Better Than Cliff Notes

The peppy tune really brings something to the tragedy.





Hamlet you've been had by an uncle you call "dad!"

Curtains

Artist Julia Solis's project about abandoned theaters reminds me of Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, in which the main characters live in an abandoned movie theater. Check out the slideshow of these abandoned theaters; some haunting images throughout.

Next Up: Vin Diesel as Macbeth

How can you get high school kids to pay attention to Hamlet? How about you throw in a little more action?





I freakin' love fake trailers. And since I usually feel like Hamlet needs to get a little more motivation, this really appeals to me.

Children's Writers Have Sick Senses of Humor...Hurray!

Remember Shel Silverstein? Where the Sidewalk Ends? The Giving Tree? Yeah, good stuff from your childhood. Martyr-complex trees and funny poems are great and all, but what I really like is dark humor about dead ponies. And Shel delivers.

He has some great short plays, but The Best Daddy is, without a doubt, the most hysterical thing ever.

Catch the American Repertory Theater's production of Seriously Funny: an evening of short works by David Mamet, Harold Pinter, and Shel Silverstein to see it live

Seriously, guys. Dead ponies.

I love you so much, Shel Silverstein.

Move On

A little of how I'm feeling. Plus pointillism.





"Stop worrying where you're going-
Move on
If you can know where you're going
You've gone
Just keep moving on."

From Sunday in the Park with George.

Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!

As a redhead named Annie, you can bet your bottom dollar that I watched the movie Annie every single day when I was little. There was that brief period in which I hated the musical, since kids would sing "Tomorrow" at me, but those days are over and I sincerely love it again. Sometimes when I'm down I'll put on the soundtrack and sing, "She's like a shine on your shoes, or hearing a blues that's great..." Except I can't sing well, so there was never a chance that this Annie could have been in Annie.

And maybe that's a good thing. Check out Life After Tomorrow, a documentary about women who played Annie (or were one of the orphans) on Broadway. Even though you can tell they all love the musical, it did kind of mess with their heads. One minute they're huge Broadway stars, and then next they're out the door because there's a more adorable kid taking their place. Also, they were kind of let run wild. (Sarah Jessica Parker mentions how they all used to run around Broadway before it got cleaned up, making fun of the prostitutes.)

Nowadays, I hope kids in theater are under a little more supervision, but there are still stage parents forcing kids to be perfect, and I'm guessing kids don't get therapy after their lose a role to kids who are younger and cuter. One person in the film makes a good point--if your kid says they want to be an astronaut, you don't send them to NASA. But if your kid says he/she wants to be a star, you can potentially make that happen. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

But it is nice to see that the women in Life After Tomorrow don't hate Annie. They all just say it was a wonderful but overwhelming time in their lives.

I can't embed the whole documentary here, but here's a taste from 20/20:

Beckett Wishes He Wrote This

I would love to see this hit Broadway.





"Why couldn't they do Oklahoma? I understand Oklahoma."

When You Wish Upon a Star

Barrel of Monkeys, a theater/arts education group in Chicago, works with school children to develop shows. The kids write stories/plays/poems/whatever and Barrel of Monkeys turns their work into short skits in their performance, That's Weird, Grandma. It's a hysterical show, and they change it all the time because kids are constantly creating new work. They even have some kids' work online. One of my favorites is:

Girl is Man

By James C.

4th Grade, Columbia Explorers Academy

Once there was a hamburger that was the size of a man. She saw a star, and said “I wish I was a real girl. I don’t want to be a girl hamburger, but a real girl.” But what she didn’t know that the star was an opposite star and she came out a man.

Oh my lord, James. That is so not how I thought this story would end. Way to keep the reader guessing!

Broadway Baby

I love when adorable, talented couples have babies. So the Idina Menzel/Taye Diggs baby proves to be super exciting.

They're both such talented people and they seem really cool, as well. They've been married since 2003, after seven years of dating, and this will be their first child. Menzel is best known for her Tony Award-winning role as Elphaba in Wicked. Diggs has also been in a bunch of Broadway shows, including Rent, The Wild Party, (both of which he starred in with Menzel) and Chicago. Now he's on the Grey's Anatomy spin-off, Private Practice. (He's the one reason I watched the first episode. Taye, you need better material.) I also love his newsboy cap/bowtie/grandpa sweater combo.

Basically, I want to be as cool as they are. And now I'll want to be as cool as their baby. Congratulations, guys!

(Thanks to Catherine for the news!)

At Last, We See Each Other Plain

It's come to my attention that some people haven't seen Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel (from How I Met Your Mother) do the confrontation song from Les Miserables.





This must be a freakin' awesome show to work on.

(I met Neil Patrick Harris once. After seeing tick...tick...BOOM! I told him he did a great job. So basically we're best friends now.)

A Little Priest

Angela Lansbury--Mrs. Potts to many of us in the under-30 crowd--was Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Was Mrs. Potts serving human-tea?

Seriously though, Lansbury's awesome and deserves more credit than she's gotten from the acting/entertainment community. Check out how creepy and crazy she is!




Plus, I love the puns. Let's call this one for Punday.

There's No Business (Like Show Business)

For all you musical theater nerds out there, SNL tries to save Broadway.

Sort of.




Neil Patrick Harris is too awesome.

Say Cheese!

I like headshots. They make everyone look so attractive. If they weren't so expensive, I'd get some just so I could break them out for friends and guests and say, "See, sometimes I look really put together and pretty!" But sometimes the actors don't just let a photographer take a pretty picture of him/her. Sometimes actors like to get a little creative with their headshots.

A couple of highlights:

"Kitten actually states on her resume that she ‘privately and commercially will ONLY wear pink.’ And that doesn’t just apply to her clothes"

"His resume reveals that he actually sees himself as a Dracula figure and “a bit of a Johnny Deep.”"

It's Not Over Until the Vulcan Sings

Some people think opera just isn't for them. It's unfamiliar performers singing overly dramatic songs in foreign languages. It doesn't connect to real life or contemporary entertainment. But Floris Schönfeld is out to change that with his Klingon opera.

"He latched on to the idea of a Klingon opera as a way to explore themes he wanted to pursue about merging different worlds...The Klingon opera Mr. Schönfeld is developing is called “ ’u’.” The apostrophes before and after the “u” are part of the title and are pronounced by Mr. Schönfeld like short coughs. The title, he said, stands for universe or universal."

It's an interesting idea. I tend to like when people take some kind of canon--Star Trek or opera here--and play around with it. I'm also really curious to see how many people actually get attend. There is, after all, the popular Jerry Springer Opera, so the idea isn't totally out there as long as Schönfeld's writing/music are strong enough to support the concept.

How will Star Trek fans approach this? Especially since Schönfeld wasn't a big Star Trek fan to begin with.

Dante Dies!

A (not so subtle) plug for an awesome theater group out in Chicago. Here's a belated review from their show last summer. Some awesome quotes:

"Not too surprised then that a stage adaptation by a young writer, performer and company was this summer's darling among the younger, hipper theater patrons."

I am so hip, I saw it three times!