Tag: performing arts

Stephanie Blank has a secret. No, not that. Even TMZ has reported on the ridiculously civilized parting of the ways between the veteran Atlanta charitable fundraiser and her husband of 16 years, Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank. We’re talking about a real secret here.

As a young British chap touring Spain with his mum some years ago, Renshaw became enchanted with flamenco and bullfighting. So when he was approached about staging the tale of rapier-wielding, masked lothario Zorro, he had one caveat: “Yes. As long as it’s flamenco.”

As any eastside commuter can attest, one rarely drives through the Krog Street tunnel—the graffiti gallery/underpass connecting Cabbagetown and Old Fourth Ward—without spying an aspiring musician or model posing for a photo shoot.

"I want to welcome everyone who couldn't get a ticket to tonight's Braves game," Conan O'Brien told a cheering audience Monday afternoon at the first Final Four week Atlanta taping of his TBS "Conan" late night show at the Tabernacle downtown. Longtime fans like Jas Chahal and Stephanie Kasper, who had won their tickets through the TeamCoco.com website, had been milling about on Luckie Street all day. Chahal had driven up from Orlando for the occasion and from their second row seats, they had orange signs reading "ATL Luvs Coco" and "Conan Hug Me" signs at the ready (note to fans attending this week's shows at the Tabernacle: the show's stage manager requests that the audience refrain from displaying your Conan love signage since it will interfere with the cameras swinging around capturing the show in progress).

In 2006 choreographer Lauri Stallings unveiled Shoo Pah Minor, her first commission for the Atlanta Ballet. After the performance, John McFall, the Ballet’s artistic director, followed Stallings to the bathroom to ask if she’d consider a three-year residency.

Last year the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies declared Georgia second-to-last in the nation in terms of public arts financing. That number forty-nine ranking (six cents per capita, compared with $5.77 in first-place Minnesota) may shock some Atlantans, but it surprises no one involved with the arts.

On Tuesday, taking a break from staging yet another warmed over musical based on a 1980s popcorn flick, the Fox Theatre announced a booking that will finally rival 2011's Charlie Sheen's "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour in terms of sheer hot messiness. On April 20 at 8 p.m, the Fox (presumably) proudly presents convicted rapist, "The Hangover" punchline and former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson starring in his one-man show "Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth" live on stage at the Atlanta landmark.

The Atlanta Ballet staged the North American premiere of Dracula in 1998 and has reincarnated the vampiric love story every few years since. Bloodsucking counts, it seems, are crowd-pleasers on par with Sugar Plum Fairies.

Writer and Memphis native Katori Hall’s play "The Mountaintop," a fictional account of the final night of Martin Luther King Jr’s life, concludes its well-received Atlanta run this weekend at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre. The play made its U.S. debut on Broadway last year in a $3 million production directed by Leon and starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett. In an exclusive interview with Atlanta magazine, Hall took time out from writing the screenplay based her new play “Hurt Village” to talk about bringing “The Mountaintop” to Atlanta.

As if embattled Republican Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin didn't have enough to worry about as he continues his national "legitimate rape" apology tour, he's now in Margaret Cho's comedic crosshairs. Akin's recent comments about women being able to magically "shut that whole thing down" following a rape make him almost irresistible bait for Cho's new fall tour "Mother."