I’m grateful to Stephanie Schubert, Operations Coordinator of the Pacifica Network, for conducting and publishing this interview she did with me about the recent Arts Express production of To The Lighthouse. At the end of the article, you’ll find a link to our podcast page, if you’d like to hear the production.
Tony award winning director/actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson gives a beautiful speech, under the marquee of Broadway’s August Wilson Theater this past June 29th, “Lloyd Richards Day,” celebrating the great American director, nurturer of playwrights, acting teacher, and artistic director.
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Thanks to Borough President Mark Levine, and City Council Member Erik Bottcher and everyone else who worked to make this happen at the August Wilson Theater today. And our next job is to get West 47th Street, where Raisin in the Sun was performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, co-named after Lloyd Richards as a permanent marker of his contribution to Broadway, NYC, and American Theater.
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!!UPDATE: The event will happen under the marquee of the beautiful August Wilson Theater on West 52nd Street at 12 noon, June 29th!!
We are so happy to announce the details about the public ceremony for Lloyd Richards Day. The public ceremony will happen in Times Square, Thursday, June 29th, 12 noon. We anticipate some Tony and Emmy Award winning theatrical colleagues of Lloyd to be there. You’re all invited! Feel free to share this notice.
To learn more about what Lloyd Richards has given to Broadway, New York City, and American Theater, see this post.
The song “Shy” from the Broadway musical, Once Upon a Mattress, made a star out of Carol Burnett. The score was composed by Mary Rodgers, and of course, the last name Rodgers should ring a bell because indeed, Mary Rodgers was the daughter of Richard Rodgers, which was both her blessing and her curse. “Shy” is not only the name of the song but also the name of Mary Rodgers’ recent autobiography, published posthumously with the help of NY Times theatre critic Jesse Green. if there is a major theme in the story of Mary Rodgers life, it is how does a talented daughter get out from under the shadow of a very famous musical genius.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear my review of Shy, as broadcast today on the Art Express radio program, heard on WBAI-FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
This is a radio segment based on an article I wrote a few decades ago about the theatrical elements of hustles like three-card monte.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the piece as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
** Actress Inger Tudor of Goliath speaks about Voodoo Macbeth and playing Rose McClendon, the legendary Depression-era African-American theater actress.
** A portfolio of photos from the actual historic 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth
** 28 Children: Artist Mary McClusker’s moving tribute to children killed by guns
and more!
Get your free subscription to the Arts Express Magazine, the companion magazine to Arts Express Radio, by sending an email with the word “subscribe” in the subject line to: artsexpresslist@gmail.com
It’s April 23rd, and for us it marks the anniversary of both the birthday of William Shakespeare and the day he died. In celebration of the date, we have produced a new radio version of one of the most intriguing of Shakespeare’s plays, Measure for Measure. I call it Shakespeare’s #Me Too play, and with its up to the minute Me Too themes of sexual harassment and hypocritical Puritanical seeming lying politicians, it couldn’t be more relevant to today. Of course, we couldn’t broadcast our entire play in our Arts Express time slot, but we are happy to present to you a key scene featuring two of our Arts Express stalwarts, Mary Murphy and KeShaun Luckie.
So let’s set the scene: We’re in 16th century Vienna and the newly appointed interim Mayor, Lord Angelo, has just declared a new Puritanical ban on out-of-marriage fornication, punishable by death. A young woman, Isabella, learns, just as she is about to take vows to become a nun, that her poor brother Claudio has run afoul of these laws and is about to be executed. She runs to Lord Angelo to beg him to spare her brother’s life, but Angelo insists that the law must be done. However, Angelo is secretly enamored by Isabella and he wants to see her again, so he tells her to come back the next day and maybe he will reconsider. And so, Isabella returns to Lord Angelo to plead again for her brother.
And now what happens next, from Measure For Measure.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the segment as broadcast today on Arts Express radio, heard on WBAI FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
And If you’d like to listen to our entire production of the play, you can hear it here:
https://artsexpress.podbean.com/e/shakespeare-s-measure-for-measure-an-arts-express-special/
Nurse: Which arm?
Shakespeare: As you like it
Nurse: Was that painful?
Shakespeare: Much ado about nothing.
Nurse: Did any of your family or friends have the virus?
Shakespeare: Oh, lots: Two noble kinsmen, Antony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida
Nurse: You will have to have a second jab.
Shakespeare: Measure for measure?
Nurse: So, how was the experience?
Shakespeare: A midsummer night’s dream!
Nurse: So what do you think of the govt handling of Covid?
Shakespeare: it’s a Comedy of errors.
Shakespeare: There’s been a recent surge in the virus?
Nurse: Alas, The winter’s tale
Shakespeare: When will my quarantine end?
Nurse: On the Twelfth night.
Shakespeare: Who will foot my quarantine bill?
Nurse: The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare: Where will I be put up for my quarantine?
Nurse: In a Hamlet.
Shakespeare: Thank you for helping me!
Nurse: All’s well that ends well.
Thanks to Pearl Shifer for sending me these (with a few of my own additions)
The great Sidney Poitier died this month.
Here he is in one of his most masterful performances as Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.
The play was originally directed on Broadway by Lloyd Richards, the first Black director on the Broadway stage. In their lean days as struggling actors, Richards and Poitier would pool their money to buy and split a hot dog. They promised each other that if one got an opportunity, they’d bring the other along. When Poitier got Hansberry’s script, he insisted that Lloyd direct the play. Lloyd worked intensely with Hansberry to shape the play and then cast and directed the play perfectly. The stage cast, many of whom were also in the film– and who you can see in this clip from the film–included Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, and John Fiedler.
Thanks to YouTuber The aesthetic of the Image: [world] cinema clips
As snow and cold invades these parts, Renée Elise Goldsberry seeks some warmth from Will Chase in Rent.
Thanks to BroadwayInHD
There’s a long history of actors and variety performers who have had their first taste of theater with a basement childhood puppet stage. But actor Robert Brock of Lancaster PA was determined to make good on his childhood dream of building a marionette theater for the public and living in an apartment upstairs. Now in a new documentary, director Alexander Monelli brings to life the joys and woes of Robert’s single-minded adult pursuit of his childhood dream in Monelli’s new film Marionette Land.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview with Alexander Monelli, as broadcast yesterday on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Daniel Radcliffe in a non-Harry Potter-ish role, insists on the unity of us all, as his corporate brethren in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying agree. Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick who both played the same role, introduce the high-spirited number at the Tony Awards.
Who knew that Radcliffe was such a great song-and-dance man?
Thanks to YouTuber The xNYr
Monday morning, put the oxygen tanks on standby.
That’s Graeme Henderson putting the chorus gypsies through their paces in the London West End revival of 42nd Street
Thanks to YouTuber Great Performances | PBS
At the closing performance of Jonathan Larsen’s Rent, after 12 years on Broadway, the cast was joined in their finale by the original 1996 cast to sing “Seasons of Love.”
Thanks to YouTuber BroadwayInHD
A romantic ghost story of the transients from O Henry, adapted and performed by myself.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the story, as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program heard on WBAI FM NY and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Monday Morning, waking up hyperactive, the power is out and last year’s rent is due.
The frenetic choreography is over the top for me, but the music and lyrics as sung by the 2008 Broadway cast of Jonathan Larsen’s Rent are still zippy.
Thanks to YouTuber BroadwayInHD
For Halloween, an original update of an old-time radio show, we call 2121: A Tale of the Near Future.
In a world where efficiency must be maximized, are poets and artists non-essential workers to be imprisoned and exterminated?
Featuring Mary Murphy as Caroline, Rick Tuman as the Guard, Julius Hollingsworth as the General Manager, and myself as James T. Randall. With music from Kojiro Miura.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the story, as broadcast today on Arts Express on WBAI FM NYC, and Pacifica stations across the country.
There have been many enjoyable memoirs about an actor’s life in theater and film– the autobiographies of Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando come to mind–but one of my favorites is David Hare’s Acting Up. The British-born David Hare is not a professional actor, but rather an acclaimed playwright and director who talked himself into taking the main–and only–role in his play Via Dolorosa. He kept a diary of his rehearsals and performances, and published it. Here’s a radio piece I did recently, expanding on a brief essay I had written previously.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the piece, as broadcast today on Arts Express on WBAI FM NYC, and Pacifica stations across the country.
A delightful dance from The Birmingham Royal Ballet in David Bintley’s Hobson’s Choice, about the three daughters of a shoestore owner. With Stephen Wicks as Albert Prosser and Chenca Williams as Alice Hobson.
Thanks to YouTuber Ballet archive
There are not too many living performers I would call geniuses. Brachetti is one of them.
Here’s a small clip extolling “The Great Magicians” but it’s just a small snippet from his 2016 full-length theatrical show, “SOLO”.
Brachetti makes me gasp with amazement.
More at Arturo Brachetti – The legend of quick change
Here’s Part Two of our Mark Harris interview about his wonderful new biography called Mike Nichols: A Life. In this part we focused on the director’s eclectic and fabled film career, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate and Angels in America.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to hear part one of the interview Mark gave on Arts Express, as broadcast yesterday on WBAI FM NY and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Part One is here:
The Graduate, Angels in America, The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, The Gin Game, Hurley Burley, Silkwood, Postcards From The Edge, Heartburn, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Streamers, The Real Thing, Spamalot, Working Girl and more were all directed by the same man–Mike Nichols. In a career that spanned over fifty years simultaneously in both film and theater, Mike Nichols proved that he was one of America’s best directors. Now Mark Harris has written a comprehensive new biography of Nichols, which provides great insight into Nichols’ life and career. I had the pleasure of having a very enjoyable conversation with Mark about Nichols, who Mark knew well.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to hear part one of the interview Mark gave on Arts Express, as broadcast yesterday on WBAI FM NY and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Part Two is here:
A fun conversation on the stage of London’s Prince Charles Theatre between two great storytellers, dishing about celebrity, fame, and Marlene Dietrich.
Thanks to YouTuber Buzz Stephens
And this is just the first ten minutes. A very funny farce concerning…well, a play where everything possible goes wrong. And keep a lookout at the end for the Buster Keaton house gag.
Click on the image to play.
Thanks to YouTuber MYSTiiC KiiNG
