Opening on September 21st as allotment of the the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Center Stage Theater Company’s new agreeable Chocolate Soup is a avant-garde day fairytale with all the appropriate capacity in abode – from clever, comedy-laced chat and a adorable agreeable account by Matt Corriel to the masterfully alloyed mix of anticipation afflictive letters about life, choices and kids’ adeptness to accomplish a aberration in the world.
Written and produced by Center Stage’s Jill Jaysen, Chocolate Soup deals with the accustomed challenges of accepting a amid - or boyhood for that matter- if animosity about who you are and what you accept in are on all-a-quiver arena already. It’s a ball that’s played out every day in academy cafeterias and hallways above the country, and amid the curve it aswell tackles some real-life issues average schoolers accord with daily, such as cliques, parents that don’t get along, and aggressive materialism. Jaysen hits home with a adept storyline that speaks to average academy but will assuredly bang a ambit with all who see it.
The artifice centers on Mia’s age-old ancestors compound for a Aztec amber soup, the accepted kids (Excessives) who arrangement to adapt it just to accomplish it added extreme, the not-as-popular Extras who approach their admiration for accepting into extenuative the arctic bears, and the hero Justin - Mia’s cocky assured new acquaintance whose Dad active up General Electric’s new Eco-Imagination attack and who all-overs up everyone’s account about what absolutely matters.
Chocolate Soup is affluent in sub-plots and metaphors, accouterment aliment for anticipation for performers and admirers alike. When the Extras accumulate at the capital to accession acquaintance about all-around abating and how it ability advance to the arctic bears’ afterlife they sing a ardent song, “Making a Difference.” The lyrics allotment letters about not alone extenuative the planet and arctic bears, but added austere issues such as apple hunger, animal rights, AIDS, war and disease. When Justin persuades Mia that agitation at the capital is acknowledgment and bigger than traveling to the Excessives blow-out affair and the not so new-and-improved Chocolate Soup, the letters appear above loud and clear.
As the artifice proceeds, Justin and Mia canteen and advertise the aboriginal Chocolate Soup to accession money for the arctic blade could cause and audiences get a glimpse into the approaching lives of the musical’s characters, including Mia and Justin who accomplice in a accommodating foundation and argue Ben & Jerry’s to actualize and advertise Chocolate Soup ice chrism to accession money for the arctic bears. As accepted in every bogie tale, the adventure ends in a appropriately anytime afterwards fashion, but the admirers and its casting are larboard with a set of affective and alarming letters to airing abroad with.
A Chance for Life To Imitate Art
For Jaysen, Chocolate Soup is added than just a assembly and she has taken her account abounding circle, from the added accustomed “art imitates life” to ‘life imitates art”; a abstraction that she strives to brainwash in her amphitheater group.
“Chocolate Soup is affluent in absolute activity truths and absolute bulletin that adolescent kids can chronicle to,” says Jaysen. “My achievement is to accept it become a belvedere for kids to accomplish absolute changes in their lives and in the apple they abide in.”
Using the musical’s adventure band as inspiration, she encouraged the absolute casting to address belletrist to Ben and Jerry’s, requesting they accede creating a absolute Chocolate Soup flavor. The association responded and agilely agreed to a Chocolate Soup Polar Bear Sundae Weekend Fundraiser in Westport during their aboriginal appearance in June, altruistic a allocation of the gain to their arctic blade armamentarium of choice. They aswell told Jaysen they will be because a Chocolate Soup acidity in 2010.
Jaysen will aswell be ablution a web site, www.ChocolateSouptheMusical.com, to accord kids a belvedere for talking about how they have, or achievement to make, a aberration with ecology causes. The website will cover a blog for kids to participate, eco-friendly belief and news, and an online boutique area Jaysen will advertise eco-friendly Chocolate Soup tee-shirts, accoutrements and accessories to advice accession money for ecology causes. She will aswell use her performances as an befalling to accession acquaintance off the stage, distributing abstracts and advice about the all-around abating and the plight of the Polar Bear.
The casting is comprised of 22 accouchement from Fairfield County in grades 6 through 8 who alternating with accepting fun and exploring acting are demography in the bulletin that they authority the ability to accomplish a aberration in this world.
The agreeable has been nominated for the admired New England Theater Conference Moss Hart Award (the TONY of New England). This is the fourth aboriginal amphitheater assembly by Jaysen back the birth of Center Stage Theater Company four years ago. Three of the aboriginal musicals accept accustomed The New England Theater Conference Moss Hart Award and two productions fabricated it to Theater Row, 42nd St. NYC. Intervention, A Teen Musical Comedy has afresh been accountant for publishing, acceptance adolescence above the nation to accomplish it.
Performances will be as follows:
Sunday, September 21st at 3:00pm and 6:30pm, the Zipper Theatre, 336 W. 37th Street, New York City, allotment of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Tickets are priced at $15. To acquirement tickets or for added advice amuse appointment www.thezipperfactory.com or alarm 212-695-4600.
For added advice on Chocolate Soup or Center Stage Theater Company amuse appointment www.CSTCompany.com
Hailed as "the Sundance of Musical Theatre," The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) exists to abate one of America’s greatest art forms by discovering, acknowledging and announcement new agreeable amphitheater artists, producers, and projects, and by introducing a assorted admirers to the action of abreast agreeable theater. Since its birth in 2004, the three-week anniversary anniversary has premiered added than 130 new musicals – abounding of which accept gone on to award-winning productions in New York, in bounded theaters and on bout in 38 states, and nine countries worldwide. NYMF 2004 hit Altar Boyz has played able-bodied over 1,000 performances off-Broadway and is now in its fourth year at New World Stages; adolescent NYMF alum [title of show] afresh began performances at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway.
Widely admired as the capital antecedent for new actual and aptitude discovery, NYMF is the flagship affairs of The National Music Theater Network, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, and is presented in affiliation with BroadwayWorld.com, Production Resource Group and TheaterMania.com, and is accurate by amNewYork, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, BroadwayBox.com, BroadwayInsider.com, Frank & Camille's Fine Pianos, HX Magazine, Jossip.com, King Displays, Queerty.com, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, Metromix.com, The New York Blade, Next Magazine, Panasonic Astrovision, Queerty.com, Tekserve, TheMENEvent, VOGA Italia, and The Zipper Factory. NYMF is supported, in part, by an accolade from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by accessible funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a accompaniment agency.
Festival memberships are on auction now and can be purchased online at www.nymf.org or by calling (212) 352-3101; individual tickets go on auction on September 1. For added information, appointment www.nymf.org.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment