The Secret Theatre is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre that was established in The Long Island City Art Center in July 2007 by Actor/Director Richard Mazda. It can seat slightly under fifty audience members. The theatre is home for The Queens Players and has 'repertory' style policy of mounting an average of over 9 mainstage productions in a year.
The inaugural production featured an original work by Joel Schatzky which starred Bill Krakauer, father of Klezmer musician David Krakauer. Bill was an 80-year-old psychotherapist turned actor who played the lead role as a conductor who escaped persecution by the Nazis by emigrating to America to pursue a musical career. Subsequent productions in The Secret Theatre's first season included 'Theatre of Horror', a mainstage production featuring original plays from the Grand Guignol, A Christmas Carol, Lysistrata and Edward II by Christopher Marlowe.
The production of Edward II was filmed and went into post production. [ when? ]
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
Sir Derek George Jacobi is an English actor. He is known for his work at the Royal National Theatre and for his film and television roles. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, two Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony Award. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
The William Esper Studio was founded in 1965 as a school for the performing arts in Manhattan, New York. The school is dedicated to the acting technique of Sanford Meisner. Its founder, William "Bill" Esper, is occasionally referred to as the best-known of Meisner's first generation teachers.
William Mills Irwin is an American actor, choreographer, clown, and comedian. He began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He has made a number of appearances on film and television, and he won a Tony Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He also worked as a choreographer on Broadway and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 1989 for Largely New York. He is also known as Mr. Noodle on the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World, and he appeared in the Sesame Street film short Does Air Move Things? He has regularly appeared as Dr. Peter Lindstrom on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and had a recurring role as "The Dick & Jane Killer" on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. From 2017 to 2019, he appeared as Cary Loudermilk on the FX television series Legion.
Located in Olney, Maryland, the Olney Theatre Center offers a diverse array of professional productions year-round that enrich, nurture, and challenge a broad range of artists, audiences and students. One of the two official state theaters of Maryland, Olney Theatre Center is situated on 14 acres (57,000 m2) in the middle of the Washington–Baltimore–Frederick "triangle." There are three indoor venues: the Historic Theatre, the Roberts Mainstage, and the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. There is also an outdoor venue, the Root Family Stage at Omi’s Pavilion.
Bard on the Beach is Western Canada's largest professional Shakespeare festival. The theatre festival runs annually from early June through September in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The festival is produced by Bard on the Beach Theatre Society whose mandate is to provide Vancouver residents and tourists with affordable, accessible Shakespearean productions of the finest quality. In addition to the annual summer festival, the Society runs a number of year-round theatre education and training initiatives for both the artistic community and the general community at large. Bard on the Beach celebrated its 30th anniversary season in 2019.
Christopher McDonald is an American film, television, theatre and voice actor.
The Zoo Story is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. His first play, it was written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks.
Little Shop of Horrors is a horror comedy rock musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics and a book by Howard Ashman. The story follows a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The musical is loosely based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. The music, composed by Menken in the style of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes several well-known tunes, including the title song, "Skid Row (Downtown)", "Somewhere That's Green", and "Suddenly, Seymour".
John Lawrence "Jack" Canfora is an American playwright, actor, musician and teacher whose works include Place Setting,Jericho and Poetic License.
Raphael Sbarge is an American actor and filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Jake Straka on The Guardian (2001–04), Jiminy Cricket / Dr. Archibald Hopper on Once Upon a Time (2011–18) and Inspector David Molk on the TNT series Murder in the First (2014–16). He is also known for voicing Carth Onasi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), RC-1262 / "Scorch" in Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005) and Kaidan Alenko in the Mass Effect trilogy (2007–12).
Emily Betsy Mann is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020.
James Barbour is an American singer and theatre actor who played the title role in the Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera from February 2015 until December 2017. Among his other credits are the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.
Plenty is a play by David Hare, first performed in 1978, about British post-war disillusion.
Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo is a play by Edward Albee which adds a first act to his 1959 play The Zoo Story. This first act, also called Homelife, revolves around the marriage of Peter and Ann and ends with Peter leaving to go read a book in Central Park.
Signature Theatre Company is an American theatre based in Manhattan, New York. It was founded in 1991 by James Houghton and is now led by Artistic Director Emily Shooltz. Signature is known for their season-long focus on one artist's work. It has been located in the Pershing Square Signature Center since 2012.
Gayfest NYC is an annual theatre festival in New York City which showcases plays and musicals that feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender themes, plotlines, and/or creative teams. The festival is produced by Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman. The goal is to produce professional showcases of new works, complete with an Actor's Equity Association cast and director.
The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) was an Off-Broadway theatre company founded in 1992 by a group of New York stage veterans. For several years, TACT produced many concert performances, a cross between a staged reading and a full production. In 2006, TACT began a residency at the Beckett Theatre on Theatre Row to produce two full plays a year. TACT focused on reviving lesser-known productions that have not been performed in New York for several years. According to their website, their mission statement was "to present neglected or rarely produced plays of literary merit, with a focus on creating theatre from its essence: the text and the actor's ability to bring it to life."
Oracle Productions was a Chicago, Illinois based theatre company founded in 2001. Oracle moved into a storefront space at 3809 N Broadway in June 2006. In 2010 Oracle moved to a theater model dubbed "Public Access Theatre". Their "store front" style influenced the first shop front theatre of the UK. Oracle ceased operations at the end of 2016 citing personal changes for their Executive Producer and Director.
Trouble in Mind is a play by Alice Childress, which debuted Off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in 1955. It premiered on Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre on November 18, 2021. The play focuses on racism and sexism in American theatre. It was published in the anthologies Black Theater: a 20th Century Collection of the Work of its Best Playwrights, the second edition of Black Drama in America: an Anthology, Plays by American Women: 1930-1960, and Alice Childress: Selected Plays. It was first published on its own by Theatre Communications Group in 2022.