Theatre Shorts

By Byrne Harrison

-- Mark W. Jones, Executive Director of the Paper Mill Playhouse in NJ, resigns.

-- Dance New Amsterdam faces possible eviction.

-- The Midtown International Theatre Festival announces this season's shows. The festival runs from July 12-August 1.

-- Academy, the 2009 New York Musical Theatre (NYMF) selection to the 2010 Daegu International Musical Festival (DIMF) in Daegu, South Korea has been awarded The Best Musical Prize at the Festival. Academy has book, music and lyrics by John Mercurio and was conceived and developed by Andrew Kato. Academy won The 2009 NYMF Awards for Excellence for Best Ensemble and Best Music. Actor Corey Boardman also wins the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for the entire festival.

The NYMF/DIMF production exchange will continue with Korea’s homegrown musical Special Letter at the 2010 New York Musical Theater Festival. Written by Book and Lyrics by In Seon Park, Music by Chang Wook Ma, Special Letter is a rambunctious comedy about a soldier whose pen pal is not who she seem.

-- John Tartaglia presents music from his new Off-Broadway production Imaginocean! at Barnes & Noble (86th and Lexington) on Wednesday July 28 at 7:00 PM. Tartaglia and cast members will sign copies of the CD.

-- Broadway favorite Mary Testa will be Valerie Smaldone's special guest on her new WOR Radio program "Valerie's New York" this Friday, July 9th at 11:20 AM to discuss I'll Be Damned, currently running at The Vineyard's Dimson Theatre. The interview can be heard live at wor710.com. See photos from the production here.

-- The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) has announced the selections for its 22nd Annual Festival of New Musicals taking place on Thursday, October 21 and Friday, October 22, 2010 in New York City.

-- Brooklyn's TKTS booth turns 2 years old on Saturday.

-- Israel Hicks, a prolific stage director who in 2009 completed a nearly 20-year project directing August Wilson’s entire decade-by-decade cycle about the black experience in 20th-century America, died on Saturday in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

-- Julianne Moore's "Freckleface Strawberry" to hit Off-Broadway as a musical.

-- The Brick presents Game Play: A Celebration of Video Game Performance Art. The festival runs from July 9th-25th.

-- For those in the Philly area, People's Light & Theatre's The Secret of Sherlock Holmes opens this week.

-- Two-time Emmy Award winner Bruce Vilanch returns to Fire Island Pines on Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18 to host Fire Island Dance Festival 16 (FIDF 16), the premier cultural event of the summer benefiting Dancers Responding to AIDS (DRA). This year's festival will include performances by eleven dance companies and artists including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, MOMIX, Camille A. Brown, ABT principal Marcelo Gomes and more all performed outdoors against the stunning backdrop of the Great South Bay.



-- Are you a student looking for cheap (and possibly free) tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. StudentRush.org is just for you.

-- Exhibitionistic daters can put their love lives in the spotlight at the Fix-Up Show, a weekly Love Connection–type stage spectacle.

-- If you don't have 12 hours to see The Demons this weekend on Governors Island, you can still hear director Peter Stein discuss the production this Friday at Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse in the Rose Building, 165 West 65th Street.

-- The undergroundzero festival discussed on WNYC.org.