Events
The Iconic Neighborhood Playhouse Will Host a Virtual Open House
The Neighborhood Playhouse’s acclaimed alumni include Allison Janey, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Dylan McDermott, Joanne Woodward, Griffin Dunne, Mackenzie Davis, Robert Duvall, Ian Duff, Connie Britton, Carol Channing, Tony Randall, Martin Henderson, Sherie Rene Scott, Mary Steenburgen, David Mamet, Steve McQueen, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Geraghty, Steven Rogers, Aria Shahghasemi, Christina Toth, Christopher Meloni, Chris Noth, Christopher Lloyd, Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Grey and Gregory Peck, and many more.
On Thursday, July 8 at 5:30 p.m. EST for interested applicants New York’s famed Neighborhood Playhouse will host a virtual Open House. Attendees can join Playhouse faculty and alumni for an evening of informational, hands-on activities where they’ll discuss their two year Certificate Acting Program as well as their six week Summer Acting Intensive.
“Orange is the New Black” recent alumna Christina Toth will share her experiences from her time at The Playhouse. The internationally renowned acting school will open its doors again on September 13 to students for in- person classes.
“We’re so excited to offer this intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse into all The Neighborhood Playhouse has to offer students and since it is a virtual Open House, we welcome interested applicants from around the world to tune in,” said Pamela Moller Kareman, Executive Director. “We have been training some of the best award-winning actors for decades, and we are eager to meet the next class of brilliant artists.”
The 90-minute virtual Open House will feature an introduction to The Playhouse by the Executive Director and members of The Playhouse faculty who will also give a brief overview of the school. Members of the faculty will teach sample classes and guests will get to participate in a unique series of free, hands-on sessions, including Meisner Technique Acting and Acting on Camera. The evening will conclude with staff, faculty, and working alumni speaking about their experience and why they chose to study at The Neighborhood Playhouse.
“For many many years, The Neighborhood Playouse has proved to be a very fine training ground for actors. I am so glad that I was able to benefit from what The Playhouse has to offer. It proved to be a springboard into the reality of what was to come and the real world,” said Academy Award Winner Robert Duvall.
Reservations are required and space is limited for the virtual Open House at The Neighborhood Playhouse on Thursday, July 8 at 5:30 p.m. EST. For more information and to reserve a spot, please go www.neighborhoodplayhouse.org.
The Neighborhood Playhouse, a major force in American theatre and theatre education since its inception, was founded in 1915 at the forefront of the American theatre renaissance. Created by philanthropists Alice and Irene Lewisohn, the original Playhouse was located in the famous Henry Street Settlement House. One of the first Off- Broadway theatres, the Playhouse was committed to community and devoted to renewing the roots of drama, mounting works both classic and modern. From the theatre grew a desire to focus on training and, in 1928, The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre opened its doors. The Lewisohns entrusted the direction of the school to Rita Wallach Morgenthau, a long time board member and advisor to their theatre. The first class, comprised of only nine students, had the privilege of being taught by theatre luminaries Agnes DeMille, Louis Horst, Laura Elliott, and Martha Graham.
In 1935, Sanford Meisner, one of the founding members of The Group Theatre (along with Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, Harold Clurman, and Lee Strasberg), joined the faculty of The Neighborhood Playhouse. Over the years, he developed and refined what is now known as the Meisner Technique, a step-by-step procedure of self- investigation for the actor now globally recognized and among the foremost of modern acting techniques. Sanford Meisner retired in 1990 and served as Director Emeritus of the Acting Department until his death in 1997. Today his legacy lives on in the continuation of his training, being taught to incoming students each year in The Neighborhood Playhouse’s Two Year Program.
On October 18, 2018, The New York City Council honored The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and Sanford Meisner with a Proclamation in recognition of The Neighborhood Playhouse’s 90 years of outstanding work and the profound contributions of Sanford Meisner.
Martha Graham was one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance and is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. She began working at The Neighborhood Playhouse in 1921 and joined the faculty upon the school’s inception. only conservatory where the faculty was trained to teach acting by Sanford Meisner himself. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge University Press) described The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre The Neighborhood Playhouse remains the “as the most respected acting school in the country and first among all professional training programs.”
G.H. Harding
HERE’S BEKKA — (from Rolling Stone) Bekka Bramlett grew up around John Lennon and George Harrison, but nothing could prepare her for joining Fleetwood Mac in 1994, during one of the rockiest periods in the band’s history.
The Bekka Bramlett incarnation of Fleetwood Mac released a single album, 1995’s Time, before dissolving the next year to make way for a lucrative Hells Freezes Over-style reunion album and tour by the classic Rumours lineup. This period of the band may seem like little more than a footnote to some rock fans, but it was a pivotal time for Bramlett, and she looks back on it without any regrets.
“I knew my job was to get Stevie back,” she tells Rolling Stone from her home in Nashville. “I wasn’t a moron. I also knew this was a dangerous job when I took it. I knew I was facing tomatoes. But I didn’t want to wear a top hat. I didn’t want to twirl around. I wanted to be me. I even dyed my hair brown just so people in the cheap seats would know that Stevie wasn’t going to be here. I didn’t want anyone to be discouraged or let down.”
Joining Fleetwood Mac at 26 would have been a shock to the system of most singers, but Bramlett had been living in close proximity to rock stars her entire life. When she was very young, her parents toured and recorded with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and many other A-list rock stars, winning renown as Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Those artists also spent a lot of time at her mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
Bramlett didn’t realize any of this was unusual until she boarded the school bus one morning gripping her Disney Princess lunchbox. “This other little girl had a Beatles lunchbox,” she says. “I said to her, ‘I know him. He’s on our couch right now.’ I pointed to George Harrison. ‘I know him too.’ I pointed to John. She started hitting me since she thought I was lying. I was petrified and confused. I thought they were just Daddy’s friends that had accents.”
When she was just four years old, her father recruited Bekka and her sister Suzanne to sing background vocals on his song “California Rain.” “My mom had to get some gaffer tape to keep the headphones on my head since I was so little,” she says. “I used to hate the way it sounds, and now I love it so much. It’s so endearing.”
Right around this time, her parents split up, and she went to live with her father and grandmother. “It was weird, since mostly the moms got the babies back then,” she says. “But my parents were alcoholics. My grandmother never even smoked cigarettes or said cuss words. She brought us to church every Sunday, Wednesday, and Monday. We were in safe hands with our grandmother. I think both of my parents trusted that.”
Delaney and Bonnie both struggled to find solo success in the Seventies, and they dealt with significant substance abuse issues, but Bekka inherited their talents, and she knew from a young age that she’d devote her life to music. “I briefly thought I’d be a lawyer, but I thought I’d be a singing lawyer,” she says. “Then I wanted to be a jockey since I love horses, but I thought I’d be a singing jockey. Music is just what I’m good at.”
As a teenager with a fake ID in the early Eighties, Bramlett spent many nights checking out bands on the Sunset Strip. “I remember standing on the side of the stage as Guns N’ Roses played,” she says. “Seeing it up close, I was like, ‘This is why you never try heroin.’ But then I’d go into the audience and be like, ‘This is why you join a rock & roll band!’”
SUCCESSION — (via Deadline) The Roys are back with a vengeance. The Season 4 premiere of Succession drew an audience of 2.3M on Sunday across HBO Max and linear telecasts, which is a series high for same-day viewers. Total viewing for Sunday night was up 62% compared to Season 3’s premiere viewership of 1.4M in October 2021. At the time, that marked the best premiere night performance of any HBO original series since HBO Max launched in May 2020. Sunday’s viewership is also up about 33% from the Season 3 finale’s 1.7M. Season 3 averaged about 7.2M viewers per episode, according to HBO.HBO also says that all previous seasons of succession saw a 4x increase in viewership in the week leading up to the Season 4 premiere, compared to the week prior.
The Roy family saga picks up as the sale of media conglomerate Waystar Royco to tech visionary Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) looms. The prospect of the seismic sale provokes existential angst and familial division among the Roys: patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his four grown children, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck). A hopefully Roy-esque power struggle will ensue as the family weighs up a future where their cultural and political weight is threatened.
Succession has 13 Emmys including Best Drama Series wins for its Season 2 and Season 3, the latter of which premiered in 2021.
We had mentioned earlier that most of the advance reviews said the writing was the star of the premiere episode and I definitely agree. Creator Jesse Armstrong wrote it and delivered just a stellar job. The episode began with a grumpy-Brian Cox at his birthday and took a few moments to develop into the powerhouse it has become, but it was very, very enjoyable.
Sure some of the dialogue and plot harked back to earlier episodes, but it’s so good, you hardly noticed. And the ending with Shiv and Tom, alone at at home and contemplating their futures, was just splendid and reeked of the amazing emotion the show almost always conjures up. A class act all around.
Jennifer Coolidge
Variety confirmed this week, that the locale of the next White Lotus, from Mike White, will be Thailand. Now, if we could only get Jennifer Coolidge back … Congrats to New York Independenteditor Keith F. Girard on his second novel –
Keith F. Girard’s The Curse of Northam Bay
just out: The Curse of Northam Bay …PR-pasha David Salidor was interviewed by Charles Rosenay for Monkee Mania Radio … Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer open July 21 and it is indeed 3 hours.
Cillian Murphy
It stars Cillian Murphy and the trailer looks rather stupendous. Check it out here:
Get ready for the second annual indieplazaoutdoor music festival coming to Rockefeller Plaza this September! The first indieballroom show will kick of the music series on Sunday, May 7 at 7p.m., featuring SQÜRL, Bria, and a special guest (for tickets click here).
Rough Trade first partnered with Rockefeller Center back in the summer of 2021, and they featured artists such as Megan Thee Stallion, Mary J Blige, Father John Misty, and Japanese Breakfast.
The festival is part of a larger four-part concert series that includes quarterly indieballroom shows at the Rainbow Room, featuring three artists, two stages, one ballroom, and a full bar, all tied together with jaw-dropping views of NYC.
The indieplazaoutdoor music festival will be held at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Last year’s show featured 20+ musical guests including Claud, Yaya Bey, The Muckers, Say She She, Cola, and more.
Until April 23rd at Rockefeller Center Nicaraguan-American artist Joel Gaitan is featured in the acclaimed Art in Focus public art program. He is the first artist of 2023 to be in this multidisciplinary, site-specific program that brings contemporary art to Rockefeller Center. Visitors can enjoy Gaitan’s murals which feature his signature use of bold and vibrant colors inside 10 Rockefeller Plaza, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, and the street and concourse levels of 45 Rockefeller Plaza.
Gaitan’s practice is a profoundly personal exploration of his family ancestry and identity as a first-generation Nicaraguan living in Miami, Florida. This cross-cultural study has brought Gaitan to challenge historical hierarchies within his art practices, liberating terracotta vessels to their exalted position within the sacred traditions from Nicaragua & Central America.
In the lobby of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, layered installations in the vitrine spaces will feature photography, Central American aesthetics, and Gaitan’s terracotta vessels as a celebration of earthly pigments. The windows will include imagery of Nicaragua faces, including some of Gaitan’s family members. The spaces will underscore Gaitan’s spiritual beliefs and connection to the core elements: water, air, wind, and fire, which play vital roles in our life cycle and the laborious process of hand-sculpting and firing terracotta.
This event is free and open to the public
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