Just as the weather settles-in from an inhumanely hot and humid summer, there are those looking ahead to the bitter cold of winter. Among the retailers and snow removal people preparing for the upcoming winter, there are also a great many people in the local performing arts making preparations for the holiday season that is now roughly a quarter of a year away. In a couple of weeks Acacia Theatr...

Memories Dinner Theatre of Port Washington sent out a press release recently announcing auditions for the first two shows of its five-show season. Which includes a vintage comedy and a premiere production of a family-based holiday show. Here’s a look:   The Last Of The Red Hot Lovers— The 1969 comedy about a middle-aged guy who attempts adultery three times—failing at every turn. It came...

Some of the most primal stories are very literal journeys. Having survived for over 300 years, The Pilgrim’s Progress has proven itself quite durable over the years. The story of an Everyman’s journey from the City of Destruction (the world) to the Celestial City (Heaven,) The Pilgrim's Progress has a kind of simple purity to it missing from a great deal of the Christian Bible. This coming O...

Set in a small town bed and breakfast, Houston playwright Pat Cook’s comedy You Can’t Get There From Here tells the story of a business that gets most of its clients from cars that have broken down. A tabloid reporter shows-up, possibly looking to expose the place and slowly falls in love with it. It’s been compared to the work of Frank Capra and it’s coming to Elm Grove. � The Sunset Pl...

The cabaret-style musical revue Forbidden Broadway is kind of a strange success story. In 1982, unemployed actor Gerard Alessandrini staged a showcase for his talents in the form of a group of parodies of Broadway show tunes at a supper club on New York’s Upper West Side. It quickly went from a one-man curiosity to a full cabaret show that ended up becoming New York’s longest-running musica...

Carl Sternheim could�ve been seen as sort of a German mutation of Oscar Wilde. His plays picked ever so gently at the moral sensibilities of an emerging middle class. A century or so ago, he wrote a Die Hose �a farce involving a woman seen in her undergarments. The play was revised as recently as 2002 by intelligent comedian Steve Martin in The Underpants. Deborah Staples starred in a Milwauke...

� � Set in the 1950�s, the 1995 comedy Moon Over Buffalo has become a long-term hit for East coast playwright Ken Ludwig. The comedy about an aging theatre couple in Buffalo, New York has the kind of commercial appeal that has kept it going for over 15 years now. South Milwaukee�s Grant Park Players will be hosting auditions for a production of the comedy South Milwaukee PAC on Tuesday, June 2...

An actor’s job relies quite heavily on adaptation. Adaptation tends to require a kind of homogeneity of form—a baseline uniformity in appearance that can be adapted to a number of different roles in a number of different ways. As a result of this, it can be very difficult for actors and other performers with disabilities to find work. There are profoundly talented performers out there who wil...

The Sunset Playhouse in Elm Grove has announced that it will be holding auditions for its upcoming show Gaslight Revue. It’s a vaudeville-style variety show, which means that the Sunset is really looking for any kind of talent at all here. Comedians, dancers, singers and other specialty acts are encouraged to audition. The press release asks those classic three questions asked of all aspiring ...

In�and amidst all of the rest of what’s going on in the near future, it’s nice to see announcements for the summer musicals. Starting this June, many are expected to flock to the big, soulless Broadway import running here in town through the in August. (Tickets went on sale to the general public yesterday.) UW-Waukesha’s production of Little Shop of Horrors opens the same weekend as the ch...