AP:  An annual $150,000 prize has been established by the foundation of Tony-winning playwright-director Arthur Laurents and partner Tom Hatcher. The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award will be given for an unproduced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright. The prize includes a $50,000 cash award for the selected playwright and a $100,000 grant for production costs of the play’s premiere...

Look for an actor playing Mark Blitzstein in the current feature film “Me and Orson Welles.” The movie is about the final week or so of production leading up to the opening night of the Mercury Theatre’s 1937 production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” which Welles directed and for which Blitzstein wrote music. Early on in the film a playbill for “Caesar” has the clear statement “Music by Marc Blitzstein”...

In the bio-pic “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” Allen Ginsberg describes Russell as a poet who sings.  I like that because it puts a finger on why I’ve never connected well with Russell’s music. Lord knows I’ve tried many times, always hoping to sink into the numerous posthumous collections of his music that have come out in recent years.  His songs and instrumentals always feel like sketches to...

Despite its name, “Lipsynch” is not a drag show.   It’s the latest large scale theater piece from the inventive Canadian writer and director Robert Lepage.  Best characterized as a play, the piece begins and ends with one character singing lengthy excerpts from Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.” As much as I’ve loved that slow and lush music and its popular 1992 recording by Dawn Upshaw,...

SCHENECTADY – Sometimes theatrical producing means simply investing money into a big ambitious venture, as Proctors Theatre has done a bit lately with Broadway musicals. But producing can also mean finding some dough and also putting together a team of artists to create something new. That was the case with a new hour-long multidisciplinary show that premiered Friday night in the GE Theatre. “From Within and Outside...

In 1969, the city of Cohoes purchased the abandoned National Bank Building at the northern end of Remsen Street for $1 to save the prominent 1874 edifice from imminent destruction. As city officials began examining the building’s interior, they couldn’t find any stairs to a third floor. Eventually, they broke through a ceiling panel, only to discover that hidden away in the top half of the building was a gem of...