Stage Door: The Complex Web of Theater Awards

by Nathaniel R

Andrew Garfield in "Angels in America"

Oscar fanatics have it easy. Each year roughly 300 movies are eligible for the Oscar race and those same titles (with very few exceptions) are also eligible for all the other movie awards on this continent. They're even (with a few more exceptions) the same slate of movies that are eligible ACROSS the ocean at the other major English language film awards (the BAFTAs). Not so with theater!

Theater awards, a nichier beast altogether, are ultra territorial and when there is crossover it can feel accidental or play out like an echo rather than a harmonic convergence. The Olivier Awards, for example, just honored Lin Manuel Miranda's blockbuster "Hamilton"  which the Tony Awards honored two years prior but the only real crossover for this year's Tony Awards is likely to be Angels in America which just transferred here with most of its London cast intact...

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Come to "Show Business: The Road to Broadway" this Sunday!

by Nathaniel R

Hello all. A week or so ago I moderated a screening of Mean Girls (2004) for Show-Score's new Stage and Screen series with two members of the new stage musical's team (The Broadway version of Tina Fey's classic officially opens this Sunday).

I'm doing another Q&A so come! This Sunday at 1:00 PM I'll be speaking with director/producer Dori Berinstein about her documentary Show Business: The Road to Broadway (2007) which follows four musicals during the seminal 2003/2004 Broadway season: the blockbuster Wicked, the little scrappy show that could (and did) Avenue Q, Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's brilliant Caroline or Change, and the troubled Boy George musical Taboo.  I saw all the big shows that year (a rare occurrence) and loved all four of the musicals this doc follows so that season remains special to my heart.

The movie has awesome rehearsal and backstage footage and all sorts of brilliant taking heads like Tony Kushner, Carol Channing, Alan Cumming and many more.

Idina and Kristin rehearsing Wicked in 2003.

When: Sunday, April 8 at 1:00 PM
Where: Peter Norton Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia (2537 Broadway at 95th).

If you'd like to attend as my guest, please e-mail me and I'll arrange it. Would love to have some TFE readers there! Come support my stage fright AND see a fun movie that isn't streaming anywhere.

Stage Door: Broadway's Beach Vacations

by Dancin' Dan

It may be April, but New York City is once again covered in a blanket of snow in a winter that won't stop. But thankfully, Broadway is providing not one, but two beach vacations you can take for (slightly) less than a plane ticket to somewhere warm. Escape to Margaritaville and Spongebob Squarepants could not be more different on the surface (although both feature a volcanic explosion as an important plot point), but they do provide some pretty wonderful escapism for anyone longing for warmer climes...

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Roseanne's Return. And Other Stories

Time for a link roundup so recent news doesn't entirely escape us...

movies
• AV Club Phantom Thread deleted scene -- an actual food fight between Cyril and Reynolds! Daniel and Lesley are clearly enjoying themselves
• IndieWire March Madness movie brackets. This A24 one is a nightmare. How to vote against so many great movies?
• THR Hugh Jackman's next two projects are The Front Runner and Bad Education (despite the familiar famously queer titles I'm disappointed to say that neither of those are adaptations of famous gay love stories or drag Almodovar movies.)

More after the jump including Cameron Diaz, Roseanne, Broadway movie adaptations, Ben Affleck, and more...

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They Found Someone: Stephanie J. Block to Play Cher

By Spencer Coile 

Renowned (and Tony nominated) for The Mystery of Edwin Drood and for "breaking down" in Falsettos,  and for playing Liza Minnelli in the Hugh Jackman musical The Boy From Oz, theater star Stephanie J. Block is about to add another iconic character to her repertoire: Cher. The Cher Show, which will be penned by Jersey Boys writer Rick Elice, will tell the story of pop singer and Academy Award winning actress throughout her career...

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