Friday, October 5, 2007

Dallas Summer Musicals announces 2007-2008 season and a new sponsor

By Pegasus News wire

Dallas Summer Musicals, the largest producer of live musical theatrical entertainment in the Southwest, announced a multi-year agreement that makes Comerica Bank the official presenting sponsor for Dallas Summer Musicals. Under the agreement, Comerica Bank’s logo will be incorporated into Dallas Summer Musicals logo, and will appear extensively inside and outside the Music Hall at Fair Park, as well as DSM performances at The Majestic Theatre, The Texas Theatre and any other venues in which DSM may present in the future. The “Name-In-Title” logo will be included in all marketing and promotional materials for the next four years.

Today's announcement is a key milestone for the non-profit organization, as the 4-year agreement marks the first presenting sponsor agreement for Dallas Summer Musicals. The announcement was made by Michael A. Jenkins, President and Managing Director of Dallas Summer Musicals presented by Comerica Bank, at a luncheon at the Crescent Club.

Now, Dallas Summer Musicals, presented by Comerica Bank, announces that an unprecedented 17 shows will be offered to subscribers for their 2007-2008 season, featuring more shows than have ever been offered in the company’s history. They are celebrating their 68th season of entertaining North Texas audiences with the finest in live theatre entertainment.

Season tickets will go on sale Thursday, October 4 at noon at The Box Office, 542 Preston Royal Shopping Center, priced from $104 to $513 for DSM 7-show season; and from $76-$344 for the Broadway Contemporary Series (BCS) 5-show season. Single tickets for the six specials range from $11-$85. Renewals and new orders may be faxed to 214-691-7386 for credit card charges; for telephone orders, call 214-217-1536. For more information about the BCS or DSM season, or to purchase tickets online, visit www.dallassummermusicals.org. There is a handling fee for orders placed by phone or internet. For groups of 20 or more please call 214-426-GROUP.

Michael A. Jenkins, President and Managing Director of DSM, said, “We are very pleased to have Comerica Bank as our first presenting sponsor. Thanks to their assistance, we are able to offer an extremely diverse schedule of top quality entertainment to North Texas audiences for 2007-2008. From award-winning blockbuster musicals still playing to sold-out audiences on Broadway, such as JERSEY BOYS and THE COLOR PURPLE, to the Southwestern premiere of our own Tony® Award-winning production, JAY JOHNSON: THE TWO AND ONLY!, this is going to be a season for the record books.”

• November 2-3, 2007: Rob Becker’s popular hit show, DEFENDING THE CAVEMAN, returns to The Majestic Theatre as a subscribers’ special for three encore performances. Single tickets are on sale now for this special event, the longest running solo play in Broadway history. Defending the Caveman is now a worldwide blockbuster hit, winning the hearts of millions in more than 15 different languages.
• November 27-December 2, 2007: Jay Johnson, a North Texas native, brings his 2007 Tony® Award-winning play, JAY JOHNSON: THE TWO AND ONLY!, to The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series. The show, which won a 2007 Tony® Award for Best Special Theatrical Event, features Johnson bringing to life a dozen or more wildly varied characters, including a boa, a chimpanzee, a vulture and a tennis ball in a script he wrote. Dallas Summer Musicals also produced the show on Broadway.
• December 11-16, 2007: CIRQUE ELOIZE: RAIN, written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street. Unexpected things can come from the sky--messages, signs, promises. On stage, not only rain will fall, surprises will pour down as well. There's a certain kind of feeling in Cirque Eloize: Rain, almost a sense of nostalgia, like a strange need to go back to the house you came from, the house where a family once lived, where your roots are. In our house we call this kind of beautiful, sweet sadness that you feel when you look at a sunset, "rain in your eyes.”
• Jan. 15-20, 2008: SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street, brings the national tour of John Doyle’s Tony® Award-winning Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical thriller, SWEENEY TODD. The touring production of Doyle’s revolutionary re-imagining of the musical – considered to be Sondheim’s masterpiece – is presented by Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series, starring Judy Kaye (The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia!) as Mrs. Lovett and David Hess as the demon barber himself, Sweeney Todd. This exciting and innovative new production features a multi-talented ensemble of ten talented actor/musicians, five from the 2006 Tony® Award-winning Broadway company.
• Feb. 8-Mar. 9, 2008: TONY N’ TINA’S WEDDING at the Sara Ellen and Samuel Weisfeld Center in Dallas, a subscribers’ special presented by Dallas Summer Musicals in association with Aruba Productions. You’re invited to Tony N' Tina's Wedding, the longest running off-Broadway show (since 1988) as it returns to Dallas following its sold-out run here in 2001. In this show, the audience is an active participant, attending first the wedding upstairs in the chapel and then the lively reception, complete with dinner and dancing to a live band. The Italian families and other characters in the story may get “rude, crude, lewd or stewed,” according to The Columbus Dispatch, but they are always hilarious.
• Feb. 19-24, 2008, LOVE, JANIS, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street. The musical tells the story of Janis Joplin, the legendary singer from Beaumont, Texas, who has been the subject of a major motion picture starring Bette Midler. Her life and music are now captured in a new musical based on her many letters to her family and featuring many of her hit songs, produced by Aldo Scrofani. The San Francisco Chronicle says “Love, Janis grabs a piece of our hearts.”
• March 11-16, 2008: MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL, a subscribers’ special presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street. The hilarious show written and produced by Jeanie Linders is a 90-minute production that includes 25 tunes with re-written lyrics from the 1960s and 1970s, culminating with a salute to women who are experiencing The Change. Inspired by a hot flash and a bottle of wine, Menopause the Musical is a hilarious hit show. The cast of four women shopping for lingerie at a Bloomingdale’s sale parody classic Baby Boomer hits as they sing songs about chocolate cravings, hot flashes, loss of memory, nocturnal sweats, and sexual predicaments. Included are chart-toppers such as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine; You No Longer See 39” and the disco favorite “Stayin’ Awake, Stayin’ Awake.”
• April 15-27, 2008: THE WEDDING SINGER kicks off the Dallas Summer Musicals’ 2008 season at the Music Hall at Fair Park. The Tony® nominated Broadway musical comedy called by Newsday “One Big Party! A good-natured, high-energy musical,” is based on the 1998 hit film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It’s the 1980s, with junk bonds, MTV, leg warmers and Duran Duran, but Robbie Hart lives in his grandmother’s basement in New Jersey and sings in a wedding band. Dreams of being a singer/songwriter are gone, replaced by a desire to find the right girl and settle down. When his fiancée leaves him at the altar, he becomes a wedding planner’s worst nightmare, taking out his bitterness on stage.
• April 29-May 11, 2008: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND at the Music Hall at Fair Park. A 15-year-old girl growing up in America's Deep South in the 1950s discovers a mysterious man hiding out in a barn; when she asks who he is, the first words he utters are "Jesus Christ.” She and the town's other children vow to protect the stranger from the world that waits outside - the townspeople who are determined to catch a fugitive hiding it their midst. The musical’s multi-award-winning songs and powerful staging combine epic storytelling with intimate emotion as the innocence of children collides with the cynical adults’ world.
• May 13-25, 2008: RING OF FIRE—the music and story of Johnny Cash at the Music Hall at Fair Park. In many ways Johnny Cash wrote and sang about the lives we all lead, regardless of where we lead them. If, watching RING OF FIRE, you feel yourself being drawn back to your roots, it isn't accidental -- even if you've forgotten what those roots are. From the heart of the songs of Johnny Cash comes a unique musical show about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, home and family. Ring of Fire features 38 of the music legend’s songs such as “Country Boy,” “A Thing Called Love,” “Five Feet High and Rising,” “Daddy Sang Bass,” “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “I’ve Been Everywhere,” “The Man in Black,” and his final hit, “Hurt.” By the end of the show you will feel that you have spent the evening in the presence of an extraordinary and real man.
• May 27-June 1, 2008: CATS returns to the Music Hall at Fair Park as a subscribers’ special. Based on 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' and other poems by T.S. Eliot, the musical takes place in a junkyard where the local cats are auditioning to be chosen by their leader, Old Deuteronomy, to journey to the Heavyside Lair to be reborn. In the end, the former glamour cat, Grizabella - turned disheveled outcast is chosen by Deuteronomy to receive the prized additional life.
• June 3-15, 2008: THE DROWSY CHAPERONE presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park. It won the most 2006 Tony® Awards of any musical on Broadway. It all begins when a die-hard musical fan plays his favorite cast album, a 1928 smash hit called “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and the show magically bursts to life. We are instantly immersed in the glamorous, hilarious tale of a celebrity bride and her uproarious wedding day, complete with thrills and surprises that take both the cast (literally) and the audience (metaphorically) soaring into the rafters.
• June 17-22, 2008: STOMP!, the International Sensation returns to the Music Hall at Fair Park as a subscribers’ special. The scenes are staged with a meticulous rhythm - quick, consistent and with just enough variety to keep your concentration from wandering. Drummers work within the framework of rudimentary narratives and superficially distinct characters portrayed by a splendidly athletic ensemble. Performers make music by tapping a matchbox or twisting a creaking folding chair. The show convinces its audience that the background music of our everyday lives is worth listening to.
• June 24-29, 2008: HAIRSPRAY presented by Dallas Summer Musicals as a subscribers’ special, returns to the Music Hall at Fair Park. Welcome to the ‘60s! It’s 1962 – the ‘50s are out and change is in the air. Baltimore’s Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, has only one passion – to dance. She wins a spot on the local TV dance program, “The Corny Collins Show” and, overnight, is transformed from outsider to irrepressible teen celebrity. But can a trendsetter in dance and fashion vanquish the program’s reigning princess, win the heart of hearthrob Link Larkin, and integrate a television show without denting her ‘do?
• July 2-13, 2008: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park. With a plot described as a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s the story of two high school students from rival cliques: Troy Bolton, captain of the basketball team, and Gabriella Montez, a shy transfer student who excels in math and science. Together, they try out for the lead parts in their high school musical, and as a result, divide the school. Despite other students' attempts to thwart their dreams, Troy and Gabriella resist peer pressure and rivalry, inspiring others along the way not to "stick with the status quo."
• Begins July 2008: JERSEY BOYS, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park, is the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi. This is the story of how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide - all before they were thirty. Directed by two-time Tony® Award-winner Des McAnuff, it won four 2006 Tony® Awards including Best Musical and continues to break box office records at the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway since opening in November 2005. Jersey Boys is written by Academy Award- winner Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
• September 30-October 19, 2008: THE COLOR PURPLE, presented by Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park, will be the 2008 State Fair Musical. Nominated for 11 Tony® Awards including Best Musical, it is based on the classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker and the film by Steven Spielberg. The unforgettable and inspiring story of a woman named Celie who finds the strength to triumph over adversity and discover her unique voice in the world, The Color Purple has a joyous Grammy® nominated score featuring gospel, jazz, pop and the blues.

Source: Dallas Summer Musicals

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