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LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - No matter how many blockbusters there are, Universal's screen version of the global hit stage musical "Mamma Mia!" is the most fun to be had at the movies this or any other recent summer. Teenage boys may be glued to the latest action adventure, but the rest of the family will have a rollicking good time dancing in the aisles to Swedish pop group ABBA's irresistible songs. It's a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances. After its world premiere in London...

Officials of a north suburban park district say strong racial language in the musical "Ragtime" prompted their decision Wednesday to cancel the show two weeks before it was set to open. Those involved in the production -- set for Wilmette's Gillson Park -- say the decision means the loss of more than a month of hard work by a cast of nearly 40, and a misunderstanding of the show's message and realistic look at race relations in the past century. Wilmette Park District Executive Director Tom Grisamore said he made the decision to pull "Ragtime" 12 days after learning the...

Perhaps it is easier to list what is not attacked in this brutal ridiculing of the Catholic faith. The production is called "Jerry Springer--The Opera in Concert" and it will run from June 26-August 3 at the New Stage Collective in Cincinnati. The so-called opera will also be showing at The Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. from July 16-Aug. 10 The American TFP and its America Needs Fatima campaign vehemently protest this production. The TFP is asking its friends and supporters to send their e-protests to both theaters right away. The TFP is also promoting a protest outside the...

(WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of artwork that is offensive.)(CNSNews.com) - Federal taxpayers are subsidizing a college in New York whose art school is currently displaying works that include a drawing of a man with a crucifix coming out of his rectum, a drawing of a man with a rosary coming out of his rectum, and rosaries decorated with penises. Over the last eight years, at least $4.6 million in federal tax dollars have been provided to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which is displaying the controversial artworks. Some of the money has come...

NEW YORK - The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards. ADVERTISEMENT The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004. "Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

Reverend John Jenkins, CSC, and I have been in communication about his decision to allow performances of “The Vagina Monologues” at Notre Dame. I am grateful to Father Jenkins for the extensive time he has put into our conversation and correspondence on these matters over the last two months, and I have taken care in this statement to present his position accurately in order to make a fair response. Father Jenkins has informed me that, while he thinks that this play is a bad play, he believes that permitting its performance under certain conditions, namely, in an academic building without...

"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a play about the 23-year-old college student and human rights activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza while defending a Palestinian home from demolition five years ago, has been staged in so many places around the world that her parents can't keep track. It debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005. Since then, it's been staged in Peru, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Greece and Canada. Soon it will be seen in Argentina, Africa, Spain, France and Australia. "There are plans for it on all the continents with the...

Here's a TV review of the 2007 Kennedy Center honors. Still we have pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet. Also, a True Crime Book Review of "Unspeakable Acts". This book is more accurately a tome. Half of it could have been deleted. For this tale of two hippie doctors eliciting tales of abuse in a daycare center in the hysteria of the mid-80's is almost entirely fiction. This is a great study of how the Lamestream Media creates a story from thin air.

Follow the link to read about a play making a hero out of Rachel Corrie that is running in Montreal. Corrie was a nitwit, indoctrinated by Israel-hating leftists at Evergreen State College who got flattened by an Israeli military bulldozer. Good riddance to her! Anyone dumb enough not to move out of the way of a slow moving bulldozer shouldn't be using up valuable oxygen. Does the play have a bulldozer come on stage, like the helicopter in Miss Saigon? Because watching a re-enactment of the flattening of the unlamented Rachel Corrie might be worth the price of a ticket.

Columbia Gorge Repertory Theatre/Jesse Merz, Artistic Director and Lisa Dozier announce that The Gospel According to Tammy Faye, a new two-act musical based on the life of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner, will be presented in three special industry readings in New York City, on Sunday, December 16 at 7PM; Monday, December 17 at 4PM and Tuesday, December 18 at 2PM. Mindy Cooper (choreographer for Dracula, The Musical) directs and choreographs and Seth Farber is the musical director. With a book by Fernando Dovalina and music and lyrics by JT Buck, The Gospel According to Tammy Faye is based on a...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Fireworks explode through the air, women dressed as angels "fly" to herald Jesus' birth and camels make their way to the nativity scene with the three kings. At the First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale's $1.3-million Christmas Pageant - more Broadway extravaganza than local production - hundreds of men, women and children dressed as ancient residents of Jerusalem dance, skip and sing their way into the aisles. There is simulated snow, a horse-pulled sleigh, a kickline of dancers and a jazzed-up version of "Joy To The World." It's a far cry from the modest bed-sheeted wise...

BBC to film all 37 of Bard's plays By Chris Hastings and Stephanie Plentl  Last Updated: 4:36pm GMT 18/11/2007     Boasting one of the greatest casts ever assembled and spanning more than seven years, the BBC's Shakespeare series 30 years ago was a defining moment in British television history.   Helen Mirren in the 1980s version of Cymbeline   Now the corporation aims to upstage its own classics by producing new versions of all 37 of the Bard's plays.It has enlisted Sam Mendes, Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, and his Neal Street company to produce...

The first F bomb of the evening came early, followed rapidly by the first insult of President Bush, which, not surprisingly, incorporated the second F bomb. This was not the end of the swearing, but then, this was not your usual book fair speaker. This was Rosie O'Donnell. Or, as she is known to the patient fans without tickets waiting outside in the standby line, just plain Rosie. O'Donnell kicked off the 24th edition of the Miami Book Fair International Sunday night at Miami Dade College, and the audience was smaller than usual on past opening nights. A rough count...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A folklorist with a background in country music, soft-spoken Bill Ivey has helped change the way Capitol Hill regards the National Endowment for the Arts. Lawmakers believe Ivey has brought a more populist approach to the 35-year-old endowment, said Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. "The big difference was a shift in emphasis from the Metropolitan Opera to the people in real life -- to folk singing and things like that," said Jeffords, a longtime NEA advocate. Ivey became chairman in 1998 after running the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee, for 27 years. He succeeded actress...

...One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make you smarter. The notion that arts classes improve children's scores on the SAT, the MCAS, and other tests is practically gospel among arts-advocacy groups. A Gallup poll last year found that 80 percent of Americans believed that learning a musical instrument would improve math and science skills. But that claim turns out to be unfounded. It's true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation...

Mozart’s lighthearted opera The Abduction from the Seraglio does not call for a prostitute’s nipples to be sliced off and presented to the lead soprano. Nor does it include masturbation, urination as foreplay, or forced oral sex. Europe’s new breed of opera directors, however, know better than Mozart what an opera should contain. So not only does the Abduction at Berlin’s Komische Oper feature the aforementioned activities; it also replaces Mozart’s graceful ending with a Quentin Tarantino–esque bloodbath and the promise of future perversion. Welcome to Regietheater (German for “director’s theater”), the style of opera direction now prevalent in Europe....

PLAYWRIGHT Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether. The writer was speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival for his first major public event in Britain since winning the Nobel Prize for literature last year. He was too ill to attend the Stockholm ceremony to collect his award last November, but used yesterday's sell-out event to launch a blistering attack on British and American policy in Iraq, arguing that suicide bombers' attacks were "acts of retaliation against western domination of the world". Pinter, whose last published play came out in 2000, said the reason he had given...

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, offered the following comments today on the popularity of Catholic-bashing plays: “The Helen Hayes Theatre in New York must be experiencing hard times these days, otherwise it wouldn’t be home to ‘Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway.’  According to Variety, the play claims that the Catholic Church is run by the Nazis and that ‘the devil really does wear Prada’; the devil is the pope.  To show how timely they are, the play’s producers manage to squeeze in a smack at Mel Gibson, dropping the line ‘now he wants the Jews to treat him...

The land is wide and desolate, with tall spires of red sandstone rising abruptly from the desert. On the maps, this area straddling the Utah-Arizona border is known as the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. In the movies, Monument Valley has become -- thanks to John Ford and generations of filmmakers after him -- the image of what the West is. "What's iconic about it is that awesome space down there, and the incredible beauty of those sandstone buttes and mesas, which are confined to that area only," said James D'Arc, curator of Brigham Young University's motion-picture archive. "It remains...

N.Korea Gulag Musical to Hit Washington A Korean musical about human rights abuses in North Korea’s notorious Yoduk concentration camp will be staged at the National Theater in Washington D.C. Producers of “Yoduk Story” said Monday the musical will debut there on Sept. 21. The 165-year old National Theater is right on Pennsylvania Avenue, about 100 m from the White House, and is one of the national symbols. There will be 10 shows until Oct. 1 at the theater. Suzanne Scholte, the head of the activist group Defense Forum Foundation who played a key part in arranging the show's U.S....

After writing "The Motorcycle Diaries" screenplay, Jose Rivera felt he had more to say about Ernesto "Che" Guevara so he wrote a play he says shows the Latin American revolutionary would have had plenty to say about the war in Iraq. "When you're in a situation where you're killing people and no one really knows why, the times require someone to ask those questions," Rivera said in an interview in New York, where his new play "School of the Americas" opens on Thursday. "Che was always asking those questions and criticizing U.S. imperialistic impulses all over the world," he said....

Controversy surrounding a religious drama recently presented in two local public schools has prompted an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union -- and a plan by the church to bring the drama to the public. "The Last Call," based on the Bible's Book of Revelations, was presented to students at Muskegon Heights High School last December and at Muskegon's Steele Middle School in April. Teachers in Muskegon have complained about the program, which was performed April 14 during a mandatory all-school assembly at Steele on Good Friday during school hours. The ACLU began an investigation after The Chronicle on...

Queer Monologues Premier at John Carroll Written by Abbey Fox on April 10, 2006 Their message is simple: "It’s okay to be gay. †It’s okay to be straight. †All we ask is that you don’t discriminate!" Last weekend in the Marinello Little Theatre, the JCU Allies presented "The Queer Monologues," an entirely student written, produced and directed theatrical production. Director, sophomore Katie Sedon, says the "The Queer Monologues" is an activist production that engages an audience in the culture and ideologies of the gay community. Sedon said, "It’s greatest purpose is educational in promoting an awareness of the gay community...

by James K. Fitzpatrick Other Articles by James K. Fitzpatrick Backing Down at Notre Dame 05/09/06 Many Catholics were heartened by news reports that the new president of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins, was going to prohibit performances of The Vagina Monologues at the university. I was on board, devoting a column a few weeks ago to a New York Times’s story in mid March about Jenkins’s willingness to take on the trendy secular leftists in regard to this play. In This Article...Selling Our Kids' Souls for Job SecuritySecularization: A Dagger in the Heart of the ChurchCatholic Teachers at Catholic Colleges...

<p>Forgive this vanity post , but I received this in an email and I think it is important for Catholics to see. Please support this protest.</p> <p>Ave Maria, Regina Coeli!!!</p> <p>This event is sponsored by the Priestly Order of the Society of Saint Pius X and will be led by our pastor, Fr. Gerardo Zendejas. We will pray as many Rosaries as possible to make reparation for this heinous mockery of the Immaculate Mother of God. Please be a witness and make the necessary sacrifices to make these acts of reparation.</p>

When a professor at Slippery Rock chose to parody The Vagina Monologues with handbills for the fictitious play that incorporated the name of the male organ, fliers for the event were torn down by female members of the faculty, incensed at the use of academic freedom to satirize their favorite play, a professor from the Pennsylvania school told disbelieving state assemblymen. Professor Alan Levy also said students have complained to him that the education teachers said if there were a teacher strike and any of the students crossed picket lines, the teachers would see to it that they never got...

Today is William Shakespeare's birthday. Or it would be had the man lived to be 442. Interestingly enough, this is also his death day, as he shuffled off this mortal coil on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52. Though the Bard and his work have never gone out of fashion, for some reason everyone and his brother of late has made an audiobook about old Will. If you only have time for one of these, opt for Peter Ackroyd's compelling "Shakespeare: The Biography." Fascinating doesn't even begin to describe it. Ackroyd takes all the information we have on...

Have you ever been to Lincoln Center in New York? I had never been there until yesterday, when I was privileged enough to attend an opera at the Met. Although the opera was wonderful, I dare say I was even more impressed with the architecture of the entire center. It seems to me to be the epitome of modern architecture of the second phase of the International Style (that simplified skyscraper style with often-elegant materials, steel beams, and glass). In fact, the beauty and style of Lincoln Center could be said to rival the music created within. I had always...

Play pushed underground Cancelled in New York, the first Toronto reading of My Name Is Rachel Corrie is being held at a secret location Apr. 21, 2006. 01:00 AM RICHARD OUZOUNIAN THEATRE CRITIC Rachel Corrie was born in Washington, killed in the Gaza Strip, praised in London and censored in Manhattan. Now she's being forced to go underground in Toronto. My Name Is Rachel Corrie is a play based on the life and words of the 23-year-old American activist who died in Gaza on March 16, 2003, after an incident involving an Israeli Defence Forces bulldozer. Corrie's supporters claim she...

The museum at the former Nazi death camp Majdanek in Poland has canceled plans to host a production of "Jesus Christ Superstar," after criticism of the idea in news media, the director said Thursday

The Penis Monologues, a series of witty, one-man acts -- a twist on the honest, satirical spirit of the Vagina Monologues -- highlighted [Boston University's] Theater for Engineers' Spring Show, performed in the College of Arts and Sciences building Thursday in front of about 40 students. School of Education senior Nathan Fein said the spin-off to The Vagina Monologues was about "celebrating all stereotypes about men's penises." "The show's not disrespectful," he said. "We're exploring the penis more in-depth in a comical way." TFE President Patricia Ramsey said she was satisfied with the event, though a better venue with a...

(March 22, 2006) — Many Rochester-area high school students are, have been or soon will be involved in a springtime tradition — the musical........ Mendon is the first high school in the nation to stage Miss Saigon, said director David Brown. Performances began the weekend of March 17 and conclude this week with evening shows on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The show also provides musical, cultural and historical challenges for the cast of about 60 students........

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - A central Missouri high school drama teacher whose spring play was canceled after complaints about tawdry content in one of her previous productions will resign rather than face a possible firing. "It became too much to not be able to speak my mind or defend my students without fear or retribution," said Fulton High School teacher Wendy DeVore. DeVore's students were to perform Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," a drama set during the 17th Century Salem witch trials. But after a handful of Callaway Christian Church members complained about scenes in the fall musical "Grease" that showed...

NEW YORK - It's not hard to spot the common theme in three New York theater offerings this season that go by the titles "Bush is Bad," "Bush Wars: Musical Revenge" and "Laughing Liberally." The Web site for "Bush is Bad," which is subtitled "The musical cure for the blue-state blues," features a grand piano falling on the head of President George W. Bush. "Bush Wars" promises what it calls a counterattack on "the disgraceful agenda of the Bush administration." It features a dance number with Bush and Osama bin Laden taking their mothers to lunch at the same restaurant,...

Tickets for "Monica! The Musical" at the New York Music Theatre Festival are on sale now! Go buy some. The emptiness you have felt in your life will suddenly dissipate. The sun will shine a little brighter. Food will taste good again. You will like your friends and suffer your coworkers.All performances will take place at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 307 W. 26th Street, New York. It's gonna be awesome.

TFP Student Action launches effort to restore modesty on Catholic campuses Feminist groups on twenty-one American Catholic Universities are planning a new assault against the Church’s traditional moral teaching, by organizing showings of the lewd play, “The V***** Monologues” in the weeks surrounding St. Valentine’s Day. (Asterisks added for modesty). TO SIGN YOUR E-CARD AND JOIN THE GROWING PROTEST, visit: http://tfp.org/student_action/php/monologues_2006.php The choice of St. Valentine’s Day is particularly offensive, since it is a feast day the Church instituted to honor three martyrs who died to defend the Faith. According to the Cardinal Newman Society1, the play is a conglomeration...

Debate is in full swing at the University of Notre Dame, where the new president has imposed limits on a gay parade and a sexual-themed play. University President the Rev. John Jenkins will allow performances of "The Vagina Monologues" only in a lecture hall and renamed the Queer Film Festival, saying both raise concerns at the Roman Catholic university.

Jennifer S. Altman New York Times Tony Kushner, left, E. L. Doctorow and Thane Rosenbaum watching a scene from the HBO version of Mr. Kushner's play "Angels in America." The discussion was supposed to be about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, ... E. L. Doctorow was there, ... So was Tony Kushner, who placed the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg at the deathbed of her prosecutor Roy Cohn in his Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America." snip "Do artists worry about getting it right at all?" asked Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and law professor who served as the evening's moderator. "Is...

Continuing its campaign to rid Catholic campuses of the offensive play “The Vagina Monologues,” the Cardinal Newman Society has urged the presidents of 28 Catholic colleges to cancel announced performances in February and March 2006. Three universities have already assured CNS that they will not permit the play, after CNS informed them of student performances announced by V-Day (www.vday.org), which organizes productions across the country. Very Rev. David O’Connell, CM, president of the Catholic University of America, Msgr. Harry C. Barrett, president of New York Medical College, and Rev. Anthony Figueiredo, Executive Director of Mission and Ministry at Seton Hall...

Howard Stern's statuesque daughter, Emily, has abruptly pulled out of an off-Broadway show in which she appeared stark naked. Fearful that audience members were snapping pictures of her in the nude, the 6-foot-tall actress ditched the Jewish Theater of New York production of "Kabba lah," forcing it to shut down. "I'm terribly disappointed," said Tuvia Ten enbom, who wrote and directed the satire on how the Jewish mystical practice has gone commer cial. Tenenbom told The Post that Howard had begged Emily not to do the show, which debuted Nov. 15 and was set to run until the end of...

TEHRAN, Nov. 12 (MNA) -- Discrimination against racial minorities in housing and the slowness in delivering relief after the destructive Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. South have inspired Iranian director Behruz Gharibpur to make plans to stage “Uncle Tom's Cabin” in Tehran in the upcoming year. Authored by American writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), “Uncle Tom's Cabin” (1852) is a forceful indictment of slavery and one of the most powerful novels of its kind in American literature. Gharibpur had dramatized “Uncle Tom's Cabin” before, and Qatreh Publications is to publish a book...

The Manhattan cabaret musical revue "Bush Is Bad" will get some thematic company in January with the launch of "Bush Wars, A New Musical Revue." The production at Off-Broadway's Collective: Unconscious opens Jan. 22, 2006, following previews from Jan. 12. Bush Wars is billed as "a compassionate counterattack on what its creators view as the disgraceful agenda of the Bush administration." "Told through 16 musical parodies and dozens of costume changes, Bush Wars sinks its talons into everything from Dick Cheney (literally in bed with the oil companies) to the Supreme Court's 'right hand turn' and from 'Republican training school'...

IS THERE an audience for classical music? How many times we have asked that question, and never really come up with a compelling answer. As we approach the end of 2005 - a year of typical mixed fortunes for the music scene - I find myself revisiting this old chestnut of a question. On the one hand, there are ominous signs out there. The Usher Hall struggled yet again this year to fill its 2,000-plus seats in either the Edinburgh Festival or even with the allure a few weeks ago of American superstar soprano Barbara Bonney, as part of the...

Around the holidays, the biggest challenge for many theater companies is convincing audiences to care about yet another staging of "A Christmas Carol." This season in Atlanta, however, Actor's Express wants to stir up buzz about a less familiar property -- namely, a pedophile musical. The Express has already started pushing "Love Jerry," a new tunertuner written and composed by Megan Gogerty that follows the tortured story of Jerry, who develops a sexual relationship with his nephew while trying to stay friends with the boy's father. A delicate, often heart-wrenching piece of theater, the show, which preems Jan. 22 at...

When the cast of a church's living Nativity scene is hauled off to jail because of a herd of uncooperative livestock, a down-on-his-luck Santa becomes the unsuspecting target for "goodwill toward men." The fast-paced production is a collage of humor and heart tugs, that conveys a message about the need for a personal relationship with God is at the heart of this Christmas play. I will be performing in this hilarious Christmas comedy called “’Tis the Season” at Calvary Christian Center this Weekend. You Don’t want to miss it! Details: When: December 17th- 19th (Saturday- Monday) Time: 7pm Nightly...

By Beth Cooney Staff Writer December 15, 2005 If you are an insomniac who has caught a certain raunchy late-night infomercial, then you will get exactly what the Connecticut Gay Men's Chorus was spoofing when they dubbed their annual holiday performance, "Elves Gone Wild." Yes, a group of gay men with good voices have drawn their creative inspiration from the "Girls Gone Wild" series of videos and DVDs which feature drunken college beauties flashing their breasts, lifting their skirts and kissing each other in showers. "We weren't sure people would get it," Winston Clark, music director of the CGMC, says...

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who won wide attention with a vigil outside President George W. Bush's ranch in the name of her soldier son killed in Iraq, is the subject of a new play by Nobel laureate Dario Fo. "Peace Mom" received its world premiere in London on Saturday night, starring British actress Frances de la Tour, with both Sheehan and Italian dramatist Fo in the audience. The one-woman show is based on extracts from Sheehan's letters to Bush and other writings. De la Tour delivered the monologues beneath large pictures of Sheehan's son Casey and...

When Madison, WI playwriting duo Catherine Cappellaro and Andrew Rohn penned the hit Madison musical "Temp Slave" in 1997, the nation's largest employer was Manpower, the coast-to-coast temporary worker placement agency. Today, the nation's largest employer is ... well, who else but? Wal-Mart. Biggest retailer in the world. Icon of 21st-century capitalism. Source of Every Day Low Prices. So loved, so hated! And the perfect subject for a musical, thought Cappellaro and Rohn - who've spent the better part of the last two years writing the campy, caustic and comically irresistible "Walmartopia" for Mercury Players Theatre. The show runs at...