Six Mainstage productions were announced this weekend at Parkway Playhouse’s 2015 End-of-Season Celebration. Included in this announcement were also new plans for the popular Parkway Playhouse Junior program, that reaches hundreds of families in the region with its exciting performing arts production camps for students under age eighteen.
In the Spring of 2015, Parkway Playhouse Junior students will perform Disney’s Winnie the Pooh KIDS as well as an abridged version of the American Musical Comedy classic, The Music Man, by Meredith Wilson. Parkway Playhouse Junior’s advanced teen students will also present their first non-musical comedy; Fools by Neil Simon in May of 2016.
Parkway Playhouse Performing Arts Summer Camp students will collaborate on a production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Jr., in addition to camps and workshops to be announced.
In the fall session, students will present Disney’s Aladdin KIDS for ages 4-13 and James and the Giant Peach in a production that will travel to the 2017 National Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. Parkway Playhouse students will also have the opportunity to take classes in acting, improvisation and technical theatre in 2016.
The six productions planned for the 2016 Mainstage season will be produced on the historic Parkway Playhouse stage between May and October.
Opening on Mother’s Day weekend will be Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias; set in a Louisana Beauty parlor this popular play promises lots of hilarity, hair, and heart.
A new collaboration with New York Times bestselling author, Sharyn McCrumb was announced as an adaptation of her novel The Ballad of Frankie Silver will have its world premiere at Parkway Playhouse in 2016.
The sci-fi musical-comedy spoof Little Shop of Horrors by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman will return to Parkway Playhouse this summer.
Patrick Cronin, who won critical praise this past season in Parkway Playhouse’s production of Red, will headline a cast of the classic American comedy, You Can’t Take it With You.
Parkway Playhouse’s Mainstage season will conclude with the North Carolina premiere of Simon Levy’s electrifying adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel, The Great Gatsby.
Also announced was a production of the classic blockbuster musical West Side Story, which will run during the summer. This is the first time in, its entire history, that Parkway Playhouse has produced this beloved musical about star-crossed lovers by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. Parkway Playhouse will also be producing a series of live music, improv comedy, classes, and a holiday production in the fall of 2016.
Season tickets, performance, audition information, and class registration details will be made available on Parkway Playhouse’s website, www.parkwayplayhouse.com in October.
Stage Whispers 
FYI:
Around 1953 or 1954, the University of Miami Drama Department returned to Burnsville one summer, to re-open the Parkway Playhouse for a season of 4 plays. It had been closed for many years. We worked very hard to bring it back that first season. I was a Freshman (16 years old) and part of the UM drama group that came with Gordon Bennett, one of our department professors and director.
The attachments: photo of me attempting to be very sophisticated with a cigarette (I didn’t smoke, but it seemed so grown up) in front of the Parkway Playhouse sign; an article in the local paper of the time, announcing our plays. I was in “See How They Run” and “My Three Angels”. Some local people joined casts and crew.
Our dorm was an old 3 or 4 story building high on a hill above the Playhouse. We ate in a closed school cafeteria a short walk down one of the roads.
I visited the Playhouse a couple of years ago and found the interior pretty much as I remember it. Rush Wray, the most unique owner of the Nu Wray Inn (who was a Tennessee Williams character), invited us to dinners when the Nu Wray was in its heyday. We also ate at the Hilltop. We rode sway-backed horses; picked wild blueberries. But, being drama students, we basically lived/breathed Theater and our work. The mountains, the Playhouse, the welcoming locals…made this memorable for us all.
Andy Prine starred in your “The Man Who Came to Dinner” a few years ago. Andy and were acting buddies at the UofM. He wasn’t part of this summer group, but he was majoring in Drama with us. I We left college in our Sophomore year…he went to NY and replaced Anthony Perkins in “Look Homeward Angel”, then on to Hollywood for “Miracle Worker”…then on and on to TV successes.
I’ve returned to Burnsville throughout the years, sad to see the major highway intruding on the main streets of what was once a quiet, charming mountain escape. The Playhouse, as it’s been developing through the recent years, is an enormous benefit to the town. And it’s an enormous opportunity for anyone practicing their craft onstage and behind the scenes.
Your upcoming lineup looks great. Break a leg.
Haline (Urban) Gregory
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 16:13:18 +0000 To: haline10@hotmail.com
Thank you for sharing!