theater

Capital Region - In email and text conversations with local arts leaders there is confusion and anger about the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts from the 2026 budget.

In the world of theater those May flowers brought on by April showers are starting to bloom. Locally this month there is available a bouquet made up of comedies, musicals and dramas.

As we here at WAMC celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Roundtable, a little American musical is celebrating 10 years since it premiered in New York City – and quickly became a once-in-a-generation success in terms of reviews, ticket sales, fan enthusiasm, and awards recognition.“Hamilton” opened off-Broadway at The Public Theatre on January 20, 2015 and played there through May 3. It opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in early August of 2015, where it is still running. “Hamilton” won 11 Tony Awards, a 2016 Grammy Award for its cast recording, and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It has played – and is playing – all over the world. A pro-tape of the production’s original cast streams on Disney+ and was a pandemic sensation.But before all of that - “The Hamilton Mixtape” was a work-in-progress, put up in a black-box staged-reading, presented by New York Stage and Film and Vassar College in the summer of 2013. And I did get to be there - in the room where it was starting to happen.

It can be very misleading to describe any play as “a comedy about unhappy people.” No one likes to laugh at other people’s troubles.

It sounds simplistic, even obvious, but theater availability and general entertainment choices are usually limited during a holiday week. Today is Easter Sunday and this week celebrated Passover. The lack of theater, be it touring shows or locally produced work, indicates what happens when audiences are preoccupied by such important events.

Artists everywhere are contemplating what type of art they should create in changing, uncertain times. The question becomes “Do you offer political drama or escapism entertainment?”

This Thursday through Sunday, The Fisher Center at Bard presents “Masterclass,” an hour-long parody about playwriting, power, pomposity and people from Dublin-based theatre troupe Brokentalkers and feminist choreographer and performance artist Adrienne Truscott. Adrienne is one half of cabaret duo The Wau Wau Sisters who mix performance modes from circus to main-stage and with some regularity perform in the buff. She will serve as MC of the Spiegeltent at Bard this summer for the second consecutive season. Brokentalkers are an internationally renowned theatre company, based in Dublin, Ireland led by Co-Artistic Directors Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan with Creative Producer Rachel Bergin.

The national tour of the musical “Funny Girl” opens at Proctors in Schenectady on Tuesday. It’s based on the life of comedienne Fanny Brice, one of the most important figures in 20th century entertainment.

The fallout from COVID keeps being discovered. The most recent is the reason for the Solo Fest at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill. When I attended “Help! I’m Trapped in a One-Woman Show” on Sunday, March 16, co-founder Steven Patterson told me the reason they created the festival was the abundance of one person shows available because actors wrote them while in isolation during COVID.

There is a strong temptation to start a review of “Shucked” with a pun. Preferably a bad pun. However, if you are like me and delight in terrible puns this is the show for you.