CLT Blog

Memphis – Tuesday, January 3rd through Sunday, January 8th Ovens Auditorium. More information: http://www.blumenthalarts.org/?blumenthal=41 The scene is mid 1950’s Memphis, Tennesse. Recorded music, mostly 45s and 78s were sold in department stores along with their players. Huey Calhoun, a quirky department store sales clerk demonstrates a knack for picking just the right records that will sell to his [...]

The Society of Professional Journalists and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation are sponsoring their annual High School Essay Contest. The national contest will award scholarships in the amount of $1000, $500, and $300 for first, second, and third place essays. This year’s topic is: Why is it important we have news media that is independent of government? [...]

Grand Opera is a complicated affair. Big scores, vast staging, precision blocking, and multiple leads all vie for audience attention, creating production demands that test the most seasoned opera companies. Add an internationally renowned mezzo-soprano and certified diva to the mix, combine with one of the most recognized, oft produced, and masterfully scored opus in [...]

In a repeat gastronomic feat that is certain to rock and roll the Tar Heel State more than the blood glucose levels of a Brittle diabetic, those NC stalwart manufacturers of our favorite health foods, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Cheerwine cherry soda have teamed up again this year to create the ultimate limited edition confection, the Cheerwine [...]

Review: Blue Man Group Belk Theater Blumenthal Performing Arts Center 4/19 -24 In the tradition of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers, The Blue Man Group elevates physical comedy to a high art form relying on sight gags, playful props and synchronized movements. Unlike their comedic predecessors however, BMG has 21 st century technology and [...]

Review: Totem Charlotte Motor Speedway Performances from March 3 to March 27, 2011 Thursday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway there were more thrills, high speed turns and tension than is typically found at the Coca-Cola 600. It all took place under the Grande chapiteau where close to 2200 attendees were spellbound for nearly three hours with Totem, the latest performing [...]

Review: Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons Belk Theater, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center Feb 26-28 It was late in the summer of 1962. JFK was in the White House. Ninety miles south of Miami, American spy planes detected the prominent development of missile silos in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. One month earlier, Alan Shepard became the first American in [...]

La Traviata  – Opera Carolina – The Blumenthal Performing Arts Center Belk Theater February 3, 5 & 6 th Jonathan Boyd’s firm handshake is only part of his initial welcome I received the other day over coffee. His rich tenor, warm and chocolatey, wrapped around my ears like a favorite muffler on a cold winter’s evening. It [...]

Long before ABC’s Supernanny, Jo Frost, was sending pint-sized terrors to the naughty spot, Helen Lyndon Goff aka P.L. Travers of Queensland, Australia had other ideas of how troublesome tots and their equally wayward parents could be whipped into shape. Travers answer to the proper British turn-of-the-century house in disarray was the bustle bobbing, umbrella [...]

“It is folly to pretend that the world is anything but absurd”

… says Matt Cosper, co-founder of Charlotte’s Machine Theater, playwright and author of ThomThom (if that bird won’t sing). “Providing the ability to laugh in the face of absurdity and directly encountering our fears in the theater can provide some structure to the madness in our [...]