Copious Notes: Versailles couple finally will meet onstage in 'Almost, Maine'
Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist ,Rich Copley
Jim and Melissa Wilkeson are doing something this weekend they have not done in 16 years of marriage: They're performing opposite each other in a play.
UK's fledgling dance program is ready to fly
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
Just a year ago, students couldn't minor in dance at UK, and dance was never part of the College of Fine Arts. That changed when the school hired Susie Thiel to launch a dance program under the umbrella of the theater department. 3Dimensions is the program's first show.
'A Song for Coretta' has a lot to say, especially to young people
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
To the members of Agape Theatre Troupe, A Song for Coretta is a wake-up call. Pearle Cleage's 2007 play is set at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 6, 2006, the day that Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., lay in state there. Thousands of people showed up to pay their respects, and Cleage's play supposes a cross-generational meeting of five of them.
Stand-up comic Craig Shoemaker relies on his reality for laughs
By Blake Hannon Contributing Writer
Craig Shoemaker wants to make people laugh — and he'll take it any way he can get it.
Review: Lexington Children's Theatre's delightful 'Shimmering Sky' is circus of a show
By Candace Chaney Contributing Theater Critic
Why is the sky blue? Why do the sun and the moon hang in the sky? Modern parents can answer these questions with science, but ancient cultures answered them with mythology and folk tales, many of which also imparted moral lessons. So it is in Lexington Children's Theatre's latest production, the delightful, educational and cute Tales of the Shimmering Sky.
Review: Touring 'In the Heights' is uneven but fun, insightful
By Tedrin Blair Lindsay Contributing Culture Critic
On the northernmost tip of Manhattan, under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, lies the district known as Washington Heights. Heavily populated with Latinos and far from the glamour and wealth of Midtown, ordinary people live out their hopes and sorrows in this urban cityscape. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes' In the Heights, the 2008 Tony Award winner for best musical and playing this weekend at the Lexington Opera House as part of the Broadway Live series, celebrates the importance of community with this highly sanitized slice of life in the barrio.
Review: Studio Players' 'Leading Lady' is a flawed seductress
By Candace Chaney Contributing Theater Critic
The show must go on, but what if that show is marred by one of the greatest tragedies in American history? Such is the premise of Studio Players' fascinating, if uneven, production of Charles Busch's Our Leading Lady.
Actress in tour of 'In the Heights' was one of its first groupies
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
Celina Polanco was a fan of In the Heights well before it won the Tony Award for best musical and became the latest sign of cultural shifts on Broadway. "I was kind of a groupie of the show," the actress said from Chicago, where she is playing Camila in the national tour that comes to Lexington this weekend.
Lexington Children's Theatre adds a circus touch to 'Tales of the Shimmering Sky'
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
This could be the children's theater equivalent of someone plunging a chocolate bar into a jar of peanut butter.
Comedy draws drama, laughs from scene of Lincoln's assassination
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
Sasha Halvorsen went to the theater in New York one night and saw a play she just had to be in. It was the off-Broadway production of Our Leading Lady starring Kate Mulgrew.
Actor's one-man show honors Frederick Douglass
By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com
For actor Roger Guenveur Smith, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend is the perfect time to present a program about 19th-century abolitionist and feminist Frederick Douglass.
New free-ticket program will expose kids to Broadway shows in Lexington
Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist
Broadway Buddies is a program designed to get tickets to the February Broadway Live presentation of Shrek at the Lexington Opera House to underserved youth in the Lexington area.
Impressionist, actor, comic, interviewer, storyteller: Kevin Pollak stays busy
By Blake Hannon Contributing Writer
Kevin Pollak, 54, has been doing comedy since he was 10, but a lot of people don't know him for his dozens of film roles.
Rich Copley: The new year opens with stories whose endings haven't been written yet
Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist
Here are some of the things that the Herald-Leader and LexGo.com's arts and culture desk will be watching in the coming year.
Central Kentucky arts scene saw big events and big changes
Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist
We did not have a major international event in Lexington this year like 2010's Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, but it felt like a big year in the arts.
