East siders rejoice – summer is actuality and the time is appropriate for alive theater.
Lucky amphitheater assemblage don’t accept to delay for September for the amphitheater division back it aloof keeps advancing – sometimes outdoors.
Cain Park, Chagrin Valley Little Theatre (CVLT) and its River Street Playhouse, the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Fairmount Assuming Arts Conservatory (FPAC) and Mercury Summer Stock are all aperture productions in either June or July and the offerings are agitative and varied.
CVLT in Chagrin Falls has aloof opened “A Night in Provence,” a absurdity from Robin Hawdon, whose plays “Perfect Wedding” and “Don’t Dress for Dinner” accept been apparent at CVLT in contempo years. “A Night in Provence” plays Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. through June 23.
The big, bright agreeable “Hairspray” plays July 20 through Aug. 18. CVLT’s sister theater, the River Street Playhouse, will action the two-person badge ball “A Steady Rain” by Keith Huff from June 29-July 14, and “Belles,” a ball about the relationships amid six Tennessee sisters, from Aug. 10-25.
“We accept no downtime,” said Drew Rothman, agenda media administrator for CVLT. “We accept the affluence of owning two venues, and amid the two we can accumulate article activity at all times.”
In fact, Rothman said, summer and winter are the two heaviest assembly times.
Rothman said he is aflame for the befalling to do a agreeable like “Hairspray” with a ample mixed-race casting of adolescent aptitude and afresh about-face about and aftermath article like “Belles” with Southern women accomplishing “Steel Magnolias”-type comedy.
“[With ’Belles’] we accept the appropriate bodies to cull off the material,” Rothman said. “Having the additional breadth is such a blessing, because we can do things like ‘Belles’ that we don’t apprehend a huge bartering success from.”
Tickets are accessible at www.cvlt.org or by calling (440) 247-8955.
Like bags of added theatergoers, Erin Cameron, accepted administrator of Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, saw the boob agreeable “Avenue Q” on Broadway and anon admired it.
Since she’s consistently attractive for interesting, altered and arduous shows that accept accepted relevance, she absitively to put on “Avenue Q.”
Russ Borski and the backward Paul Gurgol active up to co-direct “Avenue Q” and the two of them casting the appearance calm in March. Gurgol, who had been aggressive pancreatic cancer, died aloof 20 canicule later, and Borski followed through on what they had discussed.
He has been alive endlessly with Costume Designer Terry Pieritz, authoritative the puppets by duke afterwards it was apparent that the aboriginal Broadway puppets they advised to hire had, “a antecedent engagement.”
Each boob took Borski and Pieritz 80 to 100 hours to create. And there are added than 40 of them!
Cain Park’s p.r. and business administrator Ksenia Roshchakovsky, who has additionally apparent “Avenue Q” on Broadway, said that the agreeable tackles boxy subjects.
“But if you allocution about article like racism, sexuality, or schadenfreude with puppets, it’s easier to apprehend it. And later, you accept a added anticipation about it, and you say, ’you’re right.’ I saw aloof the table apprehend of this show,” Roshchakovsky said, “and I was arrant from laughter.”
“Avenue Q” runs from June 14 (preview performance) through July 1 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are accessible at www.cainpark.com or by calling (216) 371-3000.
Last year, bounded administrator David Hansen was approached by Tyson Douglas Rand, aesthetic administrator of the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival – who puts on Shakespeare for chargeless alfresco every summer – and asked to absolute “Henry VIII.”
More accurately, Hansen was asked to absolute “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry The Eight,” as that is its official title. Hansen is a Shakespeare addict and has apparent all of the BBC’s versions of every comedy in the canon.
“I bethink actuality afraid by this play,” Hansen said. “It’s like a celebration vs. a history play. I said, ’let me apprehend it and see if I can do that’.”
Over the accomplished year, Hansen has edited the comedy from three hours to one and a half, burst some characters, and acclimatized the comedy to advice the admirers accept the characters’ motivations.
“Their names are unimportant and the allegiances are basic,” Hansen said. “We’ve got all these guys aggravating to disengage anniversary other, we’ve got the abatement of Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess. There’s dancing and singing and there’s avant-garde beam to it.
“Everyone’s in apparel – it’s about political chicane – it will attending like the ’West Wing’.”
“Henry VIII,” directed by bedfellow administrator David Hansen, will comedy at Notre Dame College on June 15 and 16 and appointment the Shaker Heights Colonnade on July 14, which will additionally host “As You Like It” (directed by Dana Hart) on July 15.
A cannon accursed at a achievement of Henry VIII acquired a blaze that austere bottomward the Globe Theatre in 1613, so conceivably it’s for the best that performances will booty abode outside. Rain locations are anchored nearby, tickets are chargeless and the admirers is encouraged to accompany blankets and backyard chairs. “Henry VIII” and “As You Like It” abide to comedy at assorted locations about boondocks through Aug. 5, so best to analysis www.cleveshakes.org for added information.
Curtain for all shows is 7 p.m. and the appearance will be over by dusk.
Mercury Summer Stock does musicals – it’s what it does and has been accomplishing back 1998. This summer, the theatre, which has lived in Cleveland Heights, Bedford Heights, Parma and Cleveland, allotment to the East ancillary in accord with Notre Dame College in South Euclid.
The shows that will be presented this summer will be the award-winning “Cats” (June 15-30), the bogie account “Once Upon A Mattress” (July 6-21), and the Elvis agreeable “All Shook Up” (August 3-18) with a appropriate boyhood achievement of the bedrock n’ cycle agreeable “Footloose” July 20-21.
Artistic administrator and co-founder of Mercury Summer Stock, Pierre-Jacques Brault says of the G-rated “Cats” and PG-rated “Once Upon A Mattress”: “We try to do family-friendly productions in the summer. We best ’Cats’ because we are in a new association in a new space. Alike if someone’s never heard of Mercury Summer Stock, they’ve heard of ’Cats’.
“Notre Dame’s Administrator of Theatre, Jacqi Loewy is accustomed with our company. Her eyes and continued appellation ambition is to accept Mercury be like Porthouse is to Kent State while architecture her program.”
South Euclid association can appear see “Cats” (and airing out bustling “Memory”) for alone $10 on June 15. And here’s the affair about South Euclid’s Green Road – the theatre is on the aforementioned block with a basin accessible to the public, a Bavarian Tea Studio, an burghal marsh with an ascertainment deck, alike a Gymboree for the kids.
So access a little aboriginal and blow about the adjacency to see South Euclid’s best kept abstruse for aesthetes. Yes – really!
All performances are at 7:30 p.m. at Notre Dame College at 1857 South Green Road. For added information, alarm (216) 771-5862 or appointment www.mercurysummerstock.com.
The accomplished kids at Fairmount Assuming Arts Conservatory (FPAC) are alms “Little Women” July 6-15 with performances Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 2 p.m., and “Urinetown” Aug. 10-19 with performances Friday and Saturday Aug. 10-11 and 18-19 at 7:30, Wed., Aug. 15 at 7:30 and Thurs., Aug. 16 at 7:30, and Sundays, Aug. 12 and 19 at 2 p.m.
Miss this summer’s shows, and FPAC won’t accept a appearance afresh until February 2013.
When Fred Sternfeld afresh larboard as administrator of FPAC, he larboard big shoes to fill. Dusten Welch is demography over as administrator of the amphitheater program.
Production administrator for FPAC, Sean Szaller addresses those apropos as he active into summer programming at FPAC.
“We’re aflame to accompany in a new angle and a new set of challenges, new focus and new view,” Szaller said. “We accumulate our strengths and comedy with altered approaches.”
He said the alteration aggregation best the shows attractive for newer shows, breadth premieres and shows that adolescence theatres haven’t affected in a while, and absent to advertise the strengths of the accumulation of acceptance performing.
There’s a abundant assortment amid the shows, from a civilian war agreeable to a account of baptize curtailment and greed.
“Audiences can see two actual altered styles presented by the aforementioned age accumulation and aforementioned students,” Szaller says. “You’ll see assortment you wouldn’t consistently see in adolescence theater.”
For tickets, alarm (440) 338-3171 or appointment www.fairmountcenter.tix.com.
