Marc Acito's Blog

I want to highly recommend ordering Anne Mendel's Etiquette for an Apocalypse when it comes out May 18th (it'll be on Amazon and at your local bookstore). Anne's book concerns a family living in 2020, after the world has ended. It's full of warmth, humor, wisdom, and practical survival tips (seriously!). You'll be missing out if you don't pick it up.

Even though it's been pointed out to me that bison are herbivores, I still stand by my thesis here. 
An essay on why theatre matters. 

"The most alluring feature of A Room with a View is that, despite the obvious issues of morality, it never takes itself too seriously. Italians are painted as passionately indecent creatures who see and feel everything for what it is. This is a reality that George can accept willingly but not Lucy, at least at first, and certainly not Charlotte or Reverend Mr. Beeber (Edward Staudenmayer), but it is a fact of nature, a culturally primal element that will slowly have its effect on these British folk, who will soon be forced to come to terms with transformation in their daily living."

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Th lead up to the premiere has made me too exhausted - physically, emotionally, intellectually (sexually...) - to give a proper run down of the show myself, but some other people did.
From UT San Diego:
"Witty writing, appealing actors, a gorgeous and well-orchestrated score: “A Room With a View” has just about the full monty (and that’s not even counting the naked dudes who plunge into a pool onstage)."
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From North County Times:

"Many of the novel's best lines and scenes have made it into the script and score, with each well-developed character given a moment to shine. Schwartz finds comic and poetic ways to emphasize the story's clashes of culture, class, faith and generation. And Judtih Dolan's gorgeous period costumes reflect the restrictiveness and freedom the characters taste at different points of the story."
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A glimpse of the upcoming 'Room with a View':



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My latest guilty pleasure is this list of Broadway's 50 Most Powerful People that Broadway Spotted put together. It's like high school all over again, except I actually find it, like, fun. I think it's unfair, though, that they declared the #1 spot a tie (Philip J. Smith and Robert E. Wankel). I suggest a fight to the death.

I was happy see Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of Smash, get "honorable mention." Incidentally, James Herbert recently compared the path my very own Room With a View took to the stage with Smash. I think one difference is our creative team isn't sleeping with the entire cast.

I don't know if we'll have a smash in San Diego, but with actors actually skinny-dipping in real water onstage, we'll certainly make a splash.

Birds of a Feather, my gay penguin play, has been nominated for Best New Play by the Helen Hayes Awards. I'd like to extend a warm thanks to the four immensely talented actors--Dan Crane, Matt Dewberry, Eric Messner, and Jjana Valentiner--who really brought this play alive at the Hub.
Incidentally, Pale Male, the red-tailed hawk who is one focus of the play, recently suffered a tragedy. His mate, Lima, was found dead in Central Park. The working theory is that she ate a rat that had eaten poison. I suspect fowl play.

So I have to put in a brief plug for my friend Jeff Whiting's new iPad app Stage Write.
No so much because I'm a good friend--I don't pretend to be--but because Stage Write is pretty nifty. It's like a modular diorama inside your iPad; you can block out entire productions with number lines, grid lines, etc. It's super useful, basically, and those who work in theater will all be using it soon.
So, congrats, Jeff--and I'm sorry about New Year's party, I didn't realize he was with you.

A rave review in Cabaret Scenes for the wonderful Amy Engelhardt, my collaborator on Bastard Jones.
From the review:
As Amy Engelhardt was ending her set at The Duplex (the first half of a show she was sharing with Bob Malone), a cabaret performer sitting next to me grabbed my pen and scribbled on my notepad, “She’s amazing!,” with a very large exclamation point for emphasis. She wasn’t influencing my review because I had already come to that conclusion a few songs before. Later, as Malone was banging out yet another awesome piano riff during his set, I leaned over to my cabaret friend and whispered, “This guy’s terrific,” with a very large exclamation point in my voice.
Read the full review here.

'ROOM' WENT 'ZOOM' TO THE GLOBE
World-premiere musical's creators marvel at how fast show has developed

Written by James Hebert

On the NBC-TV show "Smash," a new musical seems to go from the germ of an idea to a full-fledged production in the blink of a Broadway producer's eye.

In real life, "musicals can be in development for five years, 10 years sometimes," points out Scott Schwartz, a seasoned stage director who has worked frequently at the Old Globe.

One exception: "A Room With a View," the musical adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel that Schwartz is directing at the Globe right now...

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