Articles Tagged With: Baltimore Theatre Project

Happy Birthday, Mon Ami! an Alex&Olmsted production 📸 Ryan Maxwell Photography

Happy Birthday, Mon Ami with Alex and Olmsted

Reviews December 7, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther Leave a comment

Bonjour! Parlez-vous francais? No? Oui? Peut-être un peu? No matter! You will have a glorious good time at Alex and Olmsted’s latest fabrication— Happy Birthday, Mon Ami playing now through December 8th 2024 at Baltimore Theatre Project. Charming, wholesome family fun put together by these majestic creators of puppets, this delightful experience, reminiscent of a proper Punch&Judy show on Brighton Beach with hints of panto and improv thrown right in the mix is a charming outing for the whole family this chilly weekend in December.

John Covaleskie (left) and Michael P. Sullivan (right) in The Monroe Doctrine ???? Rand Black

The Monroe Doctrine at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews August 18, 2024 Chris Pence

author: Chris Pence

What defines success? The American Dream? Career goals? Personal satisfaction? Baltimore playwright Mark Scharf examines these queries and more in The Monroe Doctrine, a new play making its world premiere at The Baltimore Theatre Project. The play centers around the Monroe Family, a typical American family hoping to celebrate Memorial Day 2014 with the Traditional Monroe Family Memorial Day Picnic on Hog Island, Maryland. Through family arguments and personal reflections,

Cindy of Arc at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews May 4, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther

The thing about songwriting is that you can’t have just one catchy line. You have to tell a story and get at that truth. Enter Cynthia Kaplin, her three-man band— all named Mike— and her Cock Show, which is a metaphor. And also not a metaphor. Buckle up, kids, this one is something else! Directed by Dani Davis, this one-woman, one-hour clusterbang of chaos is quirk and off-color whilst being a little entertaining, and a whole lot of in your face politically.

Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly by Happenstance Theater ???? L Hewitt Photography

Adrift at Happenstance Theater

Reviews February 24, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther

As above— so below. From the profoundly deep to the oddly absurd, Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly, the latest live stage performance from Happenstance Theater, has it all. And also a strawberry. Appearing for a limited two-weekend engagement at Baltimore Theatre Project, this newly devised work comes the masterminds of Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Gwen Grastorf, Sarah Olmsted Thomas, and Alex Vernon, with their inspirations set ‘adrift’ on stage from the works of Hieronymus Bosch (amongst others) and will fill you with an oddly enlightened sense of wonderment,

Today4U Tomorrow 4 Iron Crow Theatre: An Interview with Artistic Director Sean Elias on Landing Rent at The M&T Bank Exchange Performance Space

Interviews February 9, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnight, in cups of coffee— in inches, in miles, in laughter, and strife!

The beautiful ephemeral nature of theatre is that it lingers on in our hearts long after the last curtain drops. And rarely do audiences get such an extraordinary chance to see a sold-out performance, which was so popular, it had to be extended. It had to be extended half-way across town to a brand new space!

Rent at Iron Crow Theatre

Reviews January 25, 2024 Leonard Taube

By now most of us have heard of the musical RENT and may have even seen a production (or more), and/or possibly even caught the movie version of Jonathan Larson’s brilliant masterpiece which chronicles the lives of several struggling young artists/activists/musicians in New York set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic. With roots loosely in the 1896 opera La Boheme, Larson’s tale is set in the then-thriving Alphabet City in Lower Manhattan’s East Village in New York.

Alex & Olmsted's Hubba Hubba. ???? Ryan Maxwell Photography

Hubba Hubba at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews March 30, 2023 Amanda N. Gunther

The sickness which no doctor can treat; the wound which can only be healed by the weapon which dealt the blow; Love. Movies, musicals, live-stage performances, television programs, radio dramas— you name it— have all attempted to conquer the subject, explore it or explain it, celebrate it, degrade it, deconstruct it— the path to love in our lives, particularly that interwove into our digestible media, is unending. But never has it felt so real, so relatable,

Hurricane Diane at Iron Crow Theatre

Reviews January 22, 2023 Leonard Taube

OK, listen up folks. Do you believe climate change is real? Do you have a penchant for HGTV? Do you secretly binge watch “Real Housewives of New Jersey”? If the answer is yes, have I got a show for you! Even if the answer is no to all or at least one of those questions, Iron Crow Theatre’s production of Hurricane Diane is one that promises to please nonetheless. And make you laugh.

Blown Away: An Interview with Iron Crow Theatre’s Natka Bianchini on Hurricane Diane

Interviews January 16, 2023 Amanda N. Gunther

Gods don’t die; they just change form. And what if one of the most revered Gods of all time— especially to those in the theatre community— were to reappear in a different form, come down to earth and hope to bring about a change of days? Then you sound like you might be prepared for Iron Crow Theatre’s production of Madeleine George’s Hurricane Diane. And if you’d like to be more prepared,

Head Over Heels at Iron Crow Theatre

Reviews December 10, 2022 Leonard Taube

Listen up folks! Have you got “the beat”? No? Well then you better get your tickets and pay a visit to The Baltimore Theatre Project in Baltimore where resident company Iron Crow Theatre is putting on Head Over Heels, a jukebox musical comedy based on the songs of the 1980’s female rock bad The Go-Go’s. But before we talk about the show, we must talk about both the company and the venue,

Mankind at Iron Crow Theatre

Reviews October 10, 2022 Joshua Bermont

Representing the triumphant return of the Iron Crow Theatre after their long pandemic hiatus, Mankind – written by Robert O’Hara, and directed by Ann Turiano – is a bold and beautifully-presented madcap satire that throws stones at such formidable topics as religion, anti-abortion legislation, and an upside-down world where “FEMINISM!” is a battle cry while women themselves are an afterthought.

This frenetic cyclone of ever-escalating absurdity takes place in a future where women have been extinct for over a century,

Kiss Me, Mr. Musk: A Climate Change Parable at Single Carrot Theatre

Kiss Me, Mr. Musk at Single Carrot Theatre

Reviews August 24, 2022 Joshua Bermont

Experimental, absurd, and downright surreal new works seem to be dominating playhouses lately, and why not? If art reflects the times in which it is conceived, then it’s no wonder that the larger-than-life senselessness we’ve collectively been adrift in for the past several years has provoked playwrights and directors to express themselves in weirder ways, eschewing formal dramatic structures and revivals of familiar shows for endeavors which feel more like cultural primal screams.

Pieces meant to confuse and challenge us – to shake us out of our complacency and remind us of the horribly high stakes of just being alive at this precarious point in history.

Trash Talk: An Interview with Single Carrot Theatre’s B Kleymeyer and Kolton Cotton about Kiss Me, Mr. Musk

Interviews August 16, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

You’re gonna need a bigger boat. No, it’s not Jaws: The Musical (but I’m sure that’s coming…just look at Back To The Future: The Musical headed to Broadway in spring of 2023)…but you are definitely going to need a bigger boat if sea levels rise and Baltimore City becomes flooded. Perhaps Papa Bezos will lend you his space-rocket or let you rent out his penthouse suite at the new Moon Hotel.

AntiCone at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews June 24, 2022 Joshua Bermont

What can be said about something as bizarre, unexpected, and unapologetically ridiculous as AntiCone, the performance art spectacle written, produced, and directed by Tia Shearer and Natasha Mirny (Happy Theater) currently on offer at Baltimore Theatre Project?

At some point in one’s life – generally when one visits friends who have, in recent years, become parents – one is approached by a group of little kids and breathlessly invited to “see a play they’ve just written.” Naturally,

ATA (left- mobilized puppetry by Alex Vernon) and The Astronaut (right- Sarah Olmsted Thomas) in Marooned! ???? Glen Ricci

Marooned! A Space Comedy at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews April 29, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

Space and time are illusions. So says the Great Cosmic Peanut.

You’ve never encountered the Great Cosmic Peanut? You mean— you’ve never crash-landed your interstellar navigational craft on an uncharted planet and are in desperate need of rescuing? You’ve never even been to space!? Well what are you waiting for? There’s an innovative new theatrical puppet experience, appropriate for all ages and audiences, appearing now at Baltimore Theatre Project— Alex & Olmsted’s Marooned!

(L to R) Sarah Olmsted Thomas, Alex Vernon, Sabrina Mandell, Mark Jaster, and Gwen Grastorf in Pocket Moxie!

Pocket Moxie at Happenstance Theatre

Reviews March 25, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

Many may have moved away from Vaudeville but not Happenstance Theatre! Fresh off their whirlwind-tour of New York City’s off-Broadway, they have returned to Charm City in true Happenstance fashion bringing with them a jubilant and bubbly new show— Pocket Moxie. As ever, the performance is collaboratively devised by the ensemble— Gwen Grastorf, Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Sarah Olmsted Thomas, Alex Vernon— and it brings the delights of a bygone era to vivacious and zany life for everyone at Baltimore Theatre Project to enjoy.

Songs From The UnderWorld at Theatre Project

Reviews February 26, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

It’s a strange time that we’re currently traversing. The Pandemic may never truly be over; it is transitioning to something that is endemic and for some life is returning to normal or new-normal, however you’d like to label it; this is the next step. The next step for Kristin Putchinski, perhaps more readily recognized by her performance moniker, ellen cherry, is to start Grad School and put a pause on performing. In a curious self-discovery piece that is just as strange and disjointed as the current lives we’re all leading as we figure out how to take these next steps back into the real world,

(L to R) Alex Vernon, Gwen Grastorf, Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, and Sarah Olmsted Thomas in BrouHaHa.

BrouHaHa at Happenstance Theater

Reviews November 1, 2021 Amanda N. Gunther

Is this the end? A deep and troublesome question that a great many found themselves asking for many, many unending months as a global pandemic forced all signs of life as we know it to cease. In a thrilling and curiously strange, wondrously curious, and uniquely— well, Happenstance— piece of theatre, which pre-dates the global Covid-19 pandemic, BrouHaHa comes to the stage foreshadowing an existential apocalypse of sorts. A Happenstance Theater collaborative production,

Happenstance Theatre's Cabaret Macabre 2019. Photo: WAGS Media

Cabaret Macabre at Happenstance Theatre

Reviews October 31, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping? Do you
have a little drop of poison coursing through your veins? Then come, dark
denizens of Baltimore and areas surrounding, and delight in this autumnal treat
that appears every so often on the stage of Baltimore Theatre Project. What Gorey
work am I speaking of, you ask? Why, Happenstance Theatre’s Cabaret
Macabre, now in its most current rendition. Like a cherished memory,

Proxy at Rapid Lemon Productions

Reviews October 11, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

They say try and remember the good times, or think about the
good memories, when doling out advice for how to cope with the loss of a loved
ones. But good memories get ruined by grief; they make you wish you could
forget entirely. What if there was no more need for forgetting? What if loss
was no longer necessary? Enter Proxy, the last show on the Rapid Lemon stage
for their 2019 calendar season.

Crusade at Rapid Lemon Productions

Reviews August 14, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

Recon— they don’t speculate. They observe and report. Sort
of like theatre critics. We don’t speculate— we observe and report. Observing
now: Crusade the only full-length production of the Baltimore
Playwrights Festival in the 2019 calendar year. Crusade, written by Bruce
Bonafede, is a world premiere making its debut in association with the BPF
through Rapid Lemon Productions at the Baltimore Theatre Project. (BPF, RLP,
BTP, over and out!) Directed by Timoth David Copney,

Variations on Myth at Rapid Lemon

Reviews May 12, 2019 Joseph R. Kennedy

In Rapid Lemon’s Variations on
Myth, director T. P. Huth takes advantage of the emotional ride a series of
ten-minute plays can create if presented in an order that allows them to
strengthen one another. It is too often that a series of smaller plays is
presented as hors d’oeuvres, being consumed individually without thought to if
the first appetizes the audience for the second, whereas this collection of ten-minute
plays formed a cohesive experience.

Marooned! at Alex and Olmsted

Reviews May 3, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

*ccchk* Houston? *ccchk* Hello? *ccchk* Is there anybody out there?

Space.

The final frontier.

It is man’s destiny to go forth and explore. It is Alex
& Olmsted’s destiny to go forth and create extraordinary theatre with puppetry
and puppets being their cynosure into the next leg of their extraterrestrial
and theatrical experience. Marooned! A
Space Comedy is the latest offering from the Jim Henson Foundation Grant
Winning company.

Pantheon at Happenstance Theatre

Reviews April 12, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

Oh workers, builders, and destroyers of the world! Heed the
call— it is your destiny— in seats at Theatre Project for your bodies to be— feel the sweetness of Eurydice— and rest
assured the show’s lyricist (Craig Jaster) is far better at this rhyming stuff
than me— and to prove it you must take yourself forth and see— Pantheon. The latest in the Happenstance
Theatre realm of fantastical fabrications, this iteration of theatricality
revolves around Greek Mythology.

Thank You, Dad at Rapid Lemon Productions

Reviews January 11, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

In a world exploding with fake news, the facts often get
lost in the chaotic flurry of excitement fluttering all around the story. And
even when the facts are straight forward, they don’t tell the whole story. The
facts here are straight forward. On November 18, 1978 over 900 people died in
the Jonestown agricultural commune in Guyana; over 300 of them were aged 17 and
under.

Dirty Pictures at Rapid Lemon Productions

Reviews October 15, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther

When you force the eye to see something in a whole new light; that’s true beauty. A pile of junk is just a pile of junk until it isn’t anymore; looking differently upon something broken, disregarded, or damaged can transform trash into treasure. In the world premiere of D. W. Gregory’s Dirty Pictures, art, beauty, and truth find new lights and the backwoods yokels of wilderness-nowhere Colorado absorb new perspective on what those things mean to their lives.

Terminal Lucidity at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews August 25, 2018 Erin Tarpley

Dada comes to Baltimore in the raw and intimate experience that is the world premiere of Terminal Lucidity, written by Amy Bernstein and directed by Melanie S. Armer. This work, presented by Baltimore’s own Theatre Project, brings to the stage a look at the dark and damaging political path America may currently be treading through the experiences of the women affected by the “monster in her midst.”

Dada in and of itself means… nothing.

Palindrome at Rapid Lemon Productions

Reviews May 16, 2018 Linda Roby

Palindrome by Max Garner holds a special element of history with two important men of music in the two plays he wrote. With each one act play explaining the fantastic yet tragic stories of Thelonious Monk and Marvin Gaye. With subtle touches of musical aspects in each play, the audience’s ears ring with the smooth sounds of jazz and other genres that were produced by the focused artists.

Allan Sean Weeks who took the responsibility of lighting director really took on the “less is more” saying for each play.

Homebodies at Baltimore Theatre Project

Reviews April 28, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther

What’s inside the box? More like what isn’t inside the box when it comes to Alex & Olmsted’s latest production: Homebodies. An original devised work that is gloriously magnificent in its own right, Homebodies explores the life of two individuals and their ordinary, everyday life. Inside their box. Devised and performed by Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas this quaintly quirky, highly expressive, physical exploration of movement and life has a little bit of something for everyone.

Cloud 9 at Iron Crow Theatre

Reviews January 28, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther 1 Comment

If there isn’t a right way to do things then you have to invent one. Iron Crow Theatre is doing exactly that with their current production of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9. Directed by Dr. Natka Bianchini, this work of Churchill’s examines a lot of things but askes a great deal from the audience in order to exist as anything other than a preachy drama with a lot of confusion. That said,