Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini (born November 27, 1953) is an American playwright, parodist, actor and theatre director best known for creating the award-winning off-Broadway musical theatre parody revue ''Forbidden Broadway''. He is the recipient of Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, an Obie Award, four Drama Desk Awards (including the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the Drama Desk Special Award), an Outer Critics Circle Award, and two Lucille Lortel Awards, as well as the Drama League Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. Life and career Alessandrini was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in suburban Needham, and graduated from Xaverian Brothers High School in 1972. After graduating from the Boston Conservatory of Music in 1976, he moved to New York City. As a young actor in summer stock, regional theater and dinner theater, he starred in ''The Fantasticks'', '' Oklahoma'' and '' Carousel'', among others. He also worked at the off-Broadway Ligh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Light Opera Of Manhattan
Light Opera of Manhattan, known as LOOM, was an off-Broadway repertory theatre company that produced light operas, including the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and European and American operettas, 52 weeks per year, in New York City between 1968 and 1989. Founded by William Mount-Burke, LOOM's first long-term home was in the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church#Jan Hus Playhouse Theater, Jan Hus theatre from the late 1960s to 1975, where it succeeded another small light opera company, the American Savoyards. At the Jan Hus, LOOM performed predominantly the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, such as ''The Pirates of Penzance'', ''The Mikado'' and ''H.M.S. Pinafore''. Led by conductor-director Mount-Burke, principal comedian Raymond Allen (stage actor), Raymond Allen and choreographer/stage manager Jerry Gotham, the company mentored many young actors and singers who went on to careers on Broadway theatre, Broadway or elsewhere in theatre or music. In 1975, the company moved across the st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carousel (musical)
''Carousel'' is the second musical by the team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics). The 1945 work was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play ''Liliom'', transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline. The story revolves around carousel barker Billy Bigelow, whose romance with millworker Julie Jordan comes at the price of both their jobs. He participates in a robbery to provide for Julie and their unborn child; after it goes tragically wrong, he is given a chance to make things right. A secondary plot line deals with millworker Carrie Pipperidge and her romance with ambitious fisherman Enoch Snow. The show includes the well-known songs "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone". Richard Rodgers later wrote that ''Carousel'' was his favorite of all his musicals. Following the spectacular success of the first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ''Oklahoma!'' (1943), the pair sought to collaborate on anot ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oklahoma (musical)
''Oklahoma!'' is the first musical written by the duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, ''Green Grow the Lilacs''. Set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie. The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation. It has long been a popular choice for school and community productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for ''Oklahoma!'' in 1944. This musical, building on the innovations of the earlier ''Show Boat'', epitomized the development of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Fantasticks
''The Fantasticks'' is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and book and lyrics by Tom Jones. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the 1894 play ''The Romancers'' (''Les Romanesques'') by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The show's original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years (until 2002) and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical. The musical was produced by Lore Noto. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1991. The poetic book and breezy, inventive score, including such familiar songs as "Try to Remember", helped make the show durable. Many productions followed, as well as television and film versions. ''The Fantasticks'' has become a staple of regional, community and high school productions since its premiere, with approximately 250 new productions each year. It is played with a small cast, two- t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dinner Theater
Dinner theater (sometimes called dinner and a show) is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. "Dinner and a show" can also refer to a restaurant meal in combination with live concert music, where patrons listen to a performance during a break in the meal. In the case of a theatrical performance, sometimes the play is incidental entertainment, secondary to the meal. In the style of a night club, the play may be the main feature of the evening, with dinner less important or optional. Dinner theater requires the management of three distinct entities: a live theater, a restaurant and, usually, a bar. History The Madrigal dinners in the Renaissance were early forms of dinner theater. Some early dinner theaters, known as "theatre restaurants", served dinner in one room and staged the play in another.Lynk, p. 18 Notable venues in the United States Barksdale Theatre Barksdale Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, founded in 1953 by David and Nancy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Regional Theater
A regional theater or resident theater in the United States is a professional or semi-professional theater company that produces its own seasons. The term ''regional theater'' most often refers to a professional theater outside New York City. A regional theater may be a for-profit or Nonprofit organization, not-for-profit entity and may be Trade union, unionized or non-union. Overview Regional theaters often produce new Play (theatre), plays and challenging works that do not necessarily have the commercial appeal required of a Broadway theater, Broadway production. Companies often round out their seasons with selections from classic dramas, popular Comedy, comedies, and Musical theatre, musicals. Some regional theaters have a loyal and predictable base of audience members, which can give the company latitude to experiment with a range of unknown or "non-commercial" works. In 2003, ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine praised regional theaters in general, and some top theaters in p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Summer Stock
In American theater, summer-stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock theaters frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors or under tents set up temporarily for their use. Some smaller theaters still continue this tradition, and a few summer stock theaters have become highly regarded by both patrons as well as performers and designers. Often viewed as a starting point for professional actors, stock casts are typically young, just out of high school or still in college. Elitch Theatre Summer stock started in Denver, Colorado, at the Elitch Theatre (part of Elitch Gardens). A 1937 article in Time magazine reported: "Elitch's Gardens is the great-grandfather of all U. S. summer stock companies... and nearly every personage in U. S. show business, from General & Mrs. Tom Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Needham, Massachusetts
Needham ( ) is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. A suburb of Boston, its population was 32,091 at the 2020 U.S. Census. It is home of Olin College. History Early settlement Needham was first settled in 1680 with the purchase of a tract of land measuring by from Chief Nehoiden for the sum of 10 pounds, of land, and 40 shillings worth of corn. It was officially incorporated in 1711. Originally part of the Dedham Grant, Needham split from Dedham and was named after the town of Needham Market in Suffolk, England. Just 15 months after asking for their own church, 40 men living on the north side of the Charles River suddenly asked the General Court to separate them from Dedham. Their petition cited the inadequate services provided, namely schools and churches. They also said that, if they were simply to be made a precinct instead of a separate town, that they would suffer political reprisals. Dedham agreed that the services were inadequate and did not oppose the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |