Tom Provenzano

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End of the Rainbow

Tom Provenzano
Judy Garland's legendary triumphs and tragedies, dish and dirt have been chronicled so often and in so many forms, it would seem no nuance is left to be unearthed. Then there is Tracie Bennett, a performer whose colossal vocal and emotional power in End of the Rainbow pull us eagerly......
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Chinglish

Tom Provenzano
The title is the slang term for unintentionally hilarious translations that appear on Chinese signage, meant to help the recent onslaught of English-speaking tourists. Verbally thrilling playwright David Henry Hwang uses these misadventures in translation as a springboard into a fascinating tale of colliding cultures in a new world where......
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Chapter Two

Tom Provenzano
Famous for the broad, mainstream comedies that made him the 20th century's most commercially successful playwright, Neil Simon suffered the shocking loss of his first wife to cancer, leaving him devastated. A new relationship with emerging stage and screen star Marsha Mason pulled him out of depression and into a......
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Anything Goes

Tom Provenzano
New York's Roundabout Theater offers Los Angeles a glorious Christmas present in this spectacular revival of Cole Porter's signature musical comedy, staged in a broad 1930s sophisticated style but with a remarkably contemporary moral take that toys with religion, sex and organized crime. The convoluted story of shipboard romance, penned......
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How to Write a New Book for the Bible

Tom Provenzano
Priest/playwright Bill Cain puts together fragments of his family history in this exquisite play about the beauty of a simple life and dignified death. The impending cancer death of his mother, Mary (Linda Gehringer), forces the dramatized priest/screenwriter Cain (Tyler Pierce) home to see her through. The title concept invokes......
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Justin Love

Tom Provenzano
The tiny Celebration Theater can barely contain the energy and talent bursting from every aspect of this world-premiere musical that both blasts and lionizes Hollywood through through the tale of an action-movie superstar coming out of the closet. Structurally the piece follows the classic 20th-century Broadway musical form, with the......
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Deathtrap

Tom Provenzano
Successful Broadway thriller writer Sidney Bruhl (Brian Foyster) has hit a long dry spell and is desperate for a hit. He and his wife, Myra (Cynthia Gravinese), conspire to steal a play from a young playwright (Burt Grinstead), whom Bruhl met while teaching a seminar on the genre. Ira Levin's......
Ryan Smith in Chekhov Unscripted; Credit: Dan O'Connor

Impro Theater's Chekhov Unscripted: How to Improvise an Homage to Uncle Vanya

Tom Provenzano
In 1999, after 11 years of wringing laughs from willing audiences through competitive comedy and newfangled styles of longform improvisation, Impro Theater devised an upstart project called Shakespeare Unscripted that would turn into an enormously successful franchise and shape the troupe's entry into the 21st century. The "unscripted" concept has......