Attention Rochester Theater Community: Send us your nominations for the 2014 Rochester Theater Hall of Fame City Newspaper is getting ready to induct new members into the Rochester Theater Hall of Fame, and we need your nominations. We want you to suggest actors, directors, musicians, stage managers, set designers, costume designers, producers, and other prominent […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “How to Survive Crack Addiction”
To begin with, the audience crowding the foyer of Writers & Books waiting to see Padraic Lillis’ one-man show “How to Survive Crack Addiction” seemed all wrong to me. I expected — I don’t know — youthful? But these folks were almost all of a certain age, dressed respectably and drinking coffee out of Styrofoam […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: Cello Show, “Wing-Man,” “Ephemeral”
Squeezing six cellos and a drum set (along with the musicians playing them) into the small music area at Java’s Cafe on Gibbs Street was quite a feat – one that, had it not been accomplished once already this festival, I wouldn’t have believed possible. As it was, the process of making it happen resulted […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: Rhythm Tap Rochester, “12 Dollars”
I’ll admit, as a lifelong tapper, I had lofty expectations for “Rhythm Tap” at RAPA Wednesday night. The art of hoofing is often lost this day in age – and I’m thrilled to say that in William “Bill” Evans and Cheryl Johnson’s performance, it’s been found again. The duo’s 50-minute Fringe Fest show is a […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “ROOMS: A Rock Romance”
The closest I’ve ever come to writing a theater review is Alice Cooper’s show at the Auditorium Theatre a few years back. I’m not exactly a Broadway guy — on- or Off-. But I’ve got to admit I loved the production of “ROOMS: A Rock Romance,” playing at RAPA’s East End Theatre as part of […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: The 24-Hour Plays
Any die-hard theater geek knows that a show doesn’t just happen overnight. It usually takes months or even years to write the script, weeks to audition actors, and months to build the set and rehearse the actors before it’s “curtain up.” That is, unless you’re part of The 24-Hour Plays, which debuted at Writers & […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Oscar and I,” “Starting Here, Starting Now”
Yesterday was Show Tune Sunday at the Fringe Festival, at least for me. In the afternoon I attended “Oscar and I: A Rodgers and Hammerstein Sing-Along with Mrs. Anna” at MuCCC. Mrs. Anna, in case you didn’t know, is one of the great R&H characters — the “I” in “The King and I,” in fact […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Waiting at the Crossroads Cafe,” “Anomaly”
I saw only two shows at the Fringe Fest on Sunday. While they were wildly different in content, they were alike in two ways. First, they showcased some of the truly astonishing artistic talent we have right here in Rochester. And second, they cemented for me that the quality of Fringe Festival shows in general […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “A Man, A Magic, A Music,” “Bag of Tricks,” “Ping,” “Same Sex Shakespeare”
“A Man, A Magic, a Music” is a one-man show starring Movin’ Melvin Brown, playing at Geva Theatre Nextstage as part of Fringe Fest. The piece is essentially Brown’s life story as told through a retrospective of black pop culture from the 1950’s through the early 21stcentury. Brown was bitten by the showbiz bug at […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Not Wallace Stevens,” “All Your Questions Answered”
According to Just Poets member Roy Bent, the group titled its Fringe Festival program of original poetry “Not Wallace Stevens” because while Stevens is undeniably a great poet, he’s one who’s “good on the page, but not on the stage.” It’s a characteristic endemic to poetry as a whole, and their group hopes to change […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: RIT Film & Animation Honors Show, “Rochester Stories,” “The Daughter of Capulet,” “Interviewing the Audience,” “Old Maid and The Thief”
My Saturday at Fringe Fest was all about storytelling. I started off with the RIT School of Film and Animation Honors Show, screened at Little Theatre 1, which offered 26 of the best works produced at the school last year. While many of the short films were the work of students obviously flexing their burgeoning […]
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Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Almighty God Bierce,” “The Author’s Voice”
Ambrose Bierce’s (1842-1913?) death was enigmatic — a journalist who traveled to Mexico in 1913 to interview Pancho Villa, he simply vanished, hence the “?” — but his life was definitely a troubled one. Fighting in the Civil War, an unhappy marriage, and the death of his children helped add vitriol and disillusion to his […]
