An Exclusive from INSIDE Magazine Do you know the first-time rock ’n’ roll was on Broadway? Easy. Mott the Hoople played six shows in the Uris (now The Gershwin) Theatre May 7-11, 1974. Queen opened. The first time rock ’n’ roll was on Broadway? As a musical style considered wholly legit by theater audiences and professionals?... Continue Reading →
Take a walk down West Fortune Street in Tampa, in front of the Barrymore Hotel. You’ll encounter a figure cast in bronze, stationary, but with an expression so focused and a gait so purposeful you half expect him to blow right past you. "Lennon Walking Into the Future” the statue is called, and it portrays,... Continue Reading →
Congratulations, millennials. Your past has become nostalgia. Case in point: High School Musical turns 20 this year. Those fictional East High students now are in their mid-30s with careers, mortgages and kids of their own, as are many of the Disney Channel movie’s real-life fans. Case in point: Natasha Herrera Brown, Straz’s media relations manager,... Continue Reading →
There is something inherently beautiful about human beings making music together. Differences and divisions dissolve in the warm glow of musical camaraderie. It follows then that gathering 15 grown-ups to play an instrument most people haven’t touched since elementary school is a noble effort. Further, getting that group to play the beloved traditional folk number,... Continue Reading →
What can you say about a performer who willingly takes on 23 roles in a one-person show? If you replied, “probably the same sort of performer who would run a marathon followed with a stand-up comedy set, every day for a month” that would be oddly specific. But you’d be correct. Eddie Izzard ’s acclaimed... Continue Reading →
Queen of the Night (Disambiguation) Queen of the Night may refer to: “Queen of the Night,” Whitney Houston jam with Living Colour’s Vernon Reid on lead guitar; from The Bodyguard (Original Soundtrack Album) Queen of the Night, villain in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Her aria in the second act has become known as the... Continue Reading →
An Exclusive from INSIDE magazine Listening to jazz vocalist Samara Joy sing, it’s a struggle to equate her voice and her age. Samara, who turned 26 in November, sings with the authority of someone twice her age – and with twice her experience. Her voice has a depth and richness of tone that ordinarily comes... Continue Reading →
An Exclusive from INSIDE magazine Opera Tampa turns 30 this year and it’s definitely making the most of it. Its expanded season features four works instead of the usual three. Plus, there was a preseason production of Tom Sivak’s very darkly humorous Love v. Death, a two-part chamber opera about, well, love and death. Part One of... Continue Reading →
Bob Dylan’s 2006 album, Modern Times, kicked off with a track called “Thunder on the Mountain” which contains these lines: I was thinkin’ ‘bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from cryingWhen she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the lineI'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could beI been looking for her... Continue Reading →
The name Blue Man Group tells you who you’ll see – three men with skin painted blue – but doesn’t tell you what you’ll see, which would require a much longer name. Art, music, comedy and non-verbal communication are among the tools the cerulean trio use in a performance that celebrates connections with people and... Continue Reading →
Were there a Grammy® for least likely musical pairings, an April 2025 performance by Renée Fleming would be a strong contender. Renée Fleming, American soprano and actress Fleming, a soprano who is one of the best-known names in opera, sang with Dead and Company one evening during the band’s residency at Las Vegas’ The Sphere.... Continue Reading →
In 1967, a 16-year-old from Tulsa, OK., quietly shifted the landscape of American literature. Susan Eloise Hinton, known more publicly as S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders from her bedroom while still in high-school. What began as a response to the fractures she observed among her peers—the invisible line between those with privilege and those without—became... Continue Reading →
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so the song says, and it’s certainly the busiest. Shopping, cooking, corralling and entertaining your out-of-school children – the festive season takes a lot of work. So we’re adding just one more chore to your to-do list, only because it can be done with a minimum... Continue Reading →
"The Outsiders" isn’t the first (or second or third) title that usually comes to mind when the subject of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola is mentioned. Everything Coppola has made that isn’t “The Godfather,” “The Godfather Part II” or “Apocalypse Now“ will find little space left in a limelight shared with those giants. “The... Continue Reading →
It would be easy to assume that every dance ensemble in the Western Hemisphere is presenting The Nutcracker this time of year. For quite a while, one of the few that didn’t was St. Louis’ Center of Creative Arts, to the annual dismay of then-head of its dance department, Antonio Douthit-Boyd. Next Generation Ballet’s Nutcracker... Continue Reading →
Did Ralphie Parker grow up to be Lester the Nightfly? Yes. Sort of. We’ll explain. Ralphie Parker is the 9-year-old protagonist of A Christmas Story, The Musical, coming to Morsani Hall Nov. 28-30. https://youtu.be/sX0qbCmZX2E The musical is based on the 1983 holiday movie perennial A Christmas Story, which is based on stories from Jean Shepherd’s... Continue Reading →
In 1968, a heavyset, 6-foot-1-inch-tall gentleman calling himself Tiny Tim had a hit with his rendition of “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me.” He sang the song in a startlingly high falsetto, accompanying himself on a ukulele. https://youtu.be/zcSlcNfThUA?si=ZHVSWpxtf2SPmsOO A mere 40 years later, Jason Mraz scored a ukulele-centered hit with “I’m Yours,” which spawned a... Continue Reading →
Even after 50 years as an actor, Ann Morrison still gets the jitters. “Every night, I stand behind the curtain before it’s raised and think, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Ann said. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. It's the audience,” Ann said. “I'm doing it for them, and they're going to have a good time... Continue Reading →
An Exclusive from INSIDE Magazine Fences weren’t part of the original design of Straz Center, and they’re certainly not part of the renovation. Fences don’t play much of a role in our past and future but, boy, are they ever-present in our present. Straz is undergoing a major multimillion-dollar renovation that includes expanding education spaces for... Continue Reading →
Gibsonton, a community roughly 11 miles southeast of Tampa, became a winter haven for circus performers in the 1930s. Many of those Gibsonton snowbirds became full-time residents when they retired from the road. In 2021, another group of circus retirees began settling into their own community a couple hundred miles north of “Gibtown.” There they... Continue Reading →