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When you mention The Wizard of Oz, your average moviegoer's mind turns to such disparate topics as Judy Garland, ruby slippers, and apocryphal hanging munchkins. More »
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Should you visit Tokyo's Takashimaya department store by Valentine's Day, you can greet Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's Geminoid-F android, who's engaged in a curiously forlorn bit of street theater. More »
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In 1996, author Steve Englehart wrote a 96-page pitch for DC Comics' alternate reality Elseworlds imprint. Titled "The Tragedy of Batman, Prince of Denmark," this comic took the superhero and placed him smack dab in the midst of William Shakespeare's famous tragedy. More »
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I was lucky enough to catch a preview performance of the Custom Made Theatre Co.'s new stage adaptation of Cory Doctorow's award-winning novel Little Brother the other day — and it was a total marvel. Somehow, writer/director Josh Costello managed to condense the novel down to a two-hour play, without losing any of the impact. If anything, the staged version hits a bit harder than the book, because of the intense, but not overstated, performances. More »
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Should you ever find yourself in the environs of Vilnius, Lithuania, you can sign up for 1984: The Survival Drama, a three-hour faux Soviet military interrogation, complete with former KGB guards looking to recapture the magic of the old days. 25€ will get you a three-hour regimen of belt-whippings, verbal abuse, and a sham trial. What a bargain! Here's the sales pitch:

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You may remember Austin's Old Murder House Theater troupe from their gleefully no-budget live production of Robocop. Last weekend, the group staged a 90-minute, fast-forwarded recreation of James Cameron's space marine classic Aliens at a local hockey rink. The best part of the show? Only the xenomorphs really knew how to skate, whereas the space marines lurched for their lives. Witness the unparalleled chaos that was Aliens on Ice. More »
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Star Wars burlesque exists in this scattered places on this big blue marble we live on, but this video reel by the Jaded Vanities burlesque troupe makes an excellent case for this form of interpretative dancing gaining national arts funding. And yes, that case is predicated mostly on Sand Person erotica. More »
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Watch Liam Neeson make his big holographic debut, as the new narrator for the The War of the Worlds musical, replacing the voice of Richard Burton. The show, based on the HG Wells classic, is getting a total technological overhaul — including a 100-foot wide CG animation wall, a hologram of Lian Neeson playing the role of journalist George Herbert (who will also be able to interact with the audience) and a Martian fighting machine that blasts fireballs at the audience. Watch the Liam Neeson hologram in action now! More »
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Since March, Punchdrunk theater company's immersive Shakespeare adaptation Sleep No More has converted an entire Manhattan loft building into a 100-room abandoned hotel from the 1940s. More »
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At the blog After The Final Curtain, photographer Matt Lambros documents some of the most majestically collapsing theaters across the United States. More »
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Standing in front of enclosure 99 at Edinburgh Zoo, we looked in as the animals were stretching and bending together, moving rhythmically about the space. In one corner, a pair patted and poked each other as if testing what they could get away with. They seemed to be playing. More »
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I have to confess, I've never really liked Superman. I find DC Comics' flagship enterprise to be, ultimately, boring. Some of you will probably feel (and this is correct) that I just haven't read enough of the series, or found the proper arcs. But my main problem is that Superman, himself, seems too perfect: he's profoundly moral, a pure do-gooder, and utterly invincible. More »
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Darren Aronofsky no longer needs to remake the Paul Verhoeven masterpiece, RoboCop, a movie so entrenched in our collective subconscious that its dystopian future may have influenced the downfall of Detroit more than the collapse of the auto industry. More »
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A four-minute vignette of the Batman Live arena show has hit the web. Check out Batman looking extremely confused as a Joker head (with inmates for teeth) bears down on him. Also, Schumacheresque Day-Glo bo fighting! More »
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From June 2 to July 1, New York's experimental Brick Theater's holding The Comic Book Theater Festival, a selection of dramatic productions about the funny pages and the colorful characters that dwell within. Here's a list of the main shows. More »
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We've seen the concept art and the first live scenes from the Batman Live European arena tour. Now here's the show's first trailer, which seems to be gunning for a Schumacher-lite aesthetic tempered with a hint of Batusi. More »
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What links a scientific research station in Antarctica with a unique opera performance in Germany's capital? More »
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Nothing could be better than a reboot of Terminator 2, written in the Elizabethan English that Shakespeare spoke. You know you want to see it. This summer, with your help, a theater company will stage Terminator the Second. More »
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The stage version of Re-Animator was supposed to end its run the other day, but it's been extended until the end of May. Unlike Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Re-Animator: The Musical is a low-budget DIY affair. More »
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Referring to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark as a train wreck is both a tautology and inaccurate. After all, never in human history have two trains — upon crashing — suddenly morphed Voltron-style into a patchwork homunculus made of stray bits of caboose and bar car who suddenly begins bellowing, "THIS LOOKS BAD BUT WE CAN MAKE IT WORK." More »
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Now this is a show that doesn't need fancy stunts to sell us. Watch the trailer for Danny Boyle's stage translation of Frankenstein, coming soon to select movie theaters. (Previously Boyle directed 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and 172 Hours, among others). Just to make things really interesting, the two lead actors swap the roles of Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature with each performance. More »
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Here are set models from Batman Live, an arena show that will tour throughout Britain and Ireland from July-October 2011. These Jim Lee-influenced dioramas depict a 100-foot-wide, 60-foot-deep stage that will showcase pyrotechnics, a Batmobile, and a Joker dance number. More »
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Decades before Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark was just a twinkle in Julie Taymor's eye, Broadway had weathered a prior most expensive scifi musical ever: 1972's Via Galactica, a spacey extravaganza starring Raul Julia and a set made of trampolines. More »
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News reaches me from Chicago that a Klingon Christmas Carol is being performed. Indeed, the show's so well-received that The Wall Street Journal sent a journalist to cover it, who returned with a great article and fascinating video. More »
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With The Tempest, opening tomorrow, Julie Taymor and Helen Mirren bring a splashy fantasy vibe to the Bard. But science fiction and fantasy have been playing with Shakespeare forever. Here are the greatest Shakespeare homages and cover versions in SF. More »
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Adapting Dick's seminal novel is guaranteed to be a difficult process, and would have been even if Ridley Scott's Blade Runner weren't already a 30-year-old SF classic. Untitled Theater Company #61 took on the ambitious challenge. And mostly, it worked. More »
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The $65-million Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is not unlike eating a caramel-covered, poisonous arachnid. It's a deranged spectacle that's sweet going down. More »
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The latest TV spots for the Spider-Man musical have hit the web. Check out footage of the high-flying stunts, Carnage, Kraven, and the gangster Hammerhead, who has been transformed into a macrocephalic parade float. More »
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Annie Leibovitz used the cast of the new Spider-Man musical for a Vogue fashion shoot. Take a closer look at the $60 million musical. Fingers crossed for a Carnage solo where he writes on the walls with his own blood. More »
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Doctor Who's huge new stage production goes on tour October 8. It'll star Nigel Planer, better known as the hippie Neil from The Young Ones, as the Greatest Showman in the Galaxy. Will his character turn up on the show? More »
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Tonight at 8 PM EST, we'll be hosting the livestream of io9 contributor Chris Braak's new play The Empress of the Moon. It's an alternate history about the life of writer and spy Aphra Behn, featuring lots of swordfights. More »
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io9 contributor Chris Braak will be staging the world premiere of his alternate history play, Empress of the Moon, next week. And you can watch the livestream here on io9! More »
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On July 9, the second annual Game Play festival begins at Brooklyn's non-profit Brick Theater. For 2010, Game Play features Ovid by way of Grand Theft Auto, the theoretical physics of Game Boy, and hard dramatic readings of Donkey Kong. More »
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Why didn't somebody think of this long ago? U.S.S. Pinafore enlists Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera in Starfleet, with amazing results. If you've ever wished Little Buttercup's libretto included tribbles and Saurian brandy, then watch the trailer below. More »
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It's a massive behemoth and possibly the closest thing you could imagine to an unfilmable novel. But starting tomorrow, New York City's The Kitchen is doing a stage play of Samuel R. Delany's challenging Dhalgren. Have they gone mad? More »
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Any theories on why science-fiction theater tends to be so lame? Does the naturalism of the stage thwart suspension of disbelief? In any case, a good one, called The Assember Dilator, seems to've just finished brewing in the East Village. More »
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When women imagine future societies without men, it's often a bit utopian... like, say, Sally Gearhart's The Wanderground. But a new play taking New York by storm takes place in a women-only dystopia... and it's a comedy. More »
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While it remains to be seen whether Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark will even open as planned next year, a spokesman for the show has confirmed that tickets will go on sale for the musical October 31st. [New York Times] More »
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Work on the upcoming superhero musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has stopped, due to rumored money troubles. But is the problem that the production is out of money, or just can't get to the money fast enough? More »
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