Second Stage moves it’s Metamorphoses to Circle in the Square for a Broadway contract. A new play based on the myths of Ovid. Playwright and director Mary Zimmerman weaves a modern sensibility through many of Ovid’s classic tales — King Midas, Narcissus and his reflection, Orpheus and Euridice — to create Metamorphoses, a visually arresting and contemporary new play about the power of love to transform. Based on Ovid’s epic poem of mythology and human nature, Metamorphoses converts Circle in the Square’s theater into a 27-foot-wide pool of water where these classic Roman myths of gods and goddesses, of love and despair, come to life.

Julie Taymor’s breathtaking staging of the Disney animated cartoon reinvents the possibilities of theater for a whole generation: not for her the literalness of Disney’s previous screen-to-stage adaptation, Beauty and the Beast. Instead, Taymor thrillingly reimagines the story of Simba the lion cub’s voyage to adulthood as a show of theatrical daring, in which the humans are always visible beneath their animal masks and costumes. Elton John and Tim Rice’s songs from the film score have been brilliantly supplemented by much more authentic sounding African songs by Lebo M. The Lion King was the winner of the 1998 Tony for Best Musical, and Taymor won for Best Direction of a Musical.

Victor Hugo’s classic novel of the French Revolution, chronicling the unjust persecution of Jean Valjean by police inspector Javert, has been spectacularly musicalized by French writer-composers Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil and English lyricist Herbert Kretzmer, and brilliantly realized in Trevor Nunn and John Cairda’s landmark production. First produced at Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, “Les Miz” winningly injects classical theater values into its conventional Broadway mix of melodrama and razzle-dazzle stage effects.

How comfortable are you with your New York cappuccino malaise? Have you, like Marjorie Taub, become a “retail terrorist,” dropping ceramic figurines on the floor of the Disney Store in a desperate cry for help? What you need is a Lee Green, one of those serendipitously-appearing long-lost friends who has met more celebrities than Letterman, and makes the word “fabulous” a verb. Now starring Valerie Harper and Tony Roberts.

Jonathan Larson, the electrifyingly talented composer of this relocation of the story of La Boheme to contemporary Lower East Side New York, never lived to see the miraculous success of his creation: he died of an aortic aneurysm at age 36, on the day of the show’s final Off-Broadway dress rehearsal. MORE…

In QED Alan Alda gives a tour-de-force performance as physicist Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate with a larger than life personality and a career that included developing the atom bomb and explaining the puzzle of the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion. The two-character play was given its world premiere las spring at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum.

Parthenon Events Schedule

2009 – 2010 Symposia

October 6 – Theoni Pappas – Figuratively Speaking: The Language of Math

October 29 – Rex Wallace – Deciphering Etruscan

November 17 – Jim Womack – James Cowan, Gentleman Collector

December 8 – Richard Vine – John Kingerlee: By Art Alone

January 26 – Susann Lusnia – The Amazing, Colossal Temple

February 11 – Barbara Tsakirgis – Opening the Door to the Ancient Greek House

March 23 – Betsey Robinson – A Corinthian Hydra: The Fountain of Peirene Lost and Found

April 13 – John Oakley – Children in Wartime

All lectures are sponsored by The Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park and the Archaeological Institute of America. MORE…

Situated on a beautiful 55-acre property, Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art is truly one of Tennessee’s treasures. Mrs. Mabel Cheek, formerly Wood, was the daughter of a prominent Tennessee family. Her name and her husband’s were combined to form the name of their new home, Cheekwood. Mr. Leslie Cheek was the son of the founder of a successful grocery firm. Leslie Cheek, his wife, and their two children lived in Nashville until they moved into Cheekwood in 1932. The site opened to the public in 1960. MORE…

The historic Ritz Theatre located on the White Horse Pike in Oaklyn, N.J., opened in September, 1927. The original decor remains intact in today’s Ritz. The auditorium walls still feature the neo-classic murals typical of the late 1920s. The stage is surrounded by gilt trimmed marbleized columns and velvet-draped balconies enclosed by classic carved ballustrades. Intimate and ornamental, the 470-seat Ritz is the only producing theater in the area still resplendent in its original decor.

The entertainment was new flickers and old vaudeville in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Ritz was known for its fine art and foreign film bookings, drawing audiences from Philadelphia and far beyond the immediate community. The Ritz closed its doors in early 1985. today over 4,300 subscribers enjoy the six-production mainstage season, making the Ritz one of the best-attended theaters in the greater Philadelphia area. MORE…

THE GUILD AT PAPER MILL

For over 20 years, the Guild has been an invaluable volunteer arm and support organization for Paper Mill. The members, through their tireless efforts and dedication, generously donate thousands of volunteer hours by staffing and operating the Gift Shop as well as holding raffles. Monies raised from these important efforts have lead to Guild contributions in excess of $50,000 annually to the theatre.

In addition to their fundraising events, the Guild provides cultural nourishment to members. Through their wide variety of social events, the Guild offers members an array of enjoyable educational and enrichment activities. Recent seasons have included events such as informative lectures with the creative staffs of our shows, insightful behind-the-scenes backstage tours, field trips to the Paper Mill Scene Shop and theatre tours in New York. MORE…