Ray Dooley News

Today’s subject Beth Hylton is currently living her theatre life performing on your TVs and computer screens as the sole performer in Round House Theatre’s latest streaming production of Throw Me on the Burnpile and Light Me Up. The show is available for viewing through June 13th.

What’s the holiday season without a performance of A CHRISTMAS CAROL? Ever since it was first published, theaters have shared productions of Charles Dickens’s classic story every year. PlayMakers Repertory Company’s radio play production is a great example of how a theater can adapt to create something that fits the strange year this has been.

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Vivienne Benesch, who is the Producing Artistic Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At PlayMakers, she has helmed productions of Life of Galileo, Leaving Eden, The May Queen, Three Sisters, Love Alone, RED, and In The Next Room (or the Vibrator Play).

PlayMakers Repertory Company believes in the transformative power of theatre and its ability to bring communities together to share common ground. Even if that isna??t in the same space.

RAGTIME is a musical that is as relevant now as it was in 1998 when it premiered and the production currently on at PlayMakers Repertory Company makes that abundantly clear. While the show might be set in the state of New York in 1906, it makes statements about immigration, race relations, corrupt justice, and women's rights that continue to ring true today. Director Zi Alikhan stages the show as you've never seen before, cutting away the period clothing and elaborate setting to focus on its brilliant music and lyrics and the poignant themes it explores. The new 360 degree theatre layout puts the audience firmly into the action, letting them get even closer to the characters than in a normal show. 

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE presents a gripping insight into Irish life with Martin McDonagh's trademark dark humour. 

 PlayMakers Repertory Company presents Zi Alikhan's innovative staging of Ragtime, the musical by Terrance McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens. Ragtime stars Hamilton's Fergie L. Philippe and Theatre Raleigh's Lauren Kennedy and began previews last night (Nov 20). With press opening on Saturday, November 23 at 8:00pm, the show runs through December 15.

PlayMakers Repertory Company presents 'Dairyland,' a world premiere comedy by Heidi Armbruster. This whimsical, heartfelt tale of one woman's journey from farm to table and table to farm is directed by Vivienne Benesch, and runs from October 16 to November 3, 2019.

PlayMakers Repertory Company presents a?oeDairyland,a?? a world premiere comedy by Heidi Armbruster. This whimsical, heartfelt tale of one woman's journey from farm to table and table to farm is directed by Vivienne Benesch, and runs from October 16 to November 3, 2019.

PlayMakers Repertory Company What: "Life of Galileo" by Bertolt Brecht. Adaptation by Joseph Discher. Directed by Vivienne Benesch. When: February 27 to March 17, 2019. Opening Night & Press Opening Saturday March 2, 2019. Where: Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, 120 Country Club Road, Chapel Hill, NC Tickets: Start at $15; Students tickets start at $10

When Zack Fine's play BEWILDERNESS begins, it feels like a time machine has landed at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill and philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau has emerged. Fine, playing himself, directly addresses the audience while Thoreau, eagerly played by company member Geoffrey Culbertson, wanders aimlessly about the stage pondering the question: Is the afterlife a regional theater in North Carolina? The curtain opens and the time travelers find themselves at Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond, roughly built to scale on the Kenan stage. What happens next borders on the ridiculous, absurd, and downright funny.

PlayMakers Repertory Company proudly presents "Bewilderness," a PlayMakers commission and the second production in its 2018/19 PRC2 Kenan Stage series. Written and directed by Zack Fine, "Bewilderness" invites us into the upside-down, creatively chaotic world of a playwright inspired by and obsessed with the great American philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. In this madcap comedy, the famous cabin on Walden Pond plays host not only to Thoreau, but also to his brother, his mother, Ralph Waldo Emerson, some singing doctors, and a wisecracking woodchuck.

Love is in the air at PlayMakers Repertory Company. That's because the musical romance SHE LOVES ME opened earlier this week at the Paul Green Theatre as a love letter to the Triangle to ring in the holiday season. It's a familiar story, especially to fans of the rom-com film genre. Boy and girl meet through a lonely-hearts club ad and begin corresponding through a series of letters. Little do the pair know that the object of their affection may be someone they already know, perhaps even a coworker at that shop around the corner. Inspired by the 1937 play PARFUMERIE by Miklos Laszlo, SHE LOVES ME opened on Broadway in 1963. Two revivals followed one in 1993 and the other in 2016. The latter revival, starring Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi, Jane Krakowski, and Gavin Creel, broke the Guinness World Record for being the first Broadway show to be live-streamed. If the plot sounds familiar, it just might be because Laszlo's 1937 play also spawned the 1940 Jimmy Stewart film 'The Shop Around the Corner,' the 1949 Judy Garland movie musical 'In the Good Old Summertime,' and the 1998 film, 'You've Got Mail,' starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

The tale of Robin Hood is part of our collective mythology. Robin Hood is a nobleman who leaves behind his life of privilege to stand up for those in society who cannot. He is joined by a band of merry men and Maid Marian as he robs from the rich to give to the poor. But how well do we really know this legendary folk hero and what moves him? The legend of Robin Hood is one of the original resistance stories, and one man's awakening to the injustices of his society. In Ken Ludwig's frolicking, funny retelling, he's not a perfect man at all, but perfectly imperfect and surrounded by a colorful cast of characters who help challenge and shape his ideals.

With the fiery intensity of a tigress, Judy McLane channels opera diva Maria Callas in Theatre Raleigh's production of Terrence McNally's MASTER CLASS. The Tony Award-winning MASTER CLASS opened on Broadway in 1995. The play is inspired by the master classes Callas taught at Julliard in 1971 and 1972. McLane is masterful as the temperamental Callas, moving across the stage like a woman possessed, regaling the audience with stories, never 'missing an opportunity to theatricalize,' criticize, and dramatize.

Inspired by world-renowned opera singer Maria Callas' magnificent Juilliard master class series, the Tony Award-winning play Master Class spotlights the tour-de-force artist and vulnerable woman known as La Divina. Join Callas as she relentlessly coaxes, prods, and edifies her young students, motivating them to give the performances of their lives, while revealing her humor, her demons, and her genius. Master Class runs August 8 through 19 at the Kennedy Theatre.

Acclaimed playwright Mike Wiley returns to PlayMakers with singer-songwriter Laurelyn Dossett to lead us on a musical journey across time, unearthing the cycles of history in a small North Carolina town.

PlayMakers Repertory Company proudly presents the world premiere of 'Leaving Eden' a play with music, script by North Carolina playwright and UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus Mike WIley, and music & lyrics by North Carolina singer-songwriter Laurelyn Dossett. The production, the first fully commissioned work by the theatre, is directed by PlayMakers' Producing Artistic Director, Vivienne Benesch, and runs from April 4 to 22, 2018.

Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, continues its 2017-18 season with The Beauty Queen of Leenane, written by Martin McDonagh and directed by BJ Jones.  The Beauty Queen of Leenane runs March 15 - April 22, 2018 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie. The press opening is scheduled for Friday, March 23, 2018 at 8pm.

PlayMakers Repertory Company proudly presents Moliere's "Tartuffe," adapted by David Ball. The production is directed by Saheem Ali, in his PlayMakers directorial debut, and runs from February 3 to March 11, 2018 in rotating repertory with Lucas Hnath's "The Christians".