STRAZ CENTER FORMS ALLIANCE

THE NEDERLANDER ORGANIZATION AND STRAZ CENTER FORM ALLIANCE

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Tampa, Fla. – The Nederlander Organization of New York and the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa announced today that they will join forces to present the finest Broadway shows in the Tampa Bay area.

Both organizations have long and successful histories and together will continue the impressive growth of Broadway at the Straz Center.

The Nederlander Organization is one of the largest theater owners and producers on Broadway, as well as one of the largest Broadway presenters in the nation.

Celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2012-2013, the Straz Center is the largest performing arts center south of the Kennedy Center and the largest cultural organization and Broadway presenter in Florida. Its Carol Morsani Hall was ranked in top five most-attended venues in the world under 5,000 seats for the past decade by Billboard magazine.

"I am thrilled by this association with this outstanding organization,” said Judy Lisi, the president and CEO of the Straz Center. "Together we can continue the impressive growth of Broadway shows for our audiences."

Lisi said the new association would involve both pre-Broadway and post-Broadway bookings, as well as advice and consultation on Broadway shows still in development.

The Straz Center presents an annual touring Broadway season, the Bank of America Best of Broadway Tampa Bay series. The 12-13 season includes War Horse, Jekyll & Hyde, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Flashdance, Wicked, Green Day’s American Idiot, Sister Act, Anything Goes and more.

“As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nederlander organization, we could not be more proud to be associated with an organization as great as the Straz Center,” said James L. Nederlander, president of the Nederlander Organization. “We look forward to our continued growth together”

Opening in 1987, the Straz Center consists of five theaters, three restaurants and the Patel Conservatory. The 335,000 square-foot facility provides an environment for a wide variety of world-class events. In addition to hosting one of the nation’s leading Broadway series’ the Straz Center and is nationally respected for presenting a wide variety of concerts, performances and events and for its resident company Opera Tampa. For more information about the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, and its upcoming events, please visit www.strazcenter.org.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2010

The 84th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will kick off the holidays in New York City and on NBC on Thursday, November 25th! Every year, Macy’s exciting holiday tradition is seen by more than 3.5 million people who line the streets in New York and another 50 million people who tune into NBC to watch the giant balloons, one-of-a-kind floats, the nation’s best matching bands, hundreds of cheering clowns and a host of celebrities!

Something WE look forward to every year is the Broadway performances. Word on the street is that this year there will be performances from Billy Elliot, Memphis, American Idiot, Elf, Million Dollar Quartet and the Radio City Rockettes. Also look out for RAIN, A Tribute to the Beatles.

Other fun things include a giant balloon of Shrek, a float of Dora’s Christmas Carol Adventure from Nickelodeon, clowns and talent.
For a full list of line-up click HERE.

Come Fly Away With Green Day?

NYC -- Normally blase theater professionals went all gaga twice Tuesday, first for a regal appearance by the choreographer/writer/director Twyla Tharp and then for a charming sit-down with Broadway's newest surprise -- Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong.

Former dancers now in arts management clogged the front row for Tharp, just as their younger colleagues did later on for Armstrong.

Tharp, of course, helped start the most recent trend toward "Rockway" with her work on "Movin' Out," based on the works of Billy Joel. Following a short run with a show using songs by Bob Dylan, she's back with "Come Fly Away," which puts Frank Sinatra on Broadway and is billed as "A new musical love affair."

Sinatra apparently came to see one of Tharp's earlier works using one of his songs.

"I cried. I want to be a dancer," Sinatra supposedly said.

"You are a dancer," Tharp said she told him. You're great in all the movies. (Pause.) But I wouldn't quit my day job."

Director Michael Mayer, who most recently did "Spring Awakening," and composer and orchestrator Tom Kitt worked with Armstrong to turn the band's 2004 Grammy Award-winning sixth CD "American Idiot" into a new Broadway musical, supplemented by a few songs from the group's latest recording "21st Century Breakdown."

Here are some random quotes and observations from those two sessions:

American Idiot

"I wanted to create a different texture for the theater, but you still felt it was Green Day." -- Kitt

"I was in the middle of 'Spring Awakening' and I was listening to the album a lot. I started to hear a very clear narrative." -- Mayer

"We always thought it should be staged somehow -- film or whatever." -- Armstrong

"I wanted to show the band I would take care of their baby." -- Kitt

"I looked to The Beatles and George Martin … 'Yesterday' … you always knew it was The Beatles." -- Kitt

"The record was perfect … The extra narration was inside the music -- even in the drum beats, the guitar breaks." -- Mayer

"I had no preconceptions about Broadway " -- Armstrong

"This probably has been the greatest experience of my life." -- Armstrong

"There's something happening here, and it's hopeful and exciting." -- Mayer
Come Fly Away

Tharp on the origins of the musical:

"We set out to find some of the narrative he created in the great American songbook." -- Tharp

"We tell the story through the deed because words lie." -- Tharp

Tharp on working with familiar dancers:

"You love them. You know what they can do. You can try things with them because of trust."

Dancers on working with Tharp and with Sinatra material:

"We call each other gladiators. It's a different level of focus, a different level of commitment than I've ever experienced." -- Karine Plantadi

"He [Sinatra] is a male artist who can care … without being wimpy, who can show strength without being arrogant. I wanna dance like that guy sings. … I didn't know that before two minutes ago." -- John Selva.

-- MKilgore

Opening for Green Day Again

From Joe Popp, guest contributor and composer, lyricis and guitarist for Jobsite's Pericles: Prince of Tires.

Life can be full of coincidences. Circa 1994 I was playing in a punk trio called dogs on ice in Tampa, Florida. We had some minor local success and even signed to a small label out of San Francisco run by Jello Biafra’s graphic artist. We were doing as good as any local band could hope to do, but thought that maybe we would get a big break after learning we were going to open for our punk idols Green Day.

The show was scheduled at a scrappy hole in the wall called The Brass Mug – sort of the CBGBs of Tampa. I remember the evening vividly. Green Day had not been signed by Reprise yet, but were doing great on Lookout Records. As we pulled into the club in our oxidized blue Ford Econoline, a rougher, more road worn van pulled into a space close to ours. It was them – yes, Green Day, all the way from the notorious punk rock mecca 924 Gilman Street. The band we listened to constantly and read so much about in the pages of our bible, the ‘zine Maximum Rocknroll.

We greeted them, and they seemed bigger than life. Tres Cool asked if any 5-0s were rolling because he had to “take care of some business,” and Mike Dirnt asked our bass player for a string, which he provided. The Mug was filled beyond legal capacity that night ¬– at least 400 in a place that regularly drew 40. We took the stage with anticipation and rocked a pretty good set to the enthusiastic crowd. We felt good. Then Green Day took the stage. They transformed the seedy club into a whirling vortex of energy. It didn’t matter that the sound was crap or the ceiling was low. They played with such tightness and fervor that I knew great things would come to them. My opinion of my band admittedly dropped drastically when I witnessed a new musical paradigm first hand. Weeks later their Dookie album was released on Reprise. Dookie sold millions of records and proved to be the record that lead them to stardom. My band went the way of most: we broke up.

I played in other bands and started getting involved in writing rock musicals. I had done quite a few in Tampa; my first being a Mac Wellman adaptation in 1994 and a very successful outdoor version of Macbeth in 1997 with my band Joe Popp as the witches. Hoping to score the next great rock musical, I left Tampa for NYC in 2000. I wanted to hear real rock music in a show; not just show tunes with electric guitars. I thought I could make a change. I had hope.

Once in New York I experienced some minor successes. I wrote a musical called MAXWELL that my old friends at Jobsite Theater produced in Tampa and later at the ultra-hip Williamsburg venue Galapagos Art Space in 2002. Some producers saw it, but passed. An old friend introduced me to up-and-coming writer Rinne Groff in 2003, and I composed some music for several of her plays. Along with Michael Friedman, I would later co-compose music for Rinne’s play In The Bubble, a musical spin on the 70’s heartthrob John Travolta movie The Boy In The Plastic Bubble. The show was directed by Micheal Grief of Rent fame and produced in 2007 by Northwestern University as part of the American Musical Theater Project. People saw it, but it still has yet to be produced again.

After what seemed to be a lifetime of being the opening band or the regional theater rock musical guy, I tried a new approach. No longer would I stab at music as a serious career, but just have fun doing projects. I started a band called The Hornrims with two old friends, and we get together once a week to write songs. For the past two and a half years, the band been has been working on an old idea I had of a mafia-inspired rock modernization of Shakespeare’s Pericles. I am still based in NYC but I work quite often with Jobsite Theater – the well-known risky troupe in Tampa Bay that helped me cut my artistic teeth for so many years and produced my musical MAXWELL. After struggling in NYC to find anyone interested, Jobsite artistic director David Jenkins hooked me up with writers Neil Gobioff and Shawn Paonessa to write the book. We had a few meetings, worked separately in NYC and Tampa and eventually came up with the rock musical Pericles: Prince of Tires.

We produced the show in a 99 seater at The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (now the Straz Center) with great success last summer. The creative team decided to give it a go in NYC and try to get some producers to look at it. The stars seemed to line up, and we luckily landed a week at New York’s famed HERE, a theater known for its cutting edge material. Pericles: Prince of Tires is now poised for a week of shows in Tampa as a tune-up, and then four shows in NYC starting April 15th – during American Idiot's final week of previews before it opens on the 20th.

Once again, in an odd way, I am opening for Green Day. We no longer share the crusty Brass Mug stage, but here we both are still doing what we do – making some kind of music. Green Day on a grand scale, and me and The Hornrims just getting together to blast some pop-punk once a week. Although my measured success falls far short of my idols, I feel I have achieved a certain kind of success – the success of persistence. I guess where I landed is summed up nicely in the final chorus of the final song of Pericles: Prince of Tires. The cast sings, “After all these years I’m here.” And you know what? I am.

-Joe Popp

Jobsite Theater is bringing back their production of Pericles: Prince of Tires in a showcase format to take to New York after playing a week of encore performances in Tampa. Pericles: Prince of Tires is a comic rock mob musical based on William Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre Joe Popp (dogs on ice, The Hornrims, MAXWELL) has paired his power-punk music and oddball sense of humor with the estimable talents of perennial Jobsite wordsmiths Neil Gobioff & Shawn Paonessa (The Curse of Milhaven, The March of the Kitefliers). Green Day's American Idiot opens on Broadway April 20.
-Kari G.

Full disclosure, I am a board member of Jobsite Theater and will be headed to New York to support this great show and see opening night of American Idiot. I just wanted to disclose that my vacation is better than yours...