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musical

‘Chorus Line’ composer’s music still has a kick

The characters reveal their stories through a mixture of singing and dancing — with some pantomime thrown in. Hamlisch said that from the beginning the creators felt that certain stories were best told through song, others through dance.

Theater: ‘Immigrant’ sings the story of the ‘Only Jew in Town’

In 1909, an impoverished Jewish immigrant arrived in Hamilton, Texas, hawking 1-cent bananas from his pushcart.\n\nHaskell Harelik had fled Russia to escape pogroms, docking not in Ellis Island but in Galveston, Texas, via a plan to route Eastern European Jews to the West. He spoke no English and was the first Jew the Hamilton residents had ever seen. But he found some friendly faces, and he stayed in that Baptist town, founding a dry goods store and raising three sons there.

Theater: A generation’s history, one life at time

\”Showing Our Age\” is a play about stories, and the fact that everyone has one. It\’s a project that I started more than 10 years ago, though not specifically as an idea for a play. I was a participant in a community outreach program in which we interviewed senior citizens, used their remarkable life stories to write monologues and then performed them for the seniors and their families. The simplicity of just the details of a life — without sets or costumes — created some of the most powerful theater I had ever been involved with. And I have been involved in theater for a very long time, as an actress, writer, director and teacher. I wanted more! I wanted to take this idea and expand it.

Mideast allegory becomes roommate musical

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has stymied generations of statesmen and commentators, so why not try a witty song-and-dance musical? Such was the thought of playwright Oren Safdie and composer-lyricist Ronnie Cohen, and the result of their collaboration is \”West Bank, UK,\” which opens March 21 at the Malibu Stage Company.\n

Musicals: UCLA goes to Dogpatch, USA

Senior and middle-aged Angelenos who grew up on the wonderfully satirical \”Li\’l Abner\” comic strip can get their nostalgia fix as the denizens of Dogpatch USA cavort on the stage of UCLA\’s Freud Playhouse through Feb. 17.

The Calendar Girls: Picks, kicks and plugs

Calendar of events, January 26 to February 1: Kids, film, lecture, theater, maccabi games, singles, tu b\’shevat, volunteer, concert, comedy, adventure, drama, photography, book signing, music, youth art show, mardi gras.

Theater: ‘The Kid from Brooklyn’ showcases Danny Kaye’s comic cavorting

\”The Kid From Brooklyn,\” a musical based on the life of Danny Kaye, now playing at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, takes us back to the heyday of Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky), a versatile performer whose tongue-twisting verbal artistry and physical high jinks have influenced such modern-day performers as Robin Williams and Jim Carrey.

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