When Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott Launched their theater company, A Noise Within, in a tiny Glendale space 25 years ago, their critics were not optimistic. “There were people who said we’d be dead within two weeks,” Rodriguez-Elliott says. The mission of...
In 2014, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and artists like Lalah Hathaway, Bilal, and En Vogue saluted a selection of seminal and beloved musical tracks from seven decades of black cinema. As classic arrangements from Shaft and The Bodyguard were played, clips of famed...
Broadway behemoth A Chorus Line turns 40 this week, and what better way to celebrate than with three performances of the iconic show at the Hollywood Bowl? Once the longest running show in Broadway history, ACL is a meta meditation on the Great...
Composers have long been using musicals as a medium for social commentary. Given what we know (or think we know) of Cabaret from the memorable 1972 film—or the countless productions of the show—it was considered very provocative when it debuted in...
Of the 1975 documentary film by the Maysles Brothers that inspired the musical Grey Gardens, actress Rachel York says, “It is important for the audience to know that this was the purest form of reality television. There was a...
When Disney first explored the idea of doing Broadway productions, they had a long tradition of in-park shows under their belts. In 2013, when Frozenbecame a worldwide phenomenon, it seemed inevitable that the House of Mouse would look to...
It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke: a failing president, a former assassin, and a former terrorist meet up at a park in Maryland. But that’s what really happened in 1978 when American President Jimmy Carter convinced...
Al Dubin, the man who wrote lyrics for “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” “Forty-Second Street” and “Lullaby of Broadway,” fought a well-documented battle against drug and alcohol addiction. So while it may seem like an unlikely story for a musical,...
When Hugh Jackman made his Broadway debut in 2003 playing songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, he was at the center of a big, splashy musical with over 25 performers and a full band in the pit....
“It is hard work,†actor/director Alan Mandell says of performing on stage. “I’ve told someone who asked me about learning lines that it was easier when I was 85.†Yet here he goes once more onto the boards in...