Tag: theater

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 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.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show—the 50-year-old satirical horror film based on the 1973 musical—is not only a cult classic, but also a cultural phenomenon. For the past 25 years, Lips Down on Dixie, a nonprofit theater organization, has had a shadow cast acting in tandem with the film every Friday night. LDOD is the oldest shadow cast in Atlanta and one of the city’s few majority-queer theater casts, with 90 percent of the cast and crew identifying as LGBTQ+.

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.

Out Front Theatre, Atlanta’s queer-led performance company, has embraced its role in sustaining the idea that “joy is an act of resistance.” Its season-closing production, this month’s world premiere of Trick! The Musical, based on the 1999 film, trains the spotlight on the bright side of LGBTQ+ life.

Atlanta’s theater community mourns the loss of the Atlanta acting icon, who died December 3 at age 75 after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer.

All five of the city’s major arts Institutions have brought in new leadership that has changed how Atlanta experiences the arts. Meet Rand Suffolk of the High Museum of Art, Tomer Zvulun of The Atlanta Opera, Nathalie Stutzmann of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Gennadi Nedvigin of the Atlanta Ballet, and Tinashe Kajese-Bolden and Christopher Moses of the Alliance Theatre.