Broadway Week, which runs September 2 to 15, and 20 At 20, September 3 to 22, both offer theatergoers steep discounts. Also offering discounted tickets: Season of Savings.

All of this is a signal that the Fall theater season has begun. Another sign: the fall theater guides:

Associated Press

Bloomberg News

Broadway World (the Musicals)

Broadway World (the Plays)

New York Magazine

Playbill (Off-Broadway)

Variety (Off-Broadway)

Many emphasize all the stars:

Denzel Washington, Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Zachary Quinto, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Diahann Carroll, Mary-Louise Parker, Patrick Stewart, Zach Braff, Billy Crystal, Ethan Hawke, Fantasia Barrino

Then there is my Broadway Preview Guide, which goes chronologically show by show.

All this is what’s coming up. But there was plenty of theater news just in the past week, supposedly the last gasp of summer — but really the first full breath of Fall. Jessica Lange announced her return to Broadway in another classic play; Rocky got a date ; Aladdin’s magic carpet lands at the New Amsterdam.

The Week in New York Theater

Monday, August 26, 2013

New York Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award Winners 2013



Rocky has a date. ‪The musical co-written by Sylvester Stallone,directed by Alex Timbers, is set to open March 13 at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater.

Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian, exploring racism in 1964 Mississippi, directed by Robert Falls , with Ed Harris and (real-life wife) Amy Madigan opens on Theatre Row November 7 and runs through December 15.

Danny Burstein and Victoria Clark will join Mary-Louise Parker in ‪ The Snow Geese by Sharr White, opening October 24

“To write is an act of intervention,” Caridad Savich writes, but “art is not merely an instrument of social change.”

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Jessica Lange says she plans Broadway return in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. A model who made her film debut in King Kong, she now tackles tough parts, including two on Broadway – A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie — and makes smart use of her age, which is 66′

Andrea Martin returning to the trapeze in Pippin tonight after her vacation:



Following another injury of ‪a performer in Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the musical brings in record-low gross; Daniel Curry is still in the hospital

“I hate Broadway….It is the very incarnation of tackiness,”says director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Amelie,being made into a musical. The director sold the rights to make the film into a Broadway-aiming musical to raise $ for a charity. Some objected to Amelie director’s strong anti-Bway language (“disgusted.”) But I’m sure it sounded better in the original French.

Wikipedia introduces WikiProject Musical Theatre to improve and expand their coverage



What does a Broadway show about a rabbi do during High Holy Days? ‪Soul Doctor will be dark Yom Kippur eve (Friday) but there will be two shows on Saturday

August Wilson’s American Century Project — all 10 of his plays recorded as radio dramas….in front of a live audience, and livestreamed on the Web.

@NewYorkTheater Gem of the Ocean, so far. But I haven’t seen all of them. — Suzi Steffen (@SuziSteffen) August 29, 2013

@NewYorkTheater Literally was going to say Piano Lesson. I love Fences but Piano Lesson is really special. — Corey Ryan (@ChaoticCorey) August 29, 2013

@NewYorkTheater Jitney. First one I saw live. — Leslie Odom, Jr. (@leslieodomjr) August 29, 2013

@NewYorkTheater JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE, the original Broadway production. I was dazzled. — Robert LoBiondo (@Bobster427) August 29, 2013

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Silicon Alley companies use NYC’s arts culture, including Broadway, as a recruiting tool for tech talent. ‪ Doctor scheduling start-up ‪@Zocdoc “has hired former Broadway performers to sing praises of its service to physicians & patients”

‪BRIC arts media’s new $35 million home with 240-seat “performance space” opens October 3 in former Strand Theater 647 Fulton St, Brooklyn

John Lloyd Young, who played Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys on Broadway, will play him in Clint Eastwood movie version.

“No Time at All” is right. Turns out that Andrea Martin, who just returned to Pippin after a four week vacation, is leaving ‪the show for good in September, for a TV series, Working the Engels.

Broadway Perfumes: Broadway’s Answer to Justin Bieber and One Direction. Smells That Sell

Guilty by ‪@SpideyOnBway: The fragrance that you’ll fall for.

(Resist) Temptation by the Book of Mormon: A whiff of starched shirt with a note of pepper spray.

‪

“Artists are the gate keepers of truth.We are civilization’s radical voice”~Paul Robeson. ‪ Yvette Heyliger agrees

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Disney’s Aladdin, new stage musical of 1992 animated film, will open March 20 at Broadway’s New Amsterdam. Dir: Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon)

Lauren ‏ @ lauren9739 now all we need is a cast!!!

Tim Nicolai ‏ @ tim_nicolai This is going to make insane money.

Celebrated director David Cromer (Our Town, Tribes, etc.) will join Denzel in Raisin in the Sun cast as polite racist Karl Lindner

Stephen Schwartz hopes his Houdini with Hugh Jackman (Act I done) will counteract Broadway’s “artistic slump” ‪h

Yank, WWII gay love story that was at ‪York Theater, has raised $ 35,000 through Kickstarter for a cast album. There is no talk (as there once was) of transferring it to Broadway.

New season at ‪the Irish Repertory Theater to include Sean O’Casey’s Juno and The Paycock (about Irish civil war) and three Beckett short plays performed by puppets.

Theater and Social/Political Change

.A weekly Twitter chat from Howlround (Storify transcript)

Excerpt:

1. History of Theater and Activism



Jonathan Mandell: When did the idea begin that theater *should* change society? Did the Ancient Greeks feel that way

Paul Mullin ‏ @ justwrought Greek theater DID change the culture from family vendetta-driven towards democracy and institutional justice.

Yvette Heyliger ‏ @ Twinbizness No TV or twitter. Theatre was the gathering place, right?

Russell Warne ‏ @ Russwarne I don’t know for sure, but that attitude seems prominent in countries & time periods w/free speech & social unrest.

Jonathan Mandell: You’re forgetting Eastern Europe, which did not have free speech but did have world-changing theater. # VaclavHavel

Russell Warne Definitely true. But I’m talking generalities. It certainly isn’t a universal urge. # Shakespeare rarely rocked the political boat. Because of censorship?

2. Did August Wilson want to change the world,or just present a world previously unseen on stage

Lili Ashman ‏ @ LiliAshman Why can’t it be Wilson wanted to do both

Yvette Heyliger ‏Not sure he set out to change world but did so anyway

Elaine Avila ‏ @ ObrigadaAvila Doesn’t presenting a world previously unseen on stage change the world?

3. Plays that changed the world

Works by Athol Fugard’s & Anna Deavere Smith,Laramie Project, Fortune & Men’s Eyes, Ruined.ngels in America, Boys in the Band, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Vagina Monologues,

Terry Teachout ‪@terryteachout All great plays change the world, but I suspect that the greatest ones do so without trying.

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Harmony, Broadway-aiming ‪Barry Manilow musical about Comedian Harmonists, opens ‪at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater September 6.

The many practical reasons why ‪Lyn Gardner (fresh from the Fringe) loves going to the theater alone.

New “tell-all” Spider-Man book: Producers at first wanted to hire Tony Kushner or Tom Stoppard to write the book of the musical.

Tour of “green” Stephen Sondheim Theater: metal-looking walls made of recycled paper; waterless urinals

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“Othello never knew/He was schemed on by a member of his crew.” ‪Chicago Shakes goes hip-hop, for inmates.

Christopher Sieber (Shrek, Spamalot, etc) steps in for Terrence Mann as Pip’s Pop in ‪Pippin for 16 performances in September

Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser married economist John Roberts today, with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiating. ‪

My review of Night Blooming Jasmine

Night Blooming Jasmine is a Romeo and Juliet love story between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian student, originally produced in 2000, now revised and revived in Horsetrade Theater Group’s swift, well-cast, modest production at Under St. Marks….

the best change may be the theater in which the play takes place, with a minimal set. Under St. Marks Theater requires descent down a rickety staircase, and immersion in a space that feels too small and too run down, inducing the kind of claustrophobia that seems just right for a play about uneasy and unwilling neighbors.

Full review of Night Blooming Jasmine

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Fringe Encores Pics, videos & descriptions of the 17 shows — out of the 185 in the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival — being presented again this month

The Tempest will be FREE in Central Park with a cast of 206 members of the public including 32 gospel choir singers and three cabdrivers. September 6 to 8.

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