Ellen Dostal - Page 19

The challenge of balancing a career as a professional dancer with motherhood is the dilemma at the heart of Palmer Davis' one woman show SUBURBAN SHOWGIRL. Based on many of her own experiences, the likeable San Diego native has created an ambitious solo show populated with characters from her life - all presented by Davis as her stage persona, Wendy Walker.

If you're a singer who has always wanted to create your own solo show, here is a great place to begin. Joshua Finkel has created a successful method of putting together a cabaret act and talks about the growth his students experience once they begin to focus on building their own act.

Okay, I'll say it. I haven't seen a production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW that comes anywhere close to this vivid interpretation of the story. It is spectacular!

California Shakespeare Ensemble, in partnership with L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation, staged a light evening of Shakespearean love scenes this past weekend in Altadena's Farnsworth Park. The event was an encore performance of a program the company presented at Descanso Gardens earlier this summer and consisted of familiar and lesser known scenes from Shakespeare's plays that explore love in its various stages.

Independent Shakespeare Co. bookends its 2013 season with two witty romantic comedies, Oliver Goldsmith's SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER and Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, to offset a terrifyingly intense and bloody version of MACBETH during this summer's Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival.

A short drive up the 101 to Thousand Oaks, and located on the campus of Cal Lutheran University, you'll find the summer home of Kingsmen Shakespeare Company. For 17 years the professional theatre group has been presenting Shakespeare's classic plays outdoors in a lovely corner of the grounds, bordered by grand old trees and a creek that runs behind the stage

To fully appreciate THE LAST DAYS OF MARY STUART it is necessary to forget what you normally think of when you think of musical theatre. The allegorical piece jettisons the traditional trappings of the genre and instead surfaces from a lengthy workshop process as a fusion of worlds.

[title of show] is the story of two musical theatre guys who aren't anywhere close to making it but decide to write a musical about writing a musical, starring themselves and their two best friends.

The Real Housekeepers of Studio City is banking on the fact that everything old is new again by playing to the audience who views the world through a less cynical lens and remembers a time when you didn't get up to leave the room when the commercials came on because you loved them just as much as the show itself.

Shakespeare. It's not just for highbrows anymore. You can be sure of that when you see The Flynnsmen present Shakespeare's KING PHYCUS at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. What may have once scared off those less familiar with Shakespeare's plays for fear of not understanding the language is now made completely and hilariously accessible to everyone.

I know next to nothing about Pokemon and from the photos I'd seen I figured THE POKEMUSICAL would simply be a family-friendly musical that might be cute and probably fun, but I never imagined I would love it as much as I did.

If you like your musicals short, fast-paced, funny, and smart enough to spoof the big guys while delivering a healthy dose of pure fun, this is the musical for you. Brooke Seguin's 30 MM: INDEPENDENCE DAY clocks in around 40 minutes, which is plenty of time to run the aliens out of town and save the planet in a manner that would do the Fresh Prince proud, especially if he got to do it with a rap.

When Michael Shaw Fisher walks out to introduce EXORCISTIC: The Rock Musical Parody Experiment at its Fringe Mainstage home, it takes a few minutes before you realize that the musical has actually begun.

O, FALLEN ONE is the initial concept workshop of a devised play that combines stylized scenes with fragmented language, movement, dance, and other devices to create a unique artistic experience.

I decided to see Andrew Potter's one man show THE ROAD TO HIGH STREET, a busker's digital rock & roll story, after reading a glowing recommendation from a theatre colleague who saw it last year's Fringe Festival.

THE TIME MACHINE MUSICAL is a one-hour condensed version of a longer two act musical adapted for the Fringe by Steve Altman and Joshua Fardon based on the H.G. Wells sci-fi story.

A man - seemingly oblivious to the sound of his own cell phone ringing - sits in a cafe during lunchtime. His phone rings…and rings…and rings until, no longer able to bear the intrusive sound, Jean, a young woman from a nearby table, asks him to please answer it.

There are no fewer than nine different productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream playing in theatres around the Southland this summer but I can guarantee that none of them will be done up quite like the Troubies' A MIDSUMMER SATURDAY NIGHT'S FEVER DREAM at the Falcon Theatre.

With modern flair, these lush and lyrical mini-operas take inspiration from Aesop's classic fables of human nature's essential truths and are sure to add a unique presence to this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival. How does a composer begin to develop five mini-operas based on the fables of Aesop?

Summer Stages in Los Angeles