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 09:58PMWhen Conrad Birdie sings "You've got to be sincere" to his adoring fans, he's not being sincere. The Elvis Presley-esque heartthrob is swiveling his hips and curling his lip in a cool, calcu…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 03:21PMMiddletown's Wesleyan University has created the Hamilton Prize for Creativity, a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to be awarded to an "incoming student (beginning in the class of 2021) w…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:14PMYou know something's gone a little wild in the world when both Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil pull into downtown Hartford. Make the most of the altered sensory perceptions. Blue Man Gro…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 03:00AMThe 2016 International Festival of Arts & Ideas in downtown New Haven comes with plentiful musical accompaniment. After 21 years, Arts & Ideas has this whole festival thing down to a science…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:31PMThe International Festival of Arts & Ideas has always boasted that the vast majority of its offerings are free. This year, that includes: >>Headline concerts on New Haven Green by George Cli…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:27PM"Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour" is about a group of rural Scottish schoolgirls who get a chance to run down the avenues of the big city of Edinburgh, on a weekend trip to a national singin…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:27PM"The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd." The very title of this 1964 cult musical by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse would seem to disparage theater audiences. But direct…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:19PM"It's NOT my life by the way. Thanks for not asking that." Eleanor Bergstein explains how she went about turning her screenplay for the classic romance "Dirty Dancing" into a stage show. "I …
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 10:36AMConnecticut-based (and beyond) dance and theater companies are on the move this summer. The Evjen Academy of Performing Arts Studio Showcase, offering "a spectrum of dance styles" June 3 and…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:24AM"Summer's lease hath all too short a date," according to a Shakespeare sonnet. The Bard of Avon is well represented on the summer theater schedule, but so are many contemporary playwrights a…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:09AMJenn Thompson has plenty of reasons to feel good about directing "The Call" at TheaterWorks. It's about family issues that are close to her heart. It brings her back to Connecticut, where sh…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:10PMIn 2002, the American Film Institute surveyed "a blue-ribbon panel of more than 1,500 leaders of the American movie community" and declared Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" to be the funnie…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:47PMWhose Paris is it, anyway? Alfred Uhry, the playwright and screenwriter, has driven Miss Daisy, abetted the Robber Bridegroom, served Mystic Pizza and shaken up Angel Reapers. Now, at Long W…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:20AM"Anastasia" lives! The irresistible 20th-century legend of a young princess who escapes execution at the hands of Russian revolutionaries, then finds adventure and romance in Paris, has been…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:32AMThe Westport Country Playhouse's 2016 season opens with a colorful blend of two modern plays about modern art. The shows have separate casts and are performed on different days. "Art," the i…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:08PMThe Carlotta Festival of New Plays at Yale is nigh — May 6 through 14 at the university's Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. That means it's the end of the school year as well. Th…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:15PMWhen the Irish dance sensation "Riverdance" first came to these shores 20 years ago, it played the vast concert stage at the Oakdale in Wallingford. It took several years of touring before t…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:13PMDianne Wiest is waist-deep in work. The award-winning star of stage, screen and (soon) a sitcom, she's tackling the taxing, intractable role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days." The c…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 01:49PMConnecticut Ballet is putting the glass slippers on again. Artistic Director Brett Raphael first staged and choreographed Prokofiev's "Cinderella" for the company in 2006. He returned to it …
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:28PMSouthern folklorist and raconteur Tim Lowry headlines the 35th annual Connecticut Storytelling Festival Friday and Saturday, April 29 and 30, in the College Center at Crozier Williams, on th…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:10AM"Matilda The Musical," which swings into The Bushnell April 26 through May 1 on its first national tour, is famously full of spectacle. There are wild children, bright lights, towering sets,…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 02:13PMTo promote its production of the opera "Rigoletto," Connecticut Lyric Opera is using an image of Quasimodo from a well-known painting by Antoine Wiertz. There certainly are similarities betw…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 09:46AMWhen Daniel Goldstein was asked the direct "Anything Goes" at the Goodspeed Opera House, he didn't feel "anything goes" about it. He had conditions. "I refused to do it with an all-white cas…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:17PMLarry Kramer has already made history — as a playwright ("A Normal Heart"), screenplay writer ("Women in Love"), novelist ("Faggots"), essayist ("The Tragedy of Today's Gays") and renowned…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 04:01PMThe Illusionists, that illustrious ensemble of seven conjurers, return to Connecticut for two shows on Sunday, April 17, at 4:30 and 8 p.m., in the Toyota Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Roa…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMGet realish. Awkward social encounters, fashion disasters, drunken confessions and unrestrained egomaniacal outbursts happen everywhere. "Real Housewives," for instance, have been found in O…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 12:00AMSay what? "Having Our Say" is a special sort of show. Part storytelling revue, part civil rights drama, part housekeeping ritual. A co-production of Hartford Stage and the Long Wharf Theatre…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 03:26PMCan we get some suggestions from the audience, please? Be creative. We need the names of nine states, plus a country to the north of us. Next, we'll need several dozen funny names. These can…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 11:15AMHartbeat Ensemble builds community through theater projects about the communities it knows best. The company's new show "Gross Domestic Product" is about women in the workplace and centers o…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 01:21PMThere's a rule in theater that's credited to the great Anton Chekhov: If you show a gun onstage, then that gun must be fired before the play is over. Yet when Samuel D. Hunter wrote a play s…
SOURCE: Hartford Courant at 10:01AM
