For the last Hobby Center production of its 50th anniversary season Theatre Under The Stars threw a hell of a centennial birthday party for Broadway icon, choreographer and director Jerome Robbins with their revival of Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.
Before the word “Dior” became synonymous with haute couture, before the House of Dior became the global fashion giant and icon of style, Christian Dior, the pioneering designer, ran art galleries and organized exhibitions that featured artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Alexander Calder, Jean Cocteau, Dalí and Duchamp.
Five years ago, Arts and Culture Texas profiled a group of millennial theater artists striving to find creative roles for themselves offstage and to bring an innovative and fresh perspective onto Texas stages. Since then, two of those “Next Gen Leaders,” Brandon Weinbrenner, artistic associate at the Alley Theatre, and Mitchell Greco, artistic associate at Stages Repertory Theatre, have not only steadily risen to directorial prominence in Houston, they’ve also managed to carve out a personal life and marry each other.
The plays change but the players remain the same: Such is the model of a resident acting company, a group of artists who create theater together as a team.
Twenty-five years ago, to the month, Theatre Under the Stars world-premiered Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in its pre-Broadway run and introduced this independent Belle to the stage. As a grand holiday offering (through Dec. 23), TUTS now revives the show for its 50th anniversary season.
The great grand dame of hate-becomes-love stories Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice always held a current of social commentary beneath the surface of the glorious romance.
In Obie Award-winning playwright Will Eno’s latest work, Wakey, Wakey, the endearingly befuddled Guy takes the audience along on a somewhat bumbling memorial journey through his life on the way to his death.
When Matt Hune, artistic director of Houston’s Rec Room Arts, talks about his role as a theater director, he speaks of perspective, space, color and texture, words that seem more the purview of the visual artist than the vocabulary of someone audiences might imagine as that mysterious person behind the scenes bossing about all the actors.