In case you missed it on NPR today...

All Things Considered, December 4, 2008 · More than 50 student groups across the country are performing Jonathan Larson's edgy rock opera Rent this school year. Like the Broadway show, Rent School Edition is centered on a group of friends in the 1990s dealing with AIDS, gender identity, homosexuality, drug addiction and poverty.

Here's a provocative little interview with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. View the trailer for Martin McDonagh's feature film debut. Cherry Lane is putting up Edward Albee's The American Dream and The Sandbox this March as an evening of one-acts directed by Albee himself. (h/t tc) Uganda used to have a thriving theatre, not so much these days. Sondheim speaks on Sweeney Todd in a series of video interviews. Julie Taymor held the first reading the big Spider-Man Musical. Drowsy Chaperone to close.

I know for a fact that a lot of us who started theatre companies did so in part because we really wanted to be in a great band. So we're to be forgiven if shows like Hedwig and Cynthia Hopkin's Must Don't Whip 'Um make us weak in the knees.

We're also to be forgiven if we curse a little bit at the realization that Banana Bag & Bodice may have beaten us to the logical conclusion of this way of thinking.

From George Hunka:

The eight-year-old troupe this time around identifies itself as an ersatz punk-rock group, The Rising Fallen, hired to perform on an oil-drilling rig off the coast of the Faroe Islands, where they end up trapped for six months ...

Okay, so this won't be so much a review as it'll be a slathering of praise.

A photo from the Cynthia Hopkins/Accinosco production Must Don't Whip 'Um has been on the cover of the Wexner Center's programs all season, so I guess it's fair to say I had some high expectations for this show. I skipped it at The Public's Under the Radar festival, knowing I could see it here. I'm kind of regretting it now. I'm going to be out of town performing in my own show, so there's no chance I can catch it again.

The show started with a voice-over from the Narrator, assumedly Cynthia Hopkins, explaining, essentially, what we were about to see, the farewell concert of her mother's music career, an event that took place shortly before her mother's disappearance. There was some milling about on stage and a couple of scenes acted with the aid of some clever blue screen before Cynthia Hopkins appeared, the music started and I began to cry.

Denver, Colorado - 9-year old Curious Theatre opens Mall*Mart: The Musical, (it's first musical production) which is about exactly what it sounds like it's about, but don't expect a simple 2-hour anti-Wal*Mart campaign.

Walton [the director] says the musical intends to go a little deeper and look at "this desire that we have in America, and we're starting to see all across the world, to acquire more and more at lower and lower prices, and not really be conscious of the consequences of that ... and at what kind of impact mega stores have on a community."

The book is by Joan Holden, a member of the fairly legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe. She's probably best and most recently known for her work on Nickel and Dimed, the theatrical adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich's book. She must be getting quite good at documentary theatre.

You can listen to one of the songs on iTunes.

Read more and get some links at the original post, on Curious Theatre's blog.