Summary: Theatre news items of interest are culled from Alltop's theatre page at theatre.alltop.com, playbill.com and other stories gathered using Feedly and the American Association of Community Theatre. Here are the items for this week: Interesting article about the sometimes thankless job of the librettist, or book writer for musicals: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/159878-An-Open-Book-Explaining-What-Musical-Librettists-Do The Stratford Shakespeare Festival's hit production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, directed by 2-time Tony Award winner Des McAnuff, opens March 22, 2012 (previews begin March 1) at the Neil Simon Theatre. The cast gave a secret performancelast night, and met the press on Tuesday. Full story at http://broadwayworld.com/article/Saturday-Roundup-This-Week-on-BroadwayWorld-20120218#ixzz1mo50y7OZ Speaking of Stratford, their season starts in April with the usual mix of great plays by the Bard and many more. Full season listing is here: http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/ The blog Shakespeare Geek has an article about a Shakespeare app for your Android phone or device at http://goo.gl/N8nTX The app is called MicroShakespeare and you can learn more about it here: http://goo.gl/X18Kf Basketball and Broadway come together in a new play, Magic/Bird, opening on Broadway this spring. It's a dual biographical drama about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Playbill has an interview with Johnson about the play and his involvement with the playwright, here: http://goo.gl/4eOBf. Last week, members of the cast of Newsies, the upcoming stage adaptation of the 1992 Disney musical, did a live streaming chat on Ustream with Q&A from the viewing audience. Newsies just finished some initial performances in New Jersey and opens on Broadway March 15. You can watch the video and read the Playbill.com article here. Southeastern Theatre Conference Convention 2012, March 7-11, Chattanooga TN TNT Annual Conference, March 16-17, Tyler TX PACTFest 2012, March 16-18, Wellsboro, PA Theatre New Mexico State Festival, March 23-25, Las Vegas, NM Indiana Community Theatre League State Festival 2012, March 23-25, Indianapolis, IN John, Marcia and Dave will be back in the studio with more shows soon!
