Roadside Attractions has released the first trailer from the upcoming documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, directed by Mariem Pérez Riera. The film profiles Moreno’s journey from childhood poverty through the highs and lows of her seven-decade career. The 90-minute feature had its world premiere Jan. 29, 2021, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and will be released nationwide on June 18. The PBS American Masters series will present the U.S. broadcast premiere later this year.
The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is that the film is “a sharp critique of the industry’s crushing inequities and a beautiful homage to an artist who never backed down despite the odds.” Moreno’s honors includetwo Emmys, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, as well as the Kennedy Center Honors, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and National Medal of Arts. She returns to the screen later this year in the new film adaptation of West Side Story as Valentina, a new take on the original character of Doc.
The New York City Center Encores! series has produced more than 80 lesser-known musicals in staged concert versions since 1994, including the long-running Broadway revival of Chicago. This year, they have begun what they plan to make a new annual tradition: exploring iconic American musicals. The first choice, Into the Woods, is the subject of the lastest episode in the organization’s Inside the Revival series, featuring performances by New York City public school students, as well as Broadway stars Todd Almond, Laura Benanti, Philip Boykin, Judy Kuhn, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Donald Webber, Jr. The new documentary series, produced in partnership with filmmaker Juan L. Espinal, streams for free on the Encores! site and City Center’s YouTube channel. Other recent episodes of Inside the Revival explore Love Life, The Tap Dance Kid, and The Life, which were to be part of the Encores! 2020 summer series, until the pandemic shut down Broadway.
Grammy-winning composer Jim Steinman died April 19 in Danbury, Conn. Born Nov. 1, 1947, in New York City, Steinman grew up on Long Island, where he attended George W. Hewlett H.S. In his senior year at Amherst College, he wrote The Dream Engine with Barry Keating for an independent study course and, after graduating, moved back to New York to begin a career in musical theater.
Over the next decade, Steinman wrote several Off-Broadway musicals, including More Than You Deserve with Michael Weller (1973, starring Meat Loaf), Kid Champion with Thomas Babe (1975), The Confidence Man with Ray Errol Fox (1976), and Rhinegold with Keating (1978). Steinman was reworking his college musical into Neverland, when he offered three of its songs for Meat Loaf’s solo debut album, Bat Out of Hell, which launched his pop career. Below is Meat Loaf singing “More Than You Deserve.”
Steinman’s subsequent pop hits included Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Air Supply’s “Making Love,” Barry Manilow’s “Read ’em and Weep,” and “Holding Out for a Hero” from Footloose, which earned Steinman his first Grammy nomination. He reunited with Meat Loaf for the 1993 album Bat Out of Hell II, featuring “I’d Do Anything for Love,” which brought him two more Grammy nods. In 1997, he won the Grammy for Celine Dion’s Falling into You, which included “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
In the 1990s, Steinman returned to musical theater, including work on a film adaptation of Bat Out of Hell that was never produced. In 1996, Steinman wrote lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down the Wind, but after poor reviews of its D.C. tryout, the Broadway run was cancelled. A reworked West End production opened in 1998, and Boyzone topped the UK charts with a cover of the song “No Matter What.”
In 1997, Steinman worked with Michael Kunze on Tanz der Vampire, which premiered in Vienna and spawned productions in Estonia, Poland, Finland, Hungary, and Japan. The following year, the stage adaptation of Footloose opened on Broadway, bringing Steinman his sole Tony nomination. Below is a montage from the 20th anniversary production of Tanz der Vampire.
During the 2000s, Steinman worked on the Broadway adaptation of Dance of the Vampires (2002), the Swedish premiere of Garbo: The Musical (2002), the unproduced Batman: The Musical (2003), and the MTV film Wuthering Heights (2003). After recuperating from a stroke in 2004, Steinman finally realized a musical based on Bat Out of Hell, which premiered in 2017 at Manchester Opera House and made its way to Off-Broadway in 2019. Below are original stars Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington singing “Bat Out of Hell” at the London Palladium.
This morning, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for its 2021 Webby Awards. Google earned the most nominations with 22, followed by HBO with 20, and Comedy Central with 19. In addition to the academy’s selection of winners, fans can vote for the People’s Voice Award from today through Thu., May 6, at 11:59 p.m. PT. British pop culture presenter Jameela Jamil will host the virtual awards show on Tue., May 18, with winners restricted to the ceremony’s traditional five-word speeches, on WebbyAwards.com.
Television and film nominees vying for best Social Video include Marathon Digital’s Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical as well as Netflix’s Father of the Bride Part 3ish, Disney’s Disney+ Library Stunt, Warner Bros. Entertainment’s Scoob- #ScoobDance TikTok Challenge, and HBO’s Westworld Season 3.
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Performance and dance nominees in contention for best Social Video include the Rockettes’ “All That Jazz” Fosse Tribute as well as BET’s Hip Hop Awards: The Booth, Nayilah’s The Hood Dorothy: Exploring Black Excellence, 300 Entertainment’s #SavageChallenge, and Mojo Supermarket’s Savage Not Sorry.
The events and livestreams competing for best Social Content Series & Campaigns include Disney’s Hamilton Twitter Watch Party as well as RMG’s Black Entrepreneurs Day, Adobe’ CoCreate, NASA’s Launch America, and WWE’s Wrestlemania 36.
Finally, the cultural institutions being considered for best General Websites & Mobile Sites include Adage Technologies for Experience the Kennedy Center at Home,Museo Reina Sofia for (Im)possible Counter-Archives,360 Design for Shared History Project, Paradowski Creative for The Sheldon, and Dept Holding for Transforming the Van Gogh Museum.
Visit WebbyAwards.com for a full list of nominees and to vote for the People’s Voice Award.
Happy Birthday to Tony- and Olivier-winning performer Gavin Creel, born April 18, 1976, in Findlay, Ohio. After graduating from Findlay H.S., Creel studied musical theater at University of Michigan. Within months of earning his bachelor’s degree in 1998, he landed his first professional job in a national tour of Fame. You can read more about Creel’s early days in my interview with him for Dramatics magazine.
When the Fame tour ended, Creel moved to New York, making his Off-Broadway debut in Bat Boy (2001). Later that year, he was cast as Melchior in a workshop of Spring Awakening and as one of the Tribe in the Encores! concert of Hair. Creel’s breakthrough came in 2002 with his Broadway debut in Thoroughly Modern Millie, for which he earned his first Tony nomination.Below is Creel and Sutton Foster singing “I Turned the Corner” on the September 13, 2002, episode of CBS This Morning.
Creel spent the next few years in various developmental productions, including Bounce and Bright Lights, Big City in 2003 and A Tale of Two Cities in 2004. After another concert of Hair, Creel returned to Broadway in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles. He made his London debut as Bert in Mary Poppins two years later. The 2009 revival of Hair brought Creel back to Broadway and earned him his second Tony nomination. Below is Creel and the Hair revival cast singing the title song at the 2009 Tony Awards.
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Creel opened the 2010 West End revival of Hair and was back in London for the 2013 premiere of The Book of Mormon, after spending a year in that show’s American national tour. For his performance as Elder Price, Creel won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Below is Creel singing “I Believe” at the 2013 Oliviers.
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In 2014, Creel brought his award-winning performance to Toronto and Montreal, before returning to Broadway in the role during 2015. The following year, he starred in the Roundabout Theatre’s Broadway revival of She Loves Me. Below is Creel and Jane Krakowski performing “Ilona” in that production, which was filmed for the PBS Great Performances series.
Creel’s most recent Broadway appearances include the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly!, for which he earned his first Tony Award, and Waitress in 2019. When the pandemic began last year, he had just opened in the West End production of Waitress. Below is Creel and Sara Bareilles singing “You Matter to Me” during a promotional concert for the London production of Waitress.
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda travels back home to New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood to revisit some of the inspirations for his first musical, In the Heights, as part of a virtual tour of “the greatest city in the world” in a new episode of Perspectives from Google Arts and Culture. Among the sites Miranda explores are the Morris-Jumel Mansion, where he worked on the musical Hamilton in the actual room where Aaron Burr lived, and the Drama Book Shop, which Miranda and three of his Hamilton collaborators purchased in 2019. Miranda also shares some of the history of how Washington Heights became Manhattan’s largest Latin American enclave.
Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, the Off-Broadway Classic Stage Company will present its 2021 benefit, Tell the Story: Celebrating Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins. This free virtual event will include an array of performances and tributes exploring the legacy of the musical, featuring the entire cast of CSC’s upcoming production as well as alumni from the 1990 Off-Broadway premiere and 2004 Broadway revival, culminating in a discussion with creators Sondheim and Weidman, moderated by CSC Artistic Director John Doyle. Hillary Rodham Clinton will also deliver remarks about the show.
Other scheduled participants include Quincy Tyler Bernstine, André De Shields, Raúl Esparza, Ann Harada, Audra McDonald, Mary Beth Peil, George Takei, and Tony Yazbeck as well as CSC cast members Adam Chanler-Berat, Eddie Cooper, Tavi Gevinson, Brad Giovanine, Andy Grotelueschen, Bianca Horn, Judy Kuhn, Whit K. Lee, Rob Morrison, Steven Pasquale, Ethan Slater, Will Swenson, Wesley Taylor, Brandon Uranowitz, and Katrina Yaukey — plus 1990 alums Patrick Cassidy, Victor Garber, Greg Germann, Annie Golden, Lyn Greene, Jonathan Hadary, Eddie Korbich, Terrence Mann, Debra Monk, William Parry, Lee Wilkof, and director Jerry Zaks and 2004 alumsBecky Ann Baker, Mario Cantone, Michael Cerveris, Mary Catherine Garrison, Alexander Gemignani, Ken Krugman, Marc Kudisch, Anne L. Nathan, Denis O’Hare, Chris Peluso, Sally Wilfert, and director Joe Mantello.
Registration is required at ClassicStage.org, and the event will be available for viewing until April 19 at 8 p.m. ET. Below is the Broadway revival cast at the 2004 Tony Awards.
South Korea is one of few countries to have begun presenting shows to capacity audiences amid the coronavirus pandemic. The latest musical to reopen there is the Korean-language version of Wicked, the first mounting of that show to reopen anywhere. The production will run at the Blue Square Theatre in Seoul until May 2 and then will move to the Dream Theatre in Busan on May 20. The first cast features Ock Joo Hyun (Elphaba), Jeong Sun Ah (Glinda), Sea Kyoung Su (Fiyero), Nam Kyoung Joo (Wizard), and Lee So You (Madame Morrible). The second cast includes Son Seung Yeon (Elphaba), Na Ha Na (Glinda), Jin Tae Hwa (Fiyero), Lee Sang Jun (Wizard), and Kim Ji Sun (Madame Morrible). Below is a montage of Jeong Sun Ah and Ock Joo Hyun in “Popular” and “For Good.”
On Saturday, April 10, Shuffle Along star Amber Iman performed in a NY PopsUp concert at the Broadway Theatre, offering a set of songs that included covers of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” “Imagine,” and “Party in the USA.” The free show also featured guests Crystal Monee Hall (Rent) and Marcus Paul James (Ain’t Too Proud), who joined Iman for “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” under the musical direction of Michael O. Mitchell. The socially distanced audience included her fellow performers who have been out of work for the past year. As with the PopsUp event on April 3 at the St. James Theatre, there were numerous health safety protocols, including a pre-show health questionnaire and proof of a recent negative COVID test or completed vaccine cycle.
Last night, Nightline, the late-night series from ABC News (which is part of the Disney Television group), broadcast a segment about the return of Broadway shows in Australia, the first country to lift theater restrictions. The story focused on the reopening of the Disney Theatrical production of the musical Frozen, adapted from the animated Disney film. Series co-anchor Byron Pitts talked with Thomas Shumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Group, and Graeme Kearns, CEO of Foundation Theatres, which operates Sydney’sCapitol Theatre, the Australian home of Frozen.
Kerns said he’s been “astounded” by theatergoers’ ability to follow safety protocols that have kept Sydney’s theaters running at full capacity, and Schumacher suggested that Australia could be a model for Broadway’s reopening. The segment also featured interviews with Jemma Rix and Courtney Monsma, who play as Elsa and Anna in Frozen, and clips from the show as well as from Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Moulin Rouge.
Roadside Attractions has released the first trailer from the upcoming documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, directed by Mariem Pérez Riera. The film profiles Moreno’s journey from childhood poverty through the highs and lows of her seven-decade career. The 90-minute feature had its world premiere Jan. 29, 2021, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and will be released nationwide on June 18. The PBS American Masters series will present the U.S. broadcast premiere later this year. 
