PigPen’s doozy about the end of the world

San Diego Reader: The Old Globe’s multileveled set for The Old Man and the Old Moon — pilings, planks, and wooden boxes — suggests an ancient wharf. Downstage footlights and roughhewn boards say a 19th-century theater. As the audience enters, musicians dressed in bygone labor garb — suspenders and rolled-up sleeves — tune stringed instruments. Another strolls on, as oblivious to the spectators as they are to him. Two more enter, strumming instruments. It’s hard to say just when, but at some point all seven are playing the same riff. And before you realize it, they’re standing erect in concert formation and belting out a hearty, Celtic-inflected lay.

U.S. Veterans Use Greek Tragedy to Tell Us About War

The New York Times: The ancient Greeks didn’t go to the theater just to be entertained. Aristotle believed that audiences saw themselves reflected in tragic characters and that the very act of watching a character’s downfall helped purge them of emotions like pity and fear, a process he called catharsis or, roughly, “purification.”

More than 2,500 years later, a young classics major named Bryan Doerries wondered whether he could help a growing and vulnerable population in need of catharsis: veterans of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom come home from combat with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts.

Alanis Morrisette to gift world with “Jagged Little Pill” musical

Salon.com: We thought you oughta know: Alanis Morissette is writing a musical.

Titled “Jagged Little Pill” and based on her 1995 Grammy-winning album of the same name, the stage production will debut at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May of 2018.

Shoji still got it; Rock House Festival

Branson Tri-Lakes News Entertainment: There are some shows in Ozark Mountain Country that you simply go to see, then there are others you go to experience. Last week I went to see one of my favorite performers in this, or any other town, and no matter how many times I see the “Shoji Tabuchi Show,” the man never fails to amaze, captivate and entertain the heck out of me.

Why the Edward Albee estate is resisting a black Virginia Woolf.

www.slate.com: You have to give Edward Albee credit: 55 years after its Broadway debut, and less than a year after its author’s death, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has once again become the most controversial play of the season, thanks to a production nobody will ever see. The 35-seat Shoebox Theater in Portland, Oregon, doesn’t feel like the natural epicenter of a flare-up involving artists’ rights, race, and intellectual property. But earlier this month, when the Albee estate denied producer Michael Streeter the rights to Woolf over his decision to cast a black actor, Streeter, “furious and dumbfounded,” took to Facebook, arguing that “the Edward Albee estate needs to join the 21st century.”

Big Splash With Lasers At The 2016 Stanley Cup NHL Playoffs For The Pittsburgh Penguins

www.livedesignonline.com: Pangolin and Lightwave International made a big splash during the 2016 Stanley Cup NHL playoffs for the Pittsburgh Penguins helping to guide the team to a fourth Stanley Cup NHL Championship. Lasers are a familiar game opening effect for the Penguins, and the 2016 season was no exception. Lightwave was challenged to enhance the laser show of the nhl playoffs to a level of primary entertainment, not just a special effect. Each round of the stanley cup 2016 playoffs called for more laser firepower, with the final hockey Championship round requiring laser power measured not in hundreds of watts, but thousands of watts.

To Invest in Your Child’s Theater Dreams, First Invest in the Theater

The New York Times: Dean Roth, the owner and president of a New Jersey company that makes parts for the tool-and-die industry, admits he has utterly failed to talk his teenage daughter out of pursuing a career in musical theater.

Instead of watching helplessly as she bounded down an uncertain career path, he became a Broadway investor to get an inside track: He said his initial $1,000 outlay, in the 2011 revival of “Godspell,” was “tuition for me to find out what the business was like.”

Watch: A Haunting

Pittsburgh in the Round: Readings are half-baked. That’s the point. Their final registry doesn’t exist yet; it’s being found. They are plays in flux waiting for feedback and the perfect sounds of rhythm. They are for actors to try things, for the writer to listen. They are for directors to plan and cut and encourage. But they are flawed and sometimes slow and confusing. You’re just hearing about something you should be able to visualize. The subtleties are lost because those choices have (for the most part) not been made.

Lillys and Mothers

HowlRound: This year was an extraordinary year in terms of the work of women on New York’s stages, and so worth celebrating. The Lilly Awards are my favorite way of celebrating. So many remarkable plays in which incredible women playwrights collaborated with masterful women directors. I had prepared a speech that simmered with a certain amount of rage over a gap I (and many other friends and colleagues) noticed this year between the women’s work on our stages and the somewhat muted critical response—which leads to the feeling that women are still hiding in plain sight.

Q&A with 'American in Paris' choreographer Christopher Wheeldon

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Christopher Wheeldon, the darling of the ballet world, became the toast of Broadway as director-choreographer of “An American in Paris.” The show earned 12 Tony Award nominations, including two for Mr. Wheeldon, who won for choreography.

'An American in Paris' dances home to Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “An American in Paris” is coming home to Pittsburgh, where it all began.

The Oscar-winning movie starred hometown song-and-dance hero Gene Kelly. The musical theater sensation — winner of four Tony Awards with 12 nominations — can trace its roots to the Pittsburgh CLO. Executive producer Van Kaplan, who with fellow producers Stuart Oken of Elephant Eye Theatricals and Roy Furman, conceived the musical, pulled together a creative team, took the financial risk and have reaped the rewards.

Confessions of a Box Office Manager: a terrible case of mistaken identity

WhatsOnStage.com: Well, there's no turning back now, I'm afraid. I've made my metaphorical bed and I'm going to have to lie in it. My box office colleagues are no help whatsoever, one having got wind of what's going on - and subsequently barricaded himself in the back office from whence I can hear him howling, gasping for breath and moaning "Oh God, this is classic" - while the other is bent double underneath her desk, silently laughing so hard that she is in danger of gagging into the waste paper bin at any moment.

How Theatre Can Help Us Understand Donald Trump and Brexit

The Theatre Times: When it comes to the chaotic policies of Donald Trump or the seeming irrationality of Brexit, traditional political explanations can fail to produce satisfactory answers. The Conversation

Political science may help to solve some of these riddles, but far from all. For example, scholars may be able to argue that those disappointed or marginalised by the US political establishment voted for Trump’s promises. Or they could claim that people voted for the UK to leave the EU because it was seen as the project of a rich elite.

Restoring Showbiz Pizza's Animatronic Robots!

Tested: Jack Turner is obsessed with Showbiz Pizza's iconic animatronic robots. He and his father have scrounged up these old characters to restore them to their music-playing glory! We chat with Jack about his project and how he learned to rebuild these robots to animate the same way they did in the 80s.

The Great Comet’s Denée Benton and Sweeney Todd’s Norm Lewis Have a Frank Chat About Race

Playbill: The discussion about opportunity and employment with regards to race is a long and controversial one in the history of theatre. Last year, the 2015-2016 Broadway season was seen as a banner year for diversity (in race, religion, physical ability etc), but many wondered if the display marked actual progress that would continue forward, or simply a fluke. The issue is not relegated to commercial New York theatre, of course. Recently, the debate garnered new fuel when a producer in Portland, Oregon was refused the rights to produce Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? due to his choice to cast a black actor in the featured role of Nick.

The Philadelphia Story

Pittsburgh in the Round: The Philadelphia Story is a play with contemporary conflict encased within the sepia-toned shell of old Hollywood America. Its relatively complicated social and sexual conflicts are cracks in the veneer of old-school American repression, yet their existence within spaces only the most privileged of the privileged exist in make them seem somehow exotic.

“Violet” at Front Porch Theatricals

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Suitcases!

That’s the first thing you see when you walk into the Front Porch Theatricals production of Violet. They fill a wall of shelves along the upstage wall of the space, and are also tucked underneath the platform on which the eight-piece orchestra plays. And as the musical progresses, suitcases of varying shapes, sizes, and colors serve not only as backdrop but also as props and furniture, becoming bus seats, card tables, the counter of a café, a bed, and even a candy tray.

Women Dominate the Stage Management Industry, So Why Are They Still Paid Less Than Men?

OnStage: Throughout my years at college, I was involved with 18 theatre productions. Whether it was performing on stage or working behind the scenes, I was involved in some aspect of every show we put on. It wasn't until about 20 minutes before I started writing this column that I realized that there was a commonality with every show I worked on, they almost all had a female stage manager.

A new era of resource sharing in Bay Area theaters

San Francisco Chronicle: Theater has never been among the Bay Area’s most cutthroat industries, but for years, the scene was marked by a polite but determined “every theater for itself” mentality. Not so any more. Changes in the economy, in the habits of theatergoers and even in the population makeup of the Bay Area have prompted a new era of cooperation and partnerships, which not only benefit the theaters but audiences as well.

Town Hall Announced to Address UMKC Theatre Budget Cuts

PerformInk: In response to pending budget cuts which threaten the strength of UMKC Theatre, specifically the MFA program, faculty, students, alumni and supporters will come together in a public, community-wide Town Hall meeting Sunday, June 4.

Organized to raise awareness and show support for UMKC Theatre, the town hall goal is to inform the university’s administration of the extensive community support for a program, which U.S. News & World Report has rated among the top graduate theater training programs in the country.