Friday, September 16, 2016
The dance scene has changed deeply in just a couple of decades. National touring troupes are fewer, some local dance companies have been around long enough to become institutions and many sh…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMLive comedy in Connecticut this fall can be scripted, improvised, musicalized, politicized, feminized, interactive … whatever makes you laugh. The state has more comedy venues than it's ha…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMSteve Martin's new play "Meteor Shower" is a comedy about a couple of married couples contemplating life, love and the cosmos while having dinner and drinks in a spacious Los Angeles backyar…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMTuesday, September 13, 2016
The HartBeat goes on. Fifteen years after it was founded, HartBeat Ensemble's pulse is felt throughout the city. The politically aware, community-conscious theater troupe marks its decade-an…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 03:10PMThursday, September 8, 2016
"Development" is the watchword of the regional theater community. In past decades, that could mean the building of repertory acting companies, loyal subscriber bases or new performance space…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AM"Chasing Rainbows," at the Goodspeed Opera House Sept. 16 through Nov. 27, is a new musical with a lot of familiar faces and tunes you can hum on your way into the theater. The characters in…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMThursday, September 1, 2016
A few weeks before the Yale Repertory Theatre season begins in earnest, the Rep's "No Boundaries" performance series brings in Carrie Mae Weems' cutting-edge, current-events multi-media perf…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMT.D. Mitchell’s “Queens for a Year,” having its world premiere at Hartford Stage Sept. 8 through Oct. 2, is about women in the military. It’s also, behind the scenes, about women in …
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMWednesday, August 31, 2016
Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss will star as Albert Einstein in a TheaterWorks production of the play "Relativity" this fall. The show will open the TheaterWorks 2016-17 season,…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:08PMTuesday, August 30, 2016
E = MC, squared. The Big E (that multi-state state fair officially known as the Eastern States Exposition) is turning C (that's 100 in Roman numerals). The fair has resided for that entire c…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMThursday, August 25, 2016
Comedian Chris D'Elia of TV's "Undateable," not to mention the 2015 Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber, is at the Funny Bone Comedy Club in Manchester at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 7. Lik…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMDavid Pittsinger has distinguished himself both in new operas ("The Crucible," "Appomattox") and in classic American musicals ("South Pacific," "Kiss Me Kate"). Pittsinger's tackling the lea…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMThursday, August 18, 2016
Julia Pistell, managing director of Sea Tea Improv, improvises a sigh of relief. "We're done! We're doooonnnnne!" The Hartford-based sketch comedy troupe has completed work on its new year-r…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:08PM"Riverdance" began in 1994, and first toured the U.S. in 1996 (as those who saw the anniversary tour at the Bushnell in May can tell you). But what of all the Irish Europop spectacles that f…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:40PMActors, comedians and spouses Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally worked together on Offerman's TV series "Parks and Recreation," on Mullally's series "Will and Grace" (in 2001, two years befor…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:33PMWednesday, August 10, 2016
Rebecca Goodheart became the new producing director of the Elm Shakespeare Company last year, after two decades of leadership by the company's founder James Andreassi. Goodheart's off to a g…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:01AMTuesday, August 9, 2016
"It's very immediate here. Nobody's lying around," declares cabaret performance icon John McDaniel, currently holding forth at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford. That's a funny …
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 01:05PMSunday, August 7, 2016
"If/Then," the thought-provoking, consciousness-shifting Broadway musical, has made Hartford the next to last stop on its national tour. Oh, how different our lives would be if it hadn't com…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:06PMThursday, August 4, 2016
The Quebec-based circus theater troupe Cirque Eloize has been tumbling and twirling into Connecticut for decades. The troupe's first show, which toured internationally in the 1990s, was simp…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:19PMThursday, July 28, 2016
Fifty years ago, it was common for someone who had starred in a hit musical on Broadway to continue with the show when it went on its first national tour. Now such continuity is almost incon…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:46AMThe comedian Hannibal Buress already had a career, including a Comedy Central special, TV writing gigs and stand-up tours, but he blew up big time after some remarks in his stand-up routine …
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMTuesday, July 26, 2016
When it was newly born, it was small and adorable and made a lot of noise. In its early years, it was a bit of a loner, finding its voice. In its teens, it was able to hang with the cool kid…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:10PMThursday, July 21, 2016
For outdoor summer Shakespeare companies, the place is the thing. As usual, William Shakespeare said it best. In "Love's Labour's Lost," the Bard of Avon wrote, "They have measured many a mi…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:16PM"If/Then" is Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's follow-up to their Pulitzer-winning hit "Next to Normal" (about bi-polar depression) and it doesn't find the maverick musical-makers playing it any s…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 09:48AMThursday, July 14, 2016
Fourteen years ago this summer, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Robert Lopez thought his career might be over before it had started. The first public reading of "Avenue Q,…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:41PMThe issue-driven local modern dance company TNMOT AZTRO performed the first installment of "Black Boy Jungle" last year at Town & Country Club. Part Two is now ready, and debuting at the sam…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:28PMThursday, July 7, 2016
"In my cabaret show," the legendary Chita Rivera reminisces, "I talk about seeing a poster for 'Bye Bye Birdie,' then a bus driving by with a sign on it for 'West Side Story,' and thinking "…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 01:47PM"Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres," wrote Shakespeare. In the summer, numerous Connecticut theater companies invoke the Bard of Avon at outdoor shows. Artfarm's Shakespear…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMDavid Greig is known to Connecticut audiences as the writer of the National Theatre of Scotland's internationally touring production of the creepy, boozy odyssey "The Strange Undoing of Prud…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMThursday, June 30, 2016
In "Anastasia — The Musical," a Russian princess takes a trip from St. Petersburg to Paris. Now the show itself is assured an adventurous journey of its own — leaping from Hartford Stage…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 03:18PMThursday, June 23, 2016
We're already onto the third, and biggest, of the four prestigious "conference" workshop retreats at the bucolic Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Writers prepare their new projects with the as…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 09:58PM 
