Maya Angelou wrote, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” For almost two years we were homeless; without our “safe place”. As we all settle into the “new norm”, Beth Tfiloh Community Theatre has given us a taste of the past, sprinkled with hope for the future, and laced with the safety of home. Theatre is back! And Beth Tfiloh’s production of 42nd Street,
Freak,
slut, burn out, bug eyes, poser, lard ass, loser, short bus, bull dyke, stuck
up, hunchback, white trash! Names. Labels. Words used to describe people who
are different or don’t fit our image of what we consider the “norm.” Words that
one might associate with high school, but all to often are used far more common
in our everyday speech. In fact, if I am being honest, although I didn’t speak
the words,
Are you where you want to be and who you want to be and doing what you always said you would? Tidewater Players, the resident theatre company of Havre de Grace, is where they want to be and who they want to be and doing what they always said they would! Making a bold move by opening their 2018/2019 season with a politically charged production of Chess (the musical in concert), Tidewater Players stands to set the tone for their season with this shocking opening gambit.
“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd… his skin was pale and his eye was odd… he shaved the faces of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard of again. He trod a path that few have trod, did Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”.”
The opening lines to the haunting and delightfully disturbing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street still have the power to chill and unsettle audiences,
“You work real hard and the pays real low… and every hour goes oh so slow… and at the end of the day there’s nowhere to go…” but to Cockpit in Court’s production of Avenue Q! This raunchy and hilarious musical by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx is a modern adult take on the classic Sesame Street formula: adorable puppets living their day-to-day lives… It just so happens that these puppets live in the real world,
I say this with humility in this— online open space! They’re your responsibility in— good ol’ Havre de Grace! If you want to see their show and all the feelings that they spill, in Havre de Grace Opera House that’s halfway down the hill, then for God sakes get thee to it! For Congress never will! Yes, yes, it’s not even July and the Tidewater Players are calling to order the second continental congress of America with their production of 1776.
If you trust in your soul, keep your eyes on the goal, then the prize you won’t fail— you’ll find your grail at Cockpit in Court this summer with their second mainstage production, Monty Python’s Spamalot. Directed by Laurie Sentman Starkey with Musical Direction by R. Christopher Rose, this instance of comedic musical theatre has a little something for everybody. Be you a Monty Python fan, a musical theatre fan, neither,
Crazy is underrated. Normal is an illusion. What’s normal for the spider is a calamity for the fly, and what’s crazy for normal folk is just the basic happenings of everyday life for the crazies, like the gloom and doom inside the mansion in central park. Closing out the 2015/2016 season, The Children’s Playhouse of Maryland delivers a creepy and kooky performance, with all of the iconic Charles Addams’ characters alive in their shades of gray on the lecture hall stage in The Addams Family musical.
Come with me to see something strange unfold and hear the weirdest tale that’s ever been told. But children, be wary if you’re faint of heart, for what’s happening on stage is more than just art! The Children’s Playhouse of Maryland is undertaking a marvelous masterpiece, an enormously fruity and fantastical story— James and the Giant Peach! What a musical! Directed by Liz Boyer Hunnicutt with Musical Direction by R. Christopher Rose,