“sexually oriented performance” as… “a male performer exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience.”
Critics point out [the law] was written so broadly that unintended targets such as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders could be subject to its restrictions for wearing suggestively skimpy costumes.
So speaking of unintended targets… non-professional musical theatre has a shortage of interested men, even moreso when it’s musical theatre put on by a high school or a younger age group. The way I usually see things done is that once you run out of men to cast in male roles, you offer the remaining ones to women if their vocal range can handle it, and sometimes even if they can’t—their parts would just be moved up an octave. (You usually wouldn’t look into changing the character’s gender to match that of the actor, because the show rights usually say something about not being allowed to do that.) This never came across as something subversive or trying to make a statement about gender, just as “we have to fill the role with someone”. Now with this law, the countless middle school girls who get offered minor male roles because maybe 5 boys tried out for the show are legally said to be putting on a “sexually oriented performance”. After all, it’s a female performer exhibiting as a male, using clothing and makeup and singing and dancing and acting before an audience. But somehow I doubt the middle schooler wearing a too-big suit and saying their three lines a little too loudly is meant to inspire sexual desire in the audience.
Although, I think if the lawmakers were aware of this practice for amateur theatre, they’d probably want it killed too, no matter how nonsubversive it is, because it’s a person stepping out of their assigned gender role. Nevermind that an actor’s job is to portray someone they are not.
I didn't think it was possible for a Broadway musicals these days to be capitalised at "only" $6.75 million. But I suppose it helps that Gutenberg is a two-person show (plus cameos) with very modest set, costume and band requirements. And as entertaining as Gutenberg is (I didn't see the Broadway production, but a local one some years ago), I hope "bare bones" doesn't become a template for future Broadway or West End musicals.
I'm really excited that Silvie Paladino will be the alternate Norma. She has one of the best voices in the country and suspect I'll prefer her Norma to Sarah Brightman.
It’s pretty sad that people need an article like this to know how to behave in public.
Though I’ve seen pretty raucous groups at my kids school events, and I definitely wonder what the hell is wrong with parents letting their kids run wild. We shouldn’t need these kinds of articles, but parents should be teaching their kids proper etiquette, too.
Best case scenario, you're an adult taking a young child to their first stage performance. Although you know proper theatre etiquette, you can't remember all the "do"s and "don'ts" off the top of your head, you just know, so you use an article like this for a refresher on what to tell the kid before you get there. After all, you would much prefer telling them beforehand to having to constantly correct bad behavior when you are at the theatre. We are not all born knowing proper manners, someone has to teach it to us, and once we know we just do it automatically. We don't remember all the rules consciously until someone violates them.
You don't have to be interested in trains to enjoy Starlight Express, just as you don't have to like cats to enjoy Cats. Cause that's basically what Starlight Express is: Cats on wheels. Same story, except that instead of dancing you get roller skating racing. :-)
I saw this new version in Australia and liked it. I wouldn't describe it as a reimagining of the original production, but it's also more than just a few tweaks. The only issue I had with it was that the make up for the Beast really downplayed the beastliness. He looked more like a guy with a couple of prosthetics on his face.
The first time I saw The Lion King many years ago I had no idea what to expect. I'd seen the movie of course, but knew very little about the stage show. So the parade of animals during "The Circle of Life" at the beginning of the show took me by total surprise. It was one of the most breathtaking, magical things I'd seen in the theatre and I actually started crying. Which was a bit embarrassing, but I discovered over the years (and as this interview indicates) I was far from the only one to have this reaction. This is actually one of the problems with the show in my opinion - The Lion King never gets better than its opening number. Although given "The Circle of Life" is arguably the greatest opening in musical theatre, that's not a bad problem to have.
This is sad news as I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 and was looking forward to season 3 which would have covered the mega musicals that are near and dear to my heart. A friend and I had been guessing what the title of the third season would be - my money was on Les Schmiserables or Les Schmis/Schmiz.
Given the scripts and the songs have already been written, I'm surprised they didn't decide to renew Schmigadoon as an animated show, as this would significantly reduce costs. The Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon spinoff Nine Voyages has apparently changed from being live action to animated for this reason, and the "Tales of the Black Freighter" sequences in Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen were also animated to keep costs down.
This was a very good production. For me the standout was Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who's easily the best Natalie I've seen, but everyone was very good, so it's great that the entire company is doing the West End run.
We were conscientious that we weren’t like, “Here are all the lines from the first movie! It’s back again!” We wanted to show there was something fresh.
The musical itself sure wasn't this conscientious. Not sure about the movie, didn't watch, didn't like the musical enough to bother.
Yes, I am not happy with the Mean Girls musical, and saw the original film.
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