LOS ANGELES, January 28, 2010 - "Why does a man in a chicken suit cross the stage?" is not the only existential inquiry tackled by Charles Mee’s challenging but rewarding theater piece bobrauschenbergamerica.

LOS ANGELES - If a Hollywood genie ever offers to cast your movie musical with an international assortment of Oscar winners, tell him to get lost.

Washington, D.C. - The Ford’s Theatre Society announced that a donation drive during productions of “A Christmas Carol” has raised $51,671.79 for the Washington-based charity Bread for the City.

'The Great Recession,' premiering off-off-Broadway, brings together six up-and-coming playwrights and a troupe of unpaid young actors. Waiting in the wings are their own real-life hard times.

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Reporting from New York - Two young actors are rehearsing a pivotal fight scene in a new short play opening tonight at a small theater in Lower Manhattan.

Summertime and the livin' wasn't easy on Broadway.

Theater attendance plunged 9.3 percent to 3.3 million compared with last year, according to a published report.

Climbing ticket prices helped box-office grosses, but the total dropped 2.9 percent to just under $290.9 million for the period, which began in June, Crain's New York Business reported.

New productions are chock full of movie stars, which the Great White Way hopes will draw in the crowds.

As the Lower East Side is steadily swallowed by Midtown, are there really any ’60s-style radical bohemians still to be found there? So “The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side” would have you believe. The play, written and directed by Derek Ahonen and rendered with brassy verve by the troupe the Amoralists, has been deservedly extended at Performance Space 122, and what a long, shaggy but exhilarating three-act (and nearly three-hour) ride it is.

Virginia Stage Company (VSC) will be holding local Equity auditions for the 2009-2010 season on August 6th from 1pm- 8pm and August 7th from 10am-5pm at the Wells Theatre. Non-Equity auditions will be held simultaneously.

In a democratic society, there is an inevitable tension between the need of the government to protect secrets in the name of national security, and the right of the press to print all but the most dangerous of those secrets, particularly when the claim of “secrecy” is used to cover up politically damaging government decisions.  Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers is an inside look at the Washington Post‘s decision to publish the top-secret study documenting the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.

For the second time this summer, traveling troupe Cirque Berzerk has extended their run, this time through the end of August. This just confirms to us that Los Angeles is indeed ready for permanent high quality acts. Soon Cirque du Soleil will be arriving for a 10 year show at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, but what else? Can this city support a Blue Man Group theatre? Would it go on the revived Broadway? Can we give Vegas a little run for their money? Let's hope so.

NEW YORK — Early on in David Mamet’s typically contentious and intellectually salacious new Broadway play, the lively David Alan Grier, playing an attorney, posits a question.

LOS ANGELES - Trust your tongue. That’s the takeaway from “Po Boy Tango,” the new East West Players production at the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo. Eat well beforehand or make late dinner reservations, because Kenneth Lin’s exquisite kitchen confidential will definitely torture your taste buds.

NORFOLK - Don't bug out, but the summer's weather seems to have created a haven for pestilential creatures.

We're talking spiders, beetles, termites, ants. Way more than just mosquitoes.

Nanaimo BC - On Monday, July 27th, 1990 Bard on the Beach launched its inaugural production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a rented tent in Vanier Park. On Tuesday, July 28th, 2009, exactly twenty seasons later, Bard will welcome its one millionth patron attending the Festival’s Shakespeare productions.

At the Last Supper, Jesus knew that it would be the last, and that he would be dead by the next day. Each of the Evangelists tells the story differently, but, according to John, Jesus spent the time he had left re-stating to the disciples the lessons he had taught them and trying to prop up their courage. At a certain point, however, he lost heart. “Very truly,” he said to his men, “one of you will betray me.”

Playwrights Horizons announced complete casting and dates for the first two productions — The Retributionists and Circle Mirror Transformation — of its upcoming 2009-10 season at its home on West 42nd Street.

Vanities, the hit Off-Broadway play about the evolution of three Texas cheerleaders, is now a musical.

On Nov. 22, 1963, tragedy befalls a trio of teenage girls at their Texas high-school cheerleading practice. Over the PA system comes word that the president has been shot in Dallas, meaning their rah-rah routines in front of the Friday Night Lights is fur sure doomed to be doused.