Latest news with #theater
CBS News
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Inclusive theater program in Queens spotlights adults with disabilities
Queens theater program gives adults with disabilities a chance to shine Queens theater program gives adults with disabilities a chance to shine Queens theater program gives adults with disabilities a chance to shine A Queens theater program is bringing big energy and even bigger heart to the stage as adults with disabilities dazzle with talent, teamwork and a whole lot of joy. QCP Players Program celebrating debut performance A red dress and a sparkly headband are all it takes to transform Queens native Tyaisha Blake-Lochard into the Roald Dahl character Veruca Salt. She's keeping her composure before the big performance of "Willy Wonka" at Queens Centers for Progress (QCP), an organization that provides resources and support for individuals with developmental disabilities. "I'm just a little nervous, but I'm hanging in there," she said. "We know that they feel like an actor in a Broadway show feels on their opening day," QCP executive director Terri Ross said. The show marks a debut for the QCP Players Program, a partnership with inclusive performing arts nonprofit AhHa!Broadway. Participants are not only performers but also set painters, stage crew and ushers. Maurice Agard, who plays the title role, looks forward to seeing his parents in the audience. "They're going to love it," he said. "They have blossomed" Over 12 weeks of rehearsals, organizers have witnessed improvements in focus, energy, creativity and collaboration. "They have blossomed. They have become more animated, and also have become more closer with working together with other people because they realize it's part of a team," adult day services director Josie Davide said. "Literally, like, between goosebumps and tears sitting here watching them. It's just heartwarming," QCP director of development Wendy Gennaro said. Davide is eager to share the group's talent and joy with audiences. "I want them to see that people with disabilities can do whatever they put their mind to," she said. You can email Elle with Queens story ideas by CLICKING HERE.
New York Times
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Diana Oh, Fierce Voice for Queer Liberation in Theater, Dies at 38
Diana Oh, a glitter-dusted experimental artist-activist whose theater works intertwined political provocation with profound compassion in rituals of communion with audiences, died on June 17 at their home in Brooklyn. Mx. Oh, who used the pronouns they and them, was 38. The death was confirmed by Mx. Oh's brother Han Bin Oh, who said the cause was suicide. A playwright, actor, singer-songwriter and musician, Mx. Oh created art that didn't fit neatly into categories. Mx. Oh was best known for the outraged yet disarmingly gentle Off Broadway show '{my lingerie play},' a music-filled protest against male sexual violence; it was performed in a series of 10 installations around New York City. A concert-like play — with Mx. Oh singing at its center — '{my lingerie play}' percolated with an angry awareness of the ways restrictive gender norms and society's policing of sexual desire can leave whole groups vulnerable. It was an emphatic and loving assertion of the right to be oneself without worrying about abuse. 'I was born a woman, to immigrant parents,' Mx. Oh said in the show. 'That's when my body became political. That's when I became an artist.' Mx. Oh's Infinite Love Party, which the Bushwick Starr theater in Brooklyn produced in 2019, was not a show but rather a structured celebration with a sleepover option. It was a handmade experience, including music and aerial silks, designed to welcome queer people, people of color and their allies. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The ‘Wrinkle in Time' musical is a daring, baffling spectacle
'Clarity,' a witchy guardian angel sings in the new musical 'A Wrinkle in Time,' 'is overrated in matters of great works of art.' Madeleine L'Engle would no doubt agree. The world premiere adaptation of the author's peculiar sci-fi classic requires significant suspension of the prefrontal cortex, which is by no means a knock on its daring approach. (More than one audience member joked after a recent performance about how it would pair with an edible.) The boldly imaginative production from director Lee Sunday Evans features several awesome moments like nothing you've seen before onstage — uncanny, ethereal and totally gaga.
CNN
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Rachel Zegler is serenading crowds of people in central London almost every night for free
Strands of music float through every city soundscape, emanating from buskers, passing cars or your neighbor's flat, but not until this summer has the voice of a Hollywood star echoed around Argyll Street in London's Soho district. Near nightly until early September, Rachel Zegler will walk out at just before 9 p.m. onto the balcony above the London Palladium's front doors and deliver, in her crystal-clear voice, a rendition of 'Don't Cry for Argentina' for free to the hundreds of people gathered below. The paying audience inside the theater watch the song on a live video feed. Zegler's six-minute balcony performance has made 'Evita' the production of the moment on London's West End. The reasons behind staging this iconic scene in this way have sparked headlines. It is a clever marketing ploy, some say, drumming up much publicity even before the show's official press night. It is a way to make theater more accessible, others say, a chance to see Zegler, best known for her starring turns in 'West Side Story' and 'Snow White,' for free. In the context of the show, it provides an almost literal interpretation of the moment when Eva (Evita) Perón, the wife of former Argentine president Juan Perón and whose life the musical is based on, addressed a crowd from the Casa Rosada balcony. Several British outlets have highlighted the more controversial aspects of the stunt – what about those who have paid up to £245 ($336) for a ticket to watch the show's most famous song on a screen? 'People are complaining that it's a free show when people have paid, but that's the point of the show,' one onlooker, Nadine, told CNN, referencing Perón's life spent championing the rights of the poor. Much like the themes depicted in the musical, Zegler eschews the paying patrons inside for the 'peasants' outside. But on Wednesday, no one in the crowd outside the Palladium who had either seen the show or had plans to see it minded that the main spectacle happened outside the theater. For Alma Nielsen, visiting from Tucson, Arizona, watching part of Zegler's performance on a screen didn't detract from her experience. It was 'amazing,' she told CNN, adding that seeing the enormous crowds on the video feed only improved the scene. Although it was her children who persuaded her to see 'Evita' in the first place, she had returned without them to stand outside the theater and 'experience everything.' Similarly, Charlotte Pegrum is seeing the show in a few weeks time and liked the idea. Still, 'we're lucky, we're locals, maybe if you're visiting and only have one night, you might not appreciate it,' she said. Others are more skeptical. Adam Rhys-Davies, an actor himself, isn't quite sure what to make of it. 'I don't want the gimmick to be bigger than the show,' he told CNN. Jamie Lloyd, who directed this production of 'Evita,' has come to embody a modern, stripped-back, almost setless type of theater, embracing the use of cameras in his other shows. In his staging of 'Sunset Boulevard,' Tom Francis, who plays Joe Gillis, sings the titular song while walking through the streets surrounding the theater. 'Are you going to get people sitting at home, watching it on a screen, the theatres empty and saying we're watching it live?' Rhys-Davies said. Whatever the reasons behind the staging – Lloyd hasn't commented publicly and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has only noted he hopes it can continue even as the crowds get bigger – it draws a joyful, semi-spontaneous gathering of people in keeping with London's habit of fusing the glamorous and unglamorous together. Glance left while Zegler sings and there is Ikea's new Oxford Street store at the end of the road; glance right and there is a Five Guys with scaffolding outside it. Life continues in a city center, even if a Hollywood star is performing for free, and the crowd is carefully controlled, allowing onlookers to pass by unimpeded, albeit blinking upwards in bemusement. Two tourists visiting London for the first time hang around just because an excited-looking crowd has gathered. For what, they weren't exactly sure. And, just after the crowd had dispersed, another tourist wandered past the Palladium looking for Zegler. 'Has it happened already?' she said.
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Intimate Apparel review – Lynn Nottage's exquisitely stitched tale of a seamstress's dreams
Lynn Nottage's 2003 play explores what you hold close and who you are when your defences are down. In 1905 New York, Esther, a skilled Black corset-maker, creates ravishing undergarments in Wedgwood blue or salmon pink, trimmed with 'every manner of accoutrement'. Stitching romance for others, she fears she will never know her own – until George begins writing from Panama, where he is labouring on the canal. Tucked into her modest, mouse-grey dress, Samira Wiley's Esther embroiders dreams with every letter. Despite forebodings from her landlady (Nicola Hughes, plush and beady), she insists: 'I am his sweetheart twice a month and I can fill that envelope with anything I want.' Kadiff Kirwan's melodious, greedy-eyed George arrives in New York and the first act ends on the edge of hope. Later, disappointment settles: intimacies fray, promises prove moth-eaten. Foot on the treadle, eye on the lace, Esther knows her worth. Nottage writes so well about work: the painstaking immersion of time, thought and effort. The audience, fully invested in Esther's world, gasped when George tossed aside her tailoring: how callous to spurn a love-stitched jacket. Wiley's fragile frame can barely hold the hurt. Esther's clients are unmarried, or yoked without love. Intimacy seems possible in your scanties: Faith Omole's sex worker and Claudia Jolly's wealthy wife tumble out confidences as she tweaks their corsets. Esther also visits a Jewish fabric salesman (Alex Waldmann, beautifully tentative), tenderly scanning swathes of kingfisher silk or wool spun from cosseted Scottish sheep. Restrictive garments play against unbounded imaginings. Nottage's writing in the two-handed scenes is palpably lush ('a gentle touch is gold in any country'), but each line sharpens a character or sighs the tale forward. Working with movement director Shelley Maxwell, Lynette Linton's production becomes a dance, a poem: bodies swoop around one another, voices tangle in song, teasing out the sensuality these New Yorkers crave but must deny themselves. The acting is incredibly fine: Linton's great gift is to see people from every angle. Nottage's play began when she found a photo of her seamstress great-grandmother and wanted to imagine her story. This tremendous production and Wiley's superb performance fill out a life unknown. At Donmar Warehouse, London, until 9 August
