Category Archives: Press Releases

22nd Annual ACTING IRISH INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL Runs May 19-23

AIITF_logoThe Irish Heritage Center of Cincinnati is hosting the 22nd annual Acting Irish International Theater Festival May 19th through the 24th. This unique festival features full-length plays written by Irish authors or set in Ireland. The plays are performed by select theater groups from the United States and Canada. All plays will be performed at the Irish Heritage Center of Cincinnati at 3905 Eastern Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45226.

Seven different Irish plays presented by seven different Irish theater companies. Every night a show, plus two matinees. Opening of the festival and first show is on Tuesday the 19th of May at 7:30 PM.

The selection of the event is THE CAVALCADERS by Billy Roche performed by The Irish American Theater Company of Cincinnati!

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

  • May19 at 7:30pm THE CAVALCADERS by Billy Roche (Irish American Theater Co. of Cincinnati, OH)
  • May 20 at 7:30pm THE FIELD by John B. Keane (Irish Players of Rochester, NY)
  • May 21 at 7:30pm THE MAIDEN AUNT by Jimmy Keary Gaelic (Park Players of Chicago, IL)
  • May 22 at 2pm THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM by Enda Walsh (Tara Players of Winnipeg, MB)
  • May 22 at 8pm SEA MARKS by Gardner Mackay (Liffey Players of Calgary, AB)
  • May 23 at 2pm THE CHASTITUE by John B. Keane (Irish Players of Florida)
  • May 23 AT 8PM MOMENT by Deirdre Kinahan (Milwaukee Irish Arts)

$22 for single show tickets, $20 each for two to three shows, and $17 each for four or more shows, or $110 for the complete series of 7 shows.

For more information visit http://www.irishcenterofcincinnati.com/irish-theater.php

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Commonwealth Theatre Co. at NKU Announces Casts

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, KY – Commonwealth Theatre Company at Northern Kentucky University is proud to announce the casts and production teams for their 2015 Summer Dinner Theatre season. Performances begin in June.

THE SUNSHINE BOYS | By Neil Simon
June 3 – 21, 2015 | NKU Robert and Rosemary Stauss Theatre

The legendary comedy team of Lewis and Clark are no longer speaking to each other on or off the stage.  But when these cranky comics are convinced to reunite for a TV special, who will get the last laugh? Can they get through their most famous sketch one last time without killing each other?  Don’t miss Neil Simon’s comic masterpiece about showbiz, aging, and the true meaning of friendship.

  • Joshua Steele as Ben Silverman
  • Dave Roth as Al Lewis
  • Herb Duval as Willie Clark
  • Burgess Byrd as Miss Mackintosh
  • Clayton Winstead as Floor Director
  • Ellie Chancellor as Show Nurse
  • Nate Netzley as Man in Sketch
  • Director: Greg Procaccino
  • Scenic Designer: Brett Bowling
  • Costume Designer: Caren Young
  • Lighting Designer: Terry Powell
  • Sound Designer: Kevin Havlin

CTC_Sunshine Boys cast promo

THE 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
By William Finn, Rachel Sheinkin, and Rebecca Feldman
July 8 – 26, 2015 | NKU Robert and Rosemary Stauss Theatre

An eclectic group of kids vie for the ultimate spelling trophy and along the way we learn their hopes and the humorous stories of their lives. As the contestants navigate their way through increasingly complex words, the adults (and a few audience members) help and hinder their progress. This hilarious and warmhearted tale of overachievers’ angst celebrates the triumph of doing the best you can.

  • Alysun Mellick as Rona Lisa Piretti
  • Dain Paige as Vice Principal Douglas Panch
  • Christopher Richardson as Mitch Mahoney
  • Spenser Smith as Chip Tolentino
  • Haley Jones as Marcy Park
  • Korey Harlow as Leaf Coneybear
  • Madeleine Drees as Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere
  • Brandon Bentley as William Barfee
  • Hannah Gregory as Olive Ostrovsky
  • Director: Roderick Justice
  • Music Director: Jamey Strawn
  • Scenic Designer: Tyler Gabbard
  • Costume Designer: Jeff Shearer
  • Lighting Designer: Larry Csernik
  • Sound Designer: Kevin Havlin

CTC_Spelling Bee cast promo

For more information call the NKU Fine Arts Box Office at 859.572.5464 or go to commonwealth.nku.edu

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MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED! | Fri., Nov. 20 | Aronoff Center

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

MISC_Mythbusters logo

Jamie Hyneman’s final performances on tour!

Aronoff Center | Friday, November 20 – 8:00 PM

TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY, MAY 8 AT 10:00 am

CINCINNATI, OH  – The Cincinnati Arts Association (CAA) is thrilled to announce that the all-new live show MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED!, starring Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, co-hosts of the Emmy-nominated Discovery series “MythBusters,” debuts at the Aronoff Center’s Procter & Gamble Hall for one night only on Friday, November 20 at 8:00 PM. Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, May 8 at 10:00 AM. The much-anticipated show is part of CAA’S 2015-16 Season, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Aronoff Center; the full season will be announced at a later date.

PRICES:
$110 VIP* (limited to 50 tickets) • $68 • $58 • $45
*VIP ticket includes a meet-and-greet with Jamie & Adam, an autographed 8 x 10 photograph, and priority seating

INFO:
MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED! presents a fantastical evening of on-stage experiments, audience participation, exciting videos, and behind-the-scenes stories.   With this show, fans join Jamie and Adam onstage to assist in their mind-blowing and mind-twisting approaches to science.  MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED! brings you face-to-face with the curious world of Jamie and Adam as the duo matches wits on stage with each other and members of the audience. Jamie Hyneman has announced that he will end touring with the live show this year.

TICKET INFORMATION – on sale Friday, May 8 at 10:00 AM        

  • www.CincinnatiArts.org
  • 513.621.ARTS [2787]
  • Aronoff Center Ticket Office
  • Group sales (10 or more): 513.977.4157

MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED! presents a fantastical evening of on-stage experiments, audience participation, exciting videos, and behind-the-scenes stories.  With this show, fans join Jamie and Adam onstage to assist in their mind-blowing and mind-twisting approaches to science.  MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED! brings you face-to-face with the curious world of Jamie and Adam as the duo matches wits on stage with each other and members of the audience. Jamie Hyneman has announced that he will end touring with the live show this year.

Since 2012, Jamie and Adam have toured North America, Australia and New Zealand with their live show.  To date, they have performed in 108 cities, given 119 performances, over 200,000 people have seen them onstage and the tour has grossed over $12 million. This fall, the tour will perform 31 dates across the US and Canada.

One of the most highly-regarded and watched series on the Discovery Channel, “MythBusters” is now in its thirteenth season. Co-hosted by Hyneman and Savage, the show mixes scientific method with gleeful curiosity and plain old-fashioned ingenuity to create its own signature style of explosive  experimentation – and the supporting or de-bunking of urban myths that we live with day to day.

Jamie and Adam have become spokespersons at large for applying science to real life – most recently as hosts of the Discovery Channel special “iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World,” and have appeared on numerous shows including “Late Show with David Letterman,” “Good Morning America,” “The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” “The Colbert Report,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” “Countdown with Keith Olberman,” and many more.  They were invited to participate in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Fear And/Or Sanity and have received the Young Artist Award for inspiring young people in the interest of science. The MythBusters have been invited to participate on a panel at Comic-Con, where their appearances have sold-out four years running.

Jamie and Adam serve as guest editors for Popular Mechanics and were featured on the cover of the September 2009 issue. That same year, they were inducted as honorary members into Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. They are Honorary Lifetime Members of the California Science Teachers Association and were named Honorary Engineers and Honorary Members of the Francis Crowe Society at the University of Maine. Both Hyneman and Savage were given honorary Doctorates at the University of Twente in the Netherlands for their efforts at popularization of science.

Jamie and Adam produced and starred in an H1N1 Public Service Announcement for the White House, and were chosen by the President to retest the Archimedes legend using five-hundred schoolchildren as surrogate soldiers.

They appeared as themselves in the movie Darwin Awards and have made several cameos on other TV shows, including CSI.  And In 2010, Hyneman and Savage received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from the Harvard Secular Society.

About Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage
Jamie Hyneman is the owner of M5 Industries, an effects company specializing in problematic custom builds. Besides serving as headquarters of “MythBusters,” M5 continues to work on various research and development projects for private clients.

After trying his hand at careers as various as librarian at the United Nations in Geneva to running a diving and sailing charter business in the Caribbean, Hyneman began his career in show business as special effects shop assistant in New York and later in San Francisco as a crew member on films including “Robocop,” “Arachnophobia,” and “Naked Lunch.”

While managing Colossal Pictures’ model shop in San Francisco, Hyneman was given the opportunity to take over – and M5 Industries was born.

Hyneman graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Russian. He has received an honorary engineering degree from the University of Maine as well as an honorary doctorate of engineering from Villanova University, with whom he has an ongoing collaborative relationship to help develop new safety concepts for the military. He is the holder of several patents and the winner of numerous industry awards.

Hyneman currently resides the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

Adam Savage received a call from Jamie Hyneman in 2002 to participate in a demo for a TV show, which turned into the wildly popular Discovery Channel & SBS series “MythBusters.”

Savage immersed himself in the NYC arts scene before moving to San Francisco in 1990 to parlay his skills into the thriving theater scene. There he worked for dozens of companies as set designer, prop master, art director, and producer before falling into the machine art community where he learned welding, pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, and robot-building.

After exhibiting his work in over fifty art shows nationwide, Savage caught the eye of the special effects industry and began working as a prop builder and art director for major commercials for Sega, Coca-Cola, Nike, Burger King, and Chevrolet. His work on a Coca-Cola commercial earned him a Clio Award nomination.

After an eighteen-month stint as head of research and development for startup toy company ZOOB, Savage joined George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked on “Star Wars: Episodes 1 and 2,” “Galaxy Quest,” “Space Cowboys,” “A.I.,” “Terminator 3,” “The Mummy,” and dozens of commercials. During this time, he also worked as model-shop supervisor for the two “Matrix” sequels as well as taught at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

Savage continues to dabble in his multiple hobbies, including passionately restoring his vintage four-wheel drive vehicle and accruing new pieces for his movie prop collection. He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife, twin boys, and two dogs.

About MagicSpace Entertainment
Principals Lee D. Marshall, Joe Marsh, John Ballard, Steve Boulay, and Bruce Granath have been producing and presenting shows worldwide for over thirty years.

“We have had the pleasure and privilege of producing and presenting many great shows and tours over the years,” says Lee Marshall, MagicSpace CEO. “Our strength has always been the ability to find great opportunities that do not fit into any pre-conceived template. We get excited about projects, which have the potential to find an audience. It doesn’t matter to us if the show is a concert tour, an exhibition, an arena spectacle, or a Broadway musical. Our strength is finding new opportunities and then paying a great deal of attention to how they are managed. We feel we are uniquely positioned to thrive in the current marketplace where traditional formulas and business models are thrown out and new ones need to be invented daily.”

CINCINNATI ARTS ASSOCIATION SPONSORS

SEASON SPONSORS:  AMERITAS (Founding Season Sponsor), FIFTH THIRD BANK (Lifetime Endowment Partner), FURNITURE FAIR, LOCAL12 WKRC, The P&G FUND of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation

SEASON PRESENTING SPONSORS:  21C Museum Hotel, Cincinnati Herald, CityBeat, Garfield Suites Hotel, Heidelberg Distributing, Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, Pepsi, Skyline Chili

MYTHBUSTERS JAMIE & ADAM UNLEASHED! MEDIA PARTNER:   WARM98-FM

Founded in 1992, the Cincinnati Arts Association (CAA) is a not-for-profit organization that oversees the programming and management of the Tri-state’s finest performing arts venues – the Aronoff Center for the Arts and Music Hall – and is dedicated to supporting performing and visual arts. Each year, CAA presents a diverse schedule of events; serves upwards of 600,000 people in its venues; features the work of talented local, regional, and national artists in the Weston Art Gallery (located in the Aronoff Center); and supports the work of more than one dozen resident companies. Since the inception of its acclaimed arts education programs in 1995, CAA has reached more than 1.3 million students. For more information, visit www.CincinnatiArts.org.

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Regional Premiere of SILENCE! The Musical Opens Falcon’s Next Season

FT_logoFalcon Theatre is proud to announce a change to our 2015-2016 season. We have just secured the rights to product SILENCE! The Musical.

SILENCE! The Musical
Music and Lyrics by Jon Kaplan & Al Kaplan
Book by Hunter Bell.

This unauthorized parody of Silence of the Lambs premiered in 2005 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival and went on to an Off-Broadway run, garnering awards, including Time Magazine’s Top 10 Plays of 2011 and the 2012 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Musical.

Falcon will open our season with SILENCE! The Musical in September 2015 and we’re thrilled to be the first in the area to produce this musical. “Falcon has been following the amazing journey that SILENCE! The Musical has taken from a New York Fringe Festival piece to Off-Broadway, and we’ve been excited about the prospect of bringing this show to the Greater Cincinnati area from the very beginning. We’ve waited through the show’s meteoric rise in New York and, now that we’ve finally been able to bring the show to our stage, we knew it was a perfect season opener” says Ted Weil, Falcon’s Artistic Director.

In case you need your musical fix earlier, don’t forget that ASSASSINS, the classic Sondheim musical, wraps up our 2014-2015 season starting May 29 and running through June 13 2015.

Don’t forget the rest of our 2015-2016 Season:

SILENCE! The Musical
NEXT FALL
THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LENANNE
PRELUDE TO A KISS
THE MYSTERY PLAYS

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ETC Announces the 2015-2016 30th Anniversary Season

ENSEMBLE THEATRE CINCINNATI ANNOUNCES THE 2015-2016
OTTO M. BUDIG FAMILY FOUNDATION 30TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON

ETC_new_logo_banner(Cincinnati, OH) Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) is thrilled to announce its 2015-2016 Season, which also marks the theatre’s 30th Anniversary Season. The season features an exciting selection of four regional premieres including: a sharp-eyed contemporary drama focusing on one of most complicated and controversial American social institutions; an hysterical new comedy fresh off its chart-topping run Off-Broadway; and a spellbinding, ripped-from-the-headlines award-winning one-woman drama. Additionally, 2015-2016 will welcome back the return of one of ETC’s beloved holiday musicals.

About the Plays
Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati’s thirtieth anniversary season opens with the regional premiere of Luna Gale (September 8-27, 2015) by Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Gilman. The Los Angeles Times called this powerful, haunting drama about the difficulty of knowing how to do good in the world “one of this year’s most valuable additions to American drama.” Caroline, a veteran social worker, thinks she has a typical case on her hands when she meets Peter and Karlie, two teenage drug addicts accused of neglecting their baby. But when she places their infant daughter in the care of Karlie’s mother, Caroline sparks a family conflict that exposes a shadowy, secretive past—and forces her to make a risky decision with potentially disastrous consequences. Powerful and arresting, Luna Gale is a heartbreaking and unforgettable tale of love and betrayal.

The season continues with the regional premiere of Jonathan Tolins’s acclaimed Off-Broadway hit Buyer and Cellar (October 13-November 1, 2015), which will star Cincinnati native Nick Cearley (Next to Normal, The Great American Trailer Park Musical). This outrageous one-man comedy swept the Best of 2013 Theatre lists including The New York Times, Associated Press, The Hollywood Reporter, New York Post, NPR, Newsday, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Entertainment Weekly, among many others. What’s a renowned diva to do with decades of memories that light the corners of her mind? And where to put the acres of memorabilia bursting the seams of her lavish Malibu estate? If you’re Barbra Streisand, you enshrine them in a mini-mall in your basement where you can pretend to go shopping! Out-of-work actor Alex More can’t pass up the oddest of odd jobs—an offer to play shopkeeper for one tough customer who doesn’t let anyone rain on her parade. Soon it begins to take a toll on his patience, his love life, and his view of people (who need people).

For the holidays, ETC features the return of Cinderella (December 2, 2015-January 3, 2016) with book by Joseph McDonough, lyrcis by David Kisor, and music by Fitz Patton. Throw out that glass slipper and break out your library card, because ETC’s Cinderella is utterly spec-ta-cular! What do you get when you combine a nearsighted bookworm heroine, two fabulously self-absorbed stepsisters, one devilishly diva stepmother, along with a self-empowering Well-Wisher? A fresh, fun contemporary take on the classic fairy tale that demonstrates being smart is true beauty. When the king pressures his romantically challenged son to choose a bride from hundreds of “applicants,” a cross-country tour of the kingdom to reunite a missing sneaker—yes sneaker!—with its rightful owner ensues. From the creators of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, this enchanted and memorable musical will delight audiences of all ages this holiday season.

For winter 2015, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati will present the regional premiere of the award-winning, one-woman show Grounded (January 26-February 14, 2016) by George Brant. An unexpected pregnancy ends an ace fighter pilot’s career in the sky. Reassigned to operate remote-controlled military drones in the Middle East from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas, she hunts terrorists by day and returns to her family each night. As the pressure to track a high-profile target mounts, the boundaries begin to blur between the desert in which she lives and the one she patrols half a world away. The pilot’s struggle to navigate her dual identities may be her toughest mission yet.

In the spring, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati will stage a regional premiere to be announced. Production dates for this show are scheduled to be March 22-April 10, 2016.

Finally, to close out the 2015-2016 Season, in honor of the 30th Anniversary, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati will bring back one of its previously staged productions, the acclaimed musical Violet, with music by Jeanine Tesori (Caroline Or Change, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shrek) and libretto by Brian Crawley, which won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical when it premiered off-Broadway in 1997. Originally presented by ETC in 1999, the production was well received, but few audiences had the opportunity to see it. Over the years, as ETC’s audience has steadily increased, this restaging will allow many more patrons the chance to attend, as well as the theatre to celebrate a past production. Scheduled dates for this production are May 3-22, 2016.

With a score of show-stopping anthems ranging from American-roots to folk to gospel, Violet tells the story of a young woman’s quest for beauty amidst the image-obsessed landscape of the 1960s. Facially disfigured in a childhood accident, Violet dreams of a miraculous transformation through the power of faith. Convinced that a televangelist in Oklahoma can heal her, she hops a Greyhound bus and starts the journey of a lifetime. Along the way, she forms unlikely friendships with her fellow riders, including a young, African-American Soldier whose love for her reaches far past her physical “imperfections.”

About ETC’s History
In 1986, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati drew back its curtains with the intended purpose of supporting local professional artists and a steadfast belief in the transformative power of the arts to create sustainable and attractive communities. After performing for two subscription seasons at Memorial Hall and following an extended search throughout the downtown area, the fledgling theatre moved to its present location at 1127 Vine Street in historic Over-the-Rhine with financial support from co-founders John and Ruth Sawyer and Ken and Mary “Murph” Taft Mahler. The theatre then secured a contract with Actors’ Equity Association and opened its doors in 1988 as a fully professional theatre, presenting a wide range of productions, including classics and contemporary theatre. Then, in 1996 ETC sharpened its mission as a theatre solely dedicated to producing new works and introduced several educational outreach programs focusing on economically disadvantaged children. Today, Ensemble Theatre remains the Greater Cincinnati area’s second largest professional theatre, with a subscription base of over 2,200 patrons and drawing nearly 30,000 attendees annually.

Subscriptions
Subscriptions to the 2015-2016 Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati season are available now in a variety of packages. Due to popularity, ETC will continue to offer a 5-show Tuesday evening Preview Subscription for just $125 (package excludes holiday production). Regular subscription prices are $180-$192 for seniors; adult subscriptions range from $192 to $210. The popular FlexPass is $202, which includes six flexible tickets to use for any show and in any combination.

Student Subscriptions
The 2015-2016 season will continue to offer a robust suite of affordable ticket and program options designed specifically for local area teens and students to experience professional theatre. This includes a $120 Student Subscription available for any performance and which provides a seat for each of the six productions during the season. Additionally, ETC will continue its $90 Teen Scene Subscription, a deeply discounted subscription option exclusively for students ages 13-19 (available select dates only).

Single Tickets
All single tickets for the 2015-2016 Season go on sale to the general public on Monday, August 3, 2015 at 10:00 am. Subscribers, however, may start making exchanges, purchasing additional tickets, or reserving their FlexPass dates during Subscriber Only Days, July 27-August 2, 2015.

Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati is supported, in part, by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign.

The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati also receives funding from the Shubert Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati is a professional theatre dedicated to producing world and regional premieres of works that often explore compelling social issues. We fulfill our mission through our stage productions and educational outreach programs that enlighten, enliven, enrich and inspire our audiences.

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