The Bailiwick Repertory Theatre was a theater company in Chicago founded in 1982 [1] that produced eclectic works. [2] It staged productions at the Bailiwick Arts Center in the city's Lakeview neighborhood from 1995 until 2009. [3] Productions include Biello & Martin's 1999 production of Fairytales/Breathe and the 2007 American premiere of Jerry Springer - The Opera. [4]
Bailiwick Repertory Theater was officially dissolved in the fall of 2009. At that time, many of the company's former artists got together to create a new company in order to continue Bailiwick's legacy of producing daring and risky musicals and plays. [5] This new company is called Bailiwick Chicago, launched on November 8, 2009. Bailiwick Chicago is producing non-equity musicals and plays, with a special emphasis on cultural, social and sexual diversity. There is no brick & mortar location for the company at this time. Productions are mounted at various locations around Chicago.
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer than 100.
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is a professional not-for-profit theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1979 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts reinterpreted in refreshing new ways. Over the past forty years it has garnered many of the nation's most distinguished awards, including a Pulitzer Prize (1982), a Tony Award (1986), and a Jujamcyn Award (1985). In 2002, the A.R.T. was the recipient of the National Theatre Conference's Outstanding Achievement Award, and it was named one of the top three theaters in the country by Time magazine in 2003. The A.R.T. is housed in the Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University, a building it shares with the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club. The A.R.T. operates the Institute for Advanced Theater Training.
Jerry Springer: The Opera is a British musical written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, based on the talk show Jerry Springer. It contains irreverent treatment of Christian themes, extensive profanity, and surreal images, such as a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members.
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
Mary Beth Peil is an American actress and soprano. She began her career as an opera singer in 1962 with the Goldovsky Opera Theater. In 1964 she won two major singing competitions, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions; the latter of which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera National Company with whom she performed in two seasons of national tours as a leading soprano from 1965 to 1967. She continued to perform in operas through the 1970s, notably creating the role of Alma in the world premiere of Lee Hoiby's Summer and Smoke at the Minnesota Opera in 1971. She later recorded that role for American television in 1982. With that same opera company she transitioned into musical theatre, performing the title role of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate in 1983. Later that year she joined the national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I as Anna Leonowens opposite Yul Brynner, and continued with that production when it opened on Broadway on January 7, 1985. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal.
The San Jose Repertory Theatre was the first resident professional theatre company in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1980 by James P. Reber. In 2008, after the demise of the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, the San Jose Rep became the largest non-profit, professional theatre company in the South Bay with an annual operating budget of $5 million. In 2006, it was saved from impending insolvency by a $2 million bailout loan from the city of San Jose; this was later restructured into a long-term loan similar to a mortgage.
Berkeley Repertory Theatre is a regional theater company located in Berkeley, California. It runs seven productions each season from its two stages in Downtown Berkeley.
Infernal Bridegroom Productions (IBP) was a theater company located in Houston, Texas, formed in 1993 and dissolved in 2007. IBP garnered national attention when it was featured on the cover of American Theatre in September, 2002, for its original play, We Have Some Planes, by Brian Jucha, about the events of September 11. The theater's name is taken from a line in one of its first productions, In the Jungle of Cities by Bertolt Brecht. The line reads, "In my dreams I call him my infernal bridegroom." IBP produced over 60 plays, many of them world premieres.
Regina Taylor is an American actress and playwright. She has won several awards throughout her career, including a Golden Globe Award and NAACP Image Award. In July 2017, Taylor was announced as the new Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theater at Fordham University.
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright, poet, professor, and essayist. Among her most popular plays are Eurydice (2003), The Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (2009). She has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career. Two of her plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and she received a nomination for Tony Award for Best Play. In 2020, she adapted her play Eurydice into the libretto for Matthew Aucoin's opera of the same name. Eurydice was nominated for Best Opera Recording at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
The Christmas Schooner is a musical written by John Reeger with music and lyrics by Julie Shannon.
George William Stiles is an English composer of musicals for the stage.
Jack O'Brien is an American director, producer, writer and lyricist. He served as the Artistic Director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California from 1981 through the end of 2007.
Emily Skinner, also known as Emily Scott Skinner, is a Tony-nominated American actress and singer. She has played leading roles in 10 Broadway productions including New York, New York, Prince of Broadway, The Cher Show, Side Show, Jekyll & Hyde, James Joyce's The Dead, The Full Monty, Dinner at Eight, Billy Elliot, as well as the Actor's Fund Broadway concerts of Dreamgirls and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She has sung on concert stages around the world and on numerous recordings.
Brian Sidney Bembridge is an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer for theater and film. His work has been seen on stages and screens throughout the country and Internationally in Australia, Germany, Prague, Ireland, and Great Britain. Mr. Bembridge has also taught and lectured at many universities across the country. He holds a BFA from University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Diane Marie Paulus is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of Hair and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and won the award in 2013 for her revival of Pippin.
Eric Simonson is an American writer and director in theatre, film and opera. He is a member of Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and the author of plays Lombardi, Fake, Honest, Magic/Bird and Bronx Bombers. He won the 2005 Academy Award for his short documentary A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 1993 for The Song of Jacob Zulu.
Roger Bean is an American writer and director who specializes in jukebox musicals.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Biello & Martin are a songwriting duo working in dance, theatre, and film. Independently, Michael Biello is a lyricist, performance artist, and ceramic sculptor. Dan Martin is a composer and music producer. They are best known for creating performance works which promote love, spirituality, and self-expression through a Queer lens. As LGBTQ+ cultural activists, they also founded Outmusic, an LGBTQ+ music organization, and have been romantic life-partners for over 40 years.