Tag: performing arts

One of the most gratifying aspects of my years at WABE was connecting listeners to our city’s cultural events. A vibrant arts community can uplift and enrich the lives of Atlantans. The challenge today is to help these organizations thrive: Funding is essential from various sources. With money allocated to the arts, we can all take pride in a city made greater by its cultural organizations.

Alpharetta native Emma Elizabeth Smith grew up going to performances at the Fox Theatre. She remembers telling her parents, “I would love to perform here one day.” One day has arrived: April 28 to May 3, Smith will take to the Fox’s legendary stage playing Catherine of Aragon in Six, the Tony Award-winning musical that reimagines the wives of Henry VIII as pop stars. Here are five things to know about the hometown actor. 

When The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales was first published in 1992, the children’s book became immediately popular and won awards for writer Jon Scieszka’s irreverent take on fairy tales and Lane Smith’s uniquely textured illustrations. Jason Hines, the artistic director of the Center for Puppetry Arts (CPA), always knew he wanted to adapt it. He was surprised when CPA gave him the greenlight for the "raucous, subversive” tale that reimagines classics like the Gingerbread Man as the Stinky Cheese Man.

When Beth Hyland first shopped around the script for her play Fires, Ohio, multiple theater companies told her it was unproducible. There wasn’t a problem with the dialogue or the plot; the script, humorous and gripping, had already won both the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting and the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. The setting itself was the issue: a two-story house in an Ohio town, surrounded by a raging wildfire.

With two pieces inspired by a World War I Christmas Eve cease fire on the Western Front, a pair of crowd favorites plus Puccini’s Tosca and bringing to life the story of the Fisk Jubilee singers, the Atlanta Opera is setting the stage for its most diverse season before moving into its new home in 2027.

On Monday, the Atlanta Opera pitched a big red-and-blue circus tent on the lawn of its new home at the historic Bobby Jones Golf Course Clubhouse. It was the same tent the opera set up in the middle of an Oglethorpe University baseball field during the pandemic in 2020, when it was one of the only active art organizations performing in the country. Executive and artistic director Tomer Zvulun dusted the tent off and out of storage for Monday’s occasion to break ground on a new $72 million campus. A $25 million gift from Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation propelled the project, and the facility will be named after Arthur’s late mother as the Molly Blank Center for Opera and the Arts.

When Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Fox Theatre February 11 to 15, the company will close each show with Revelations, as it has done every year since it started performing here in 1976. The ballet, choreographed by Ailey and inspired by his “blood memories” of growing up in the Baptist church in Texas, has become synonymous with the modern dance company’s vivid and emotional work.

Nonprofit arts organizations in metro Atlanta are facing financial challenges as government grants, corporate sponsorships, and Covid-era relief funding have dried up while costs have risen and audience participation remains below pre-pandemic levels. In response, arts leaders have banded together through weekly meetings and the coalition Arts Capital | Atlanta, which seeks to raise $100 million to stabilize the sector and ensure smaller organizations in particular can survive.

Creativity is one of life’s great mysteries. But artists of every genre recognize it when the moment of inspiration hits them. We spoke to 16 Atlanta artists about their creative processes—visual artists, dancers, musicians, actors, and more. What ignites their creativity? How do they turn an idea into art? How do they overcome a creative block? Their answers are illuminating, sometimes humorous and often profound.

Atlanta’s arts season is bursting with creativity, from the High Museum’s landmark exhibition of Minnie Evans to bold new takes on Balanchine, Bram Stoker, and Tennessee Williams. Here's your 2025 fall arts calendar.