The Phantom, the Devil make TBO's BOT

Head on over to TBO.com to see this week's installment of The BOT, where both The Phantom of the Opera and The History of the Devil made the Top 5 Things to Get You Off the Couch This Weekend list ... make sure to watch the video all the way through the end to see a pretty phunny Phantom election spoof.

Rocky Horror on WTSP

Check out these clips of cast members of The Rocky Horror Show on our local CBS affiliate:

On Channel 10 News

On their Studio 10 program

Just 6 more performances remain!

The Phantom, a Sweet Transvestive and the Devil walk into a bar ...

Ok, well, it's not really a joke, but it is what's on stage this week at TBPAC. What a full plate of Halloween treats! Muahahahahahahahaha!

This is the LAST WEEKEND for The Rocky Horror Show in our Jaeb Theater. Shows remain Wed. - Sat. night at 7:30 and Fri. and Sat. nights at 11pm. The 11pm shows feature FULL AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION with prop bags on sale in the lobby for just $10.

Arrive in costume as of one hour before curtain to any show, and you can get a chance to score a specially-priced $15.50 ticket that allows you to sit ON STAGE.

Just SIX more performances remain of this cult classic.



LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!

And hot on the heels of Rocky comes the Clive Barker epic The History of the Devil, where Lucifer is granted a parole appeal in front of a court of man. Is The Devil responsible for the world's evil since his fall from Heaven, or is he just a witness to mankind's own demons?

Come to the Shimberg Playhouse and see for yourself!



The trial of the millennium is about to begin and you've been called for jury duty!

And finally, don't miss Broadway's smash hit The Phantom of the Opera, opening Oct. 30 for a limited engagement in Morsani Hall. Check out a video of Phantom over at our Broadway Channel!

Sweet deal on Broadway shows at TBPAC!

Get 8 Broadway shows starting at less than $100!

Cloud Club: $94.90; Sat. matinee only: $300, $200 or $100 depending on seating area. Call 813.229.STAR.

Rocky Horror - clips from backstage

The Rocky Horror Show cast member Michael Indeglio (Brad) put this video together featuring a lot of perspective from the backstage point of view. Don't forget that Rocky closes on Nov. 1!

Rocky scores another rave review!

This time from the Trib:

"Like fishnet stockings and kinky boots, "The Rocky Horror Show" has yet to go out of style … Camp works, and so does [TBPAC's] production of the cult classic … [a] delightfully macabre musical bacchanal." - The Tampa Tribune

The Rocky Horror Show is on stage now through Nov. 1.

USF Oracle <3's Rocky Horror

"... amazing singing, lewd dance numbers and the same crazy debauchery Rocky Horror has brought to audiences for more than 30 years ... It’s a show of raunchy lyrics. It’s a play that, well, flouts some conventional moral codes. It’s a cult classic that people just love to see over and over, and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center does it justice."

Check out the full review here: http://bit.ly/3mWOjG

Rocky Horror is a hit with the St. Pete Times!

Why the stage show is more fun than the movie: Many of the performers can actually sing, unlike Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick in the movie. The band, led by Stan Collins on funky keyboards, is great in Time Warp.

Good parts: Karla Hartley channeling Meat Loaf in Hot Patootie. The Usherettes (Alison Burns, Nadeen Holloway) and Phantoms in Science Fiction Double Feature. The Joe Maddon specs worn by Brad (Michael Indeglio). The video design (by Hartley) featuring clips from Forbidden Planet, Doctor X and other flicks. Joseph P. Oshry's vivid lighting. The childishly debauched atmosphere established by co-directors Hartley and Rick Criswell.

See the full review here: http://bit.ly/442GEN

Frost/Nixon opens in Des Moines

Occasionally, we get dispatches from the touring Broadway world, and we just received this one from the producers of Frost/Nixon, which just opened in Des Moines.

“I’m happy to report that the Frost/Nixon tour is up and running and soon coming to a city near you! After our tech week and one preview in Owensboro, Kentucky, we made our first move and had a terrific first performance in Des Moines last night. The cast is truly wonderful. Stacy Keach is a great Nixon, but is also the perfect leader for the company. Yesterday in Des Moines he gave 10 local radio and TV reviews in the morning, a full company rehearsal in the afternoon, and the first performance last night, and did it all with aplomb."

“Scenically, the show is as close a replica of the Broadway production as is possible. The TV screen uses flat-screen technology instead of the vintage TV monitors from Broadway. The lighting rig includes moving lights to isolate the actors in the same way that we did on Broadway, and everyone is pleased with the results.

“This is a first-rate tour that you can all be extremely proud of.”

Soon, we’ll be able to check it out for ourselves. -- MichaelK

The Wizard of Oz

In a little more than a week The Wizard of Oz will blow into Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center for a one-week engagement. To promote the occasion, The Wizard of Oz the movie was screened as part of our Scene on the Green series (don’t miss Young Frankenstein this Fri. night at 8 p.m.).

While I was watching the movie out on the Riverwalk, I remembered my A.P. History teacher explaining the extended metaphor of Baum’s Wizard to William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech.

I haven’t been in that class since the first Bush administration, so I must admit, my memory failed me on the details.

Today, a wonderful friend Vinny Tafuro who loves the theater and politics (the perfect combination) – sent me the story out-of-the-blue. I include it here for some fun historic reference and some solace in these unique, but not unprecedented economic times.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in Chicago in 1900. Its author, L. Frank Baum, was the editor of a South Dakota newspaper and a supporter of William Jennings Bryan who stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a U.S. Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

The particular concern of both Baum and Bryan was the nature of the money supply then prevalent in the United States, and in the Mid-Western States in particular.

In America during the 1890s, as in Britain, there had been a severe depression. Many businesses had gone bankrupt, farmers forced to sell up, factories closed and workers made unemployed. True, some farms in the Mid-West were suffering from drought, but most were still capable of growing food; the businesses and factories were still capable of providing the things that people needed; the workers still wanted to work to provide those things, and people would still want the goods and services produced if they had the money to buy them.

The money in the USA then, as now, was entirely created by the private banking system. The pretence existed then that money was based on gold. (Even now some people still think that it is!) The major banks, based on the East and West coasts, could vary the amount of money in circulation, lending more to encourage commercial activity, then fore-closing on loans to put people out of business, enabling the banks to acquire their businesses cheaply.

Baum and Bryan wanted money to be based on silver, not gold, as silver was more readily available in the Mid-West, where it was mined. Such a money supply could not be manipulated by the banks. So the story of the Wizard of Oz starts with a cyclone in the form of imagined electoral success for Bryan...

Dorothy, a sort of proverbial ‘Everywoman’, lands on the Wicked Witch of the East (the East-coast bankers), killing her, so freeing the Munchkins, the down-trodden poor, but the Wicked Witch of the West (the West-coast bankers) remains loose.

To deal with her and to get back to Kansas (normality), the Good Witch of the North, representing the electorate of the North (this is less than 40 years after the civil war), tells Dorothy to seek out the Wizard of Oz (‘oz’ being short for ounce, the means of weighing both gold and silver). She also gives her a pair of silver slippers (as they were in the book - they became ruby ones in the film). Only these silver slippers will enable her to remain safe on the yellow-brick road, representing the bankers’ gold standard, as she heads towards the Emerald City, representing Washington DC.

On her journey, Dorothy encounters a Scarecrow, representing the farmers, who do not have the wit to understand how they can end up losing their farms to the banks, even though they work hard to grow the food to feed a hungry nation. If only they could think it through!

Next, she encounters a Tin Woodsman, representing the industrial workers, rusted as solid as the factories of the 1890s depression, and who have lost the sense of compassion and co-operation to work together to help each other during hard times. Also, a spell cast upon him by the Wicked Witch of the East meant that every time he swung his axe, he chopped off a bit of himself - he downsized!

Then the growing party encounters a Cowardly Lion, representing the politicians. These have the power, through the power of Congress and the Constitution, to confront the Wicked Witches, representing the banks, but they lack the courage to do so.

Dorothy is able to motivate these three potent forces and leads them all towards the Emerald City, whence ‘greenbacks’ had once come, and an encounter with the omnipotent and wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz is initially quite majestic and apparently awesome, but he turns out to be a little man without the power that people assume he possesses. He does, of course, represent the President of the United States. With the Wizard’s illusion of power shattered, he is replaced by the Scarecrow who would ‘be another Lincoln’.

The Wicked Witch of the West, fearful for her own power, then attempts to destroy Dorothy but is herself dissolved in a bucket of water, as rain relieves the Mid-West drought, saves the farmers’ livelihoods and prevents repossession by the banks.

The Good Witch of the South, representing the Southern electorate, tells Dorothy that her silver slippers, silver-based money, are so powerful that anything she wishes for is possible, even without the help of the Wizard. Dorothy wishes to go home. There all is now well, because the land has a stable and abundant money supply.

-Kari G.

Win tix to Rocky Horror on 10/9!

Text ROCKY to TBPAC (82722) for your chance to win a 4-pack of tickets to see the 7:30pm showing of The Rocky Horror Show THIS Thursday (10/9).

A lucky winner will be drawn at random at or around 5pm on Wed., Oct. 8. The winner will be contacted by text message. Standard text-messaging fees from your wireless provider apply.

TBPAC's texting service is provided by Agile Communications.

Blogging Molly

The latest newsletter from Red Molly, a super talented group of ladies who will appear later in our Club Jaeb series:

Hey Everybody!

We finished out the summer with a bang, making our first trip to TX and NM, and then coming back East for our last set of outdoor shows, at the Bolton Fair in MA. In October, we'll be traveling as far north as Maine, and as far south as Alabama! All October shows are listed below. If you have friends in GA or AL, please let them know we'll be in their neck of the woods (October 22-25).

Have you seen the Red Molly Tour Diary? We usually write about the weekend's shows on our website, but this time we decided to give all you Red Heads a taste of what it's like to be right there in the car with us, traveling on the road with the band! Check out our first ever AUDIO Tour Diary here (FYI, it's 7 minutes long):
http://www.redmolly.com/audiotourdiary.html

In other news, the latest review of "Love and Other Tragedies" is in the Hartford Advocate, calling the CD "Beautiful, masterfully played, and emotionally evocative". Read the rest of the review here:
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9815

See you soon,
Laurie, Abbie & Carolann

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Official website: www.redmolly.com
Fan website: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/redmolly
Myspace: www.myspace.com/redmollyband
Merchandise: www.redmolly.com/merchandise.html
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The Rocky Horror Show opens tonight!

On stage now through Nov. 1 in the Jaeb Theater!



There are special 11pm shows on Fri. and Sat. nights featuring AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION with prop bags on sale in the lobby for $5.

Come to ANY performance in costume one hour before curtain for your chance to win a voucher that will allow you to buy a ticket for that performance for $15.50 (including service charge) that allows you to sit ON STAGE!

Don't dream it - be it!