To Jennifer Jancuska, the possibilities of a new musical are best explored through collaboration and movement. Now the resident choreographer/dance supervisor of Hamilton on Broadway, she created Jennifer Jancuska + The BringAbout in 2016. Its residency program incorporates dance into the development process of new shows as they’re still being written. Writers collaborate with The […]

This month, Massachusetts’ Barrington Stage Company premieres A Crossing, a tale of migrants coming over the southern U.S. border. It’s being billed as a dance musical, which, for Joshua Bergasse, who co-conceived, directed and choreographed the work, feels right. “It’s a traditional musical in that we have songs, but we’re telling so much of the […]

Growing up in Louisiana, Lear deBessonet fell in love with movie musicals. “That’s where my access to theater came from—that, and my mother at the piano,” she says. Now, deBessonet, who was recently named the next artistic director of New York City Center’s Encores! performance series, starting in 2021, will get to revisit some of […]

Conscientious theatergoers may be familiar with The School for Scandal, The School for Wives and School of Rock. But how many are also aware of the school of Fosse? The 1999 musical, a posthumous exploration of the choreographic career of Bob Fosse, ran for 1,093 performances, winning four Tonys and 10 nominations; employing 32 dancers; […]

The closing months of the 2016–17 season brought a glut of extraordinary music and dance to Broadway’s stages, and the superabundance has left 2017–18 looking a bit anemic. Partly it’s real estate—there are only so many Broadway theaters; in June, nearly three dozen were occupied. The only musical scheduled to open this summer was Prince […]

She may have ruined the word “ironic” forever, but we can’t help loving Alanis Morrisette for channeling all our 90s-era angst. So we were super excited to hear rumors a few years ago that someone was making a musical out of her Grammy-winning album “Jagged Little Pill.” This week we learned even better news: There’s […]

The 2017–18 Broadway season is just getting underway! But before we look ahead to new productions, let’s recall what came before. Here are a few of the sparkliest shows that opened on the Great White Way in previous Augusts. 42nd Street (1980) The cast of the 2001 revival of 42nd Street performing at the Tony […]

I have always been extremely dramatic. I think “extremely” might even be an understatement. As a child, I was constantly in costume. Never clothes. Always a costume. When I was 8 we moved into a new house, and took a home video to send to my dad’s family. My siblings were performing a song for […]