Group items tagged

Highlighted by songs in which women celebrate the murder of wayward men and a lawyer demonstrates the art of manipulating the media, musicals don't get much more cynical than Chicago. A ripped-from-the-headlines jazz-age play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins turned into a 1975 musical by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb in collaboration with Bob Fosse, Chicago enjoyed an initial run of qualified success, overshadowed by the crowd-pleasing A Chorus Line. It makes perfect sense, however, that it found a second audience on Broadway in the 1990s

Beginning actors make mistakes. Mostly it's because well, they're beginners! I prefer thinking of them is missteps rather than mistakes - they are things the beginning actor hasn't considered. And it's always a great time to change that! If you're a beginning actor, if you teach beginning actors, review this list and take a step in the right direction. Every misstep provides at least one way to solve the problem.

A film director, like an orchestra conductor, is the lord of his domain, and no director has more power than a director of animated films. He is set free from the rules of the physical universe and the limitations of human actors, and can tell any story his mind can conceive. That's no doubt why Chuck Jones, after creating the characters of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, immediately wrote down the rules of what could and could not happen in their universe. If anything could happen (and it could), the comedy would be lost in anarchy.

One of my favorite lessons I do is having my students work in groups to create TV commercials inspired by works. Check it out below. It never fails to be a fun time in the classroom!

From Singin' in the Rain and Anything Goes to Hello, Dolly! and Mary Poppins, Olivier Award winner Stephen Mear has done more than any other British choreographer to usher classic musicals into the modern era. But adept as he is at razzle-dazzling 'em, there's more to Mear, as recent excursions like City of Angels at Donmar Warehouse and Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera prove. His contribution to the lauded Gypsy revival, opening next week at the Savoy Theatre following a triumphant Chichester run, demonstrates the combination of emotional engagement and quick-witted entertainment that makes him such a formidable talent.

Equally comfortable playing romantic leads and action heroes, he has never been quite a force in theatre. This is partly a matter of choice. He has prioritised screen roles over stage opportunities. The last time he acted on stage was in 2009 in a popular West End production of Richard Greenberg's three-hander Three Days of Rain. In the mean time he has been taking a while to shake off the halo of urgent youth. He has tended to play callow characters more sinned against than sinning - the closest he's come to anything like villainy is as Idi Amin's morally compromised medic.