Monthly Archives: August 2013

Local Teens Reveal Secrets Of Building The Next Generation Of Theatergoers

Teenagers may hold the survival secrets for South Florida theaters to build a crucial new generation of patrons. Students say they seek theater that is relevant, affordable, accessible, less elitist, touching the head and the heart, marketed through cyber-word of mouth, and pumped with sensory candy. Above all, their interest has to be stimulated as early as elementary school.

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State Approves Coconut Grove Playhouse Rebirth Plan From County, FIU And GableStage

The Governor’s cabinet gave crucial approval Tuesday to Miami-Dade County, Florida International University and GableStage partnering to reopen the historic Coconut Grove Playhouse as a professional theater and educational complex.

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Mad Cat’s Blow Me Delves Into Surreal World of Doomed Fashionista Isabella Blow

Playwright Jessica Farr and director Paul Tei create a fever dream in Mad Cat Theatre Company’s Blow Me, depicting a tragic death spiral, relieved by copious droll dancing-at-your-funeral epigrams tossed off by Blow and her coterie like a latter day Algonquin Round Table, featuring a bravura performance by Erin Joy Schmidt.

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State Cabinet To Consider Grove Playhouse Deal On Tuesday In Miami

The state will consider a crucial step in the push to reopen the Coconut Grove Playhouse as a professional theater and educational complex. The Governor’s Cabinet has slated approval of a partnership among the Miami-Dade County government, Florida International University and GableStage during its meeting on Tuesday.

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Licensing Firm’s Objections to Dramaworks’ Company Causes One-Day Shutdown & Retooling

Palm Beach Dramaworks cancelled its Wednesday performance of the staged concert of Company to adjust to changes required when the New York licensing agent found that characters had been omitted, lines had been cut and the score altered, the theater and licensing company confirmed.

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Shorts Gone Wild Isn’t Particularly Wild, But It Is Consistently Funny

Shorts Gone Wild is pretty tame stuff for South Florida, but this outing of light comedies with a live-and-let-live LGBT message is more consistently entertaining than some of City Theatre’s earlier forays into an alternative adults-only version of its venerable Summer Shorts program.

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Phone Rings, Door Chimes, In Comes A Welcome Company Concert At PB Dramaworks

You may long for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ staged concert of Company to have one more week of rehearsal just to let it ripen and deepen, but what’s on stage remains an unassailably well-crafted, well-performed, downright entertaining production of Stephen Sondheim’s Continental Divide of American theater.

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Talkin’ In The Green Room With Myself (And Patti Gardner Etc.)

When actress Patti Gardner suggested that it would only be fair if I was on the receiving end of a Green Room questionnaire, I took refuge in the journalist’s centuries-old rationalization : .” just like to watch.” But she persisted with a single-mindedness that would make Christiane Amanpour envious, to the point of collecting questions from folks across the profession. So I agreed, so long as I could edit out questions about my obsession with Angora sweaters and any reference to those embarrassing videos involving Giant Pandas.

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Two Staged Readings Monday

As we’ve said, this is the summer of free staged readings of works in progress and works being considered for future production. There’s two more intriguing entries slated for Monday night the 5th at GableStage and Naked Stage including three works by Christopher Demos-Brown.

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Christmas in August: Slava’s Snowshow Returns To Miami

If anybody dares you to bet your sports car that it won’t snow in Miami in August, better go find your pink slip. There’s a blizzard inside the Arsht Center nearly every night that’ll have you picking white stuff out of your hair even if you sit in the back row. And that’s not even the mouth-dropping coda to Slava’s Snowshow, a Russian-based fantasia that showcases classic clown skills against the showmanship and stagecraft of a Cirque du Soleil production.

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