A.D. Dave Halls Gives His Version of Shooting

Variety: Dave Halls, the first assistant director on “Rust,” became the first person held accountable in the death of Halyna Hutchins when he agreed to plead to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.

All the Times Phantom of the Opera Made History on Broadway

Playbill: Thirty-five years ago, a new musical took the Broadway stage on the heels of its smash-hit success on the West End. The cultural response, both in London and New York was described as "Phantom-mania," with theatregoers around the nation buzzing about the spectacle-filled melodrama full of mystery, suspense, and romance.

The strength of community

Chicago Reader: At the end of September 2020, I wrote a piece for the Reader titled “Black artistic leaders take charge at several Chicago theaters,” which framed the influx of new (and preexisting) Black leadership in Chicago theater against the backdrop of a historic disruption in the industry. That disruption was powered in part by COVID-19 leading to budget cuts and mass layoffs, and in part by intense public criticism of the shortcomings of many predominantly white theater institutions, with a call to action for faster and more concrete gains in racial equity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement’s impact on the arts sector.

6 Artists Named 2023 USA Fellows for Theatre & Performance

AMERICAN THEATRE: The fellowships are formally awarded in 10 discrete disciplines: Architecture & Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theatre & Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Art, and Writing, though many of the fellows are multidisciplinary artists and active in community-based, socially engaged practices in fields beyond the arts.

Yamaha presents redeveloped ProVisionaire Software Suite and new DME7 Digital Signal Processor

LightSoundJournal.com: Already renowned for its flexibility, the ProVisionaire platform has been redeveloped with three core applications which support the user’s entire workflow: ProVisionaire Design for system design, ProVisionaire Control for system operation and ProVisionaire Cloud for system management. DME7 is an open architecture-type digital signal processor, which offers state-of-the-art performance and connectivity, 96 kHz sound quality and support for up to 256 input/output channels.

Review Roundup: Anthony Rapp's WITHOUT YOU Opens At New World Stages

www.broadwayworld.com: Without You, written and performed by Anthony Rapp, directed by Steven Maler with musical direction by Daniel A. Weiss opens tonight, Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at New World Stages. Read the reviews!

& JULIET, TITANIQUE & More Nominated For Queerties Awards

www.broadwayworld.com: Queerty, the LGBTQ+ entertainment news site, is announcing its nominees for The 11th anniversary Queerties awards, taking place February 28th in Los Angeles.