Category Archives: 2015 Season

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Tagged: comedy, Ivoryton Playhouse, musical theater, Playhouse, theatre

US Premier of the Number 1 UK comedy
Calendar Girls
by Tim Firth
at the Ivoryton Playhouse

Ivoryton – The summer season opens in Ivoryton with the US professional premier of one of the UK’s most popular shows, Calendar Girls.

Adapted by Tim Firth from his smash hit Miramax film of the same name, it is based on an inspiring true story that is both poignant and hilarious.  A group of extraordinary women, members of a very ordinary Yorkshire Women’s Institute, spark a global phenomenon by persuading one another to pose au natural for a charity calendar with a difference!  As interest snowballs, the Calendar Girls find themselves revealing more than they’d ever planned!

Dazzlingly funny, shamelessly sentimental and utterly captivating, this is one of the best- selling shows in British theatre history. It will make you laugh, cry and walk out singing Jerusalem!

The fundraising phenomenon of the Calendar Girls was inspired by the death of Angela Baker’s husband, John Richard Baker, an Assistant National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, who died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 54 in 1998. During his illness Angela’s friends began to raise money, initially with the aim of purchasing a sofa for the visitors’ lounge in the hospital where John was treated. Nothing could have prepared them for the way their original calendar took off (selling 202,000 copies in its first year). To date they have raised over £3 million for Leukemia & Lymphoma Research, the UK’s leading blood cancer charity.

The Ivoryton Playhouse will also be using this opportunity to raise awareness for several cancer charities. Wednesday, June 3rd at 7:30 is Cancer Survivor Night – half price adult ticket price for those individuals who have survived the challenge of cancer. Participating organizations include Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation, Little Wonder, Valley Shore YMCA – Hope is Power Program and Middlesex Hospital‘s Center for Survivorship and Integrative Medicine.

Jacqui Hubbard, Artistic/Executive Director, is directing the production and is also stepping on stage in the role of Annie. Beverley Taylor, Ivoryton Company Manager, will be joining her in the role of Chris.

“We are both Northern English lasses” says Hubbard, “I spent four years trying to get the rights to produce this wonderful play and though directing and performing at the same time will be a challenge, I knew I had to do it. These women are in our bones and it will be a rare treat to get to step in front of the curtain for a change”.

Joining them on stage are Vickie Blake, Danielle Bonanno, Erik Bloomquist, Victoria Bundonis*, R. Bruce Connelly*, Lily Dorment*, David Edwards*, Katrina Ferguson*, Maggie McGlone Jennings, and Maria Silverman*.

Set design is by Tony Andrea, lighting design by Marcus Abbott and costume design by Cully Long.

Calendar Girls opens at the Ivoryton Playhouse on June 3rd and runs through June 21st, 2015. Performance times are Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2pm. Evening performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm.

Tickets are $42 for adults, $37 for seniors, $20 for students and $15 for children and are available by calling the Playhouse box office at 860-767-7318 or by visiting our website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org  (Group rates are available by calling the box office for information.) The Playhouse is located at 103 Main Street in Ivoryton.
*denotes member of Actors Equity.  Members of the press are welcome at any performance.  Please call ahead for tickets.

Generously sponsored by PCI Medical

CALENDAR GIRLS opens on June 3rd and runs through June 21st.

For tickets visit  www.ivorytonplayhouse.org or call the Box Office at 860 767 7318

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Auditions in Ivoryton and New York

Little Shop of Horrors
by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman

– Equity Open Auditions by Appointment

Ivoryton Playhouse Ivoryton, CT SPT $450.

Executive/Artistic Director: Jacqueline Hubbard

Director: Larry Thelen

Musical Director: Robert Tomasulo

First rehearsal: September 8th;
First performance: September 23rd;
Close: October 11th, 2015

Equity Open Auditions by appointment:
Wednesday, May 13th, 2015
Noon – 8pm
(break 2-3pm)

Rehearsal Studio
22 Main Street
Centerbrook, CT 06409

New York Open Auditions by Appointment
Thursday, May 14th
11am – 4:30pm

Pearl Studios
500 Eighth Ave, Room 1205
New York, NY 10018

Prepare a song from the show or in the style of.

Please bring a picture and resume, stapled together. Call 860-767-9520 ext 203 for appointment

Looking for:

PRINCIPALS:

AUDREY Bleached-blond, Billie-Dawn-like, secret love of Seymour’s life. She has poor self-worth and education, but incredibly good looks and a sweet and vulnerable demeanor.
Female, 25-35 yrs old
Range: G#3 – D5

CRYSTAL, RONNETTE and CHIFFON African-American street urchins, acting as the occasional Greek Chorus. Young, hip, and smart, these girls are the only ones who have a grip on reality.
Female, 20-35 yrs old
Range: Ab3 – F5

MR. MUSHNIK The seasoned owner of the failing East Side flower shop and Seymour’s nosy boss. He is profit-driven, greedy, and manipulative.
Male, 55-65 yrs old
Range: G2 – F4

ORIN SCRIVELLO An egotistical dentist with a passion for leather and sadistic tendencies. Audrey’s abusive boyfriend, who is targeted by Seymour.
Male, 30-40 yrs old
Range: G2 – G4

SEYMOUR KRELBORN An insecure, put-upon florist’s clerk and eventual hero. He is a genuine, well-meaning man who is taken for granted because of his clumsy ways and poor social skills.
Male, 25-35 yrs old
Range: A2 – G4

THE PLANT (AUDREY II) Puppet. An anthropomorphic cross between a Venus flytrap and an avocado, the plant has an appetite for human flesh that is appeased by Seymour. Puppeteer doubles as other sizes of the plant.

VOICE OF THE PLANT An actor/vocalist located offstage. The voice is that of a conniving, street-smart ‘villain.’ A funky Rhythm and Blues voice is best.
Male, 20-50 yrs old
Range: G2 – G4

Theatre’s mailing address: Ivoryton Playhouse, PO Box 458, Ivoryton, CT  06442

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Press Release
April 6th, 2015

A crush can make anyone feel young again!

The Last Romance
by Joe DiPietro

Ivoryton:  On an ordinary day in a routine life, an 80-year-old widower named Ralph decides to takes a different path on his daily walk — one that leads him to an unexpected second chance at love. Relying on a renewed boyish charm, Ralph attempts to woo the elegant, but distant, Carol. Defying Carol’s reticence — and the jealousy of his lonely sister Rose — he embarks on the trip of a lifetime and regains a happiness that seemed all but lost.

Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro’s The Last Romance, a bittersweet romantic comedy with a little Puccini and a smidgen of dog treats, opens in Ivoryton on April 22nd.

DiPietro recently won two Tony Awards for co-writing the musical Memphis, which also received the 2010 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical and which will be opening in Ivoryton in August this year. DiPietro is an Ivoryton favorite; his shows I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (the longest-running musical revue in Off Broadway history), and the Broadway musical All Shook Up were both popular successes at the Playhouse.

Directed by Maggie McGlone Jennings, the cast includes Chet Carlin* as Ralph, whose Broadway credits include Fiddler on the Roof with Theodore Bikel and the National Tour of Sir Peter Hall’s As You Like It; Kate Konigisor*, the Artistic Director of Shakespeare with Benefits as Rose; Stephen Mir as the Young Man and Rochelle Slovin*, making her Ivoryton debut as Carol and reigniting a theatre career after spending the past 30 years as the Founding Director of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.  The set design is by William Stark, lighting design by Tate Burmeister and costumes by Vickie Blake.

The Last Romance opens at the Ivoryton Playhouse on April 22nd and runs through May 10th.Performance times are Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2pm. Evening performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm. Tickets are $42 for adults, $37 for seniors, $20 for students and $15 for children and are available by calling the Playhouse box office at 860-767-7318 or by visiting our website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org  (Group rates are available by calling the box office for information.) The Playhouse is located at 103 Main Street in Ivoryton.

Photo by Anne Hudson

Members of the press are welcome at any performance.
Please call ahead for tickets.

Generously sponsored by Essex Meadows and The Clark Group

 

A rendering of the beautiful set for The Last Romance as created by Set Designer William Russell Stark

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Tagged: comedy, Ivoryton Playhouse, theatre