MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Here's a little holiday cheer for you! 

I wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season!

I love these little guys out for a night on the town!

MINIS!

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RUN AND SEE: 3 Off-Broadway Shows for the Holidays!

Aside from being a season of joy and sparkly lights, winter is the time to catch all the shows you've missed throughout the year. Three of the best Off-Broadway shows I've seen this year are ending their runs soon, and if you're nearby, I urge you to catch them before they are gone.

1. PigPen Theatre Company's The Old Man and the Old Moon

Ok, y'all. I've got a new theater crush. This group of Carnegie Melon grads, known collectively as PigPen Theatre Company, burst onto the NY theater scene earlier this year with a charming tale of love and loss. Foregoing the flashy design elements often found further uptown, these seven guys create theater magic with flashlights and folk music. The story follows a man who gives up his job as keeper of the moon to chase his wandering wife across the ocean. The simple and creative design of the show lends itself to some fun and beautiful storytelling, including stunning shadow puppets and a delightful soundtrack (Their album Bremen, which includes songs from this and other shows they've written, has been on repeat on my iTunes for weeks, and is available here. Get it.).

Join them as they tell the tale of The Old Man and the Old Moon at The Gym at Judson now until January 6. (And if you were displaced by Hurricane Sandy, give them your zip code at the door for FREE tickets! Fortunately and unfortunately I was able to use the deal! Thanks, guys!)

And check out this beautiful video they created, which is how they first caught my attention:

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2. Murder Ballad

Hot damn. This sexy rock-opera whodunnit features a kick-ass score and a cast of musical theater gods. In Manhattan Theatre Club's new Studio at Stage II, audience members line two walls, and a lucky few get to sit at tables in the middle of the room, while the 4-person cast sings the story of love and revenge all around them (and sometimes at and atop their tables). While this love triangle could be anyone's story (minus the murder part...), the music and design are so captivating that there's never a dull moment. They're only running until the end of the week (December 16 - Sorry for the late notice)! But if you can snag a ticket, do so now!

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3. Tribes

I love me some Barrow Street Theatre and some David Cromer, so I couldn't wait to see this play. Having learned a bit of sign language earlier in the year, I was especially interested in seeing this show, which follows Billy, a deaf man whose family raised him to read lips in their hearing household, teaching him nothing of sign language and deaf culture. Believing that this would help him live a more "normal" life, they thought it was for the best, until he meets a woman who was raised by deaf parents and is slowly losing her hearing as well. As she introduces him to deaf culture, his family's plan backfires and he finds their choice unforgivable. Maybe I'm new to the game, but this is the first play I am aware of that deals with this issue, and I found it a fascinating argument presented in a very moving way. The audience is transported into Billy's world in some clever ways that really open your eyes to what it would be like to be deaf in a hearing household, and the struggles that present themselves when you don't know where you belong.

It just extended for two more weeks, and is now running until January 20. Don't miss it!

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FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: 100th Show!

Forbidden Broadway, everyone's favorite "fall-down funny musical roast of Broadway," is back! 

And tonight they play their 100th performance! 

I made them cookies to celebrate their milestone.

 A HUGE congratulations to the cast and crew! May you have many more performances to come!

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BROADWAY PROJECT: November - The Book of Mormon

HELLO!

While Sandy wiped out October's Broadway Project, we are back! And Book of Mormon is this month's project!

If you haven't seen this show, order your tickets now! For sometime in late 2013... it is sold out forever. But once your ticket date rolls around, you will be so happy you took my advice.

Written by the creators of South Park, it is not necessarily for the faint of heart, but it is ridiculously funny. And, I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was going to just be a silly musical, but it is actually really well-constructed, and the music is awesome. When I saw it, my face hurt from laughing and I was literally dancing in the aisles during the curtain call. So, I was super excited to make them cookies.

The opening number is sung by a group of elders going door to door singing the word of The Book of Mormon, which is why there is a doorbell on the logo, and why I made doorbell cookies!

The song is called: 

The doorbells were my favorite to make. 

I used Silver and Khaki luster dust to give them some shine.

 My friend Lawrence is in the show, and I got to visit him backstage with the cookies! 

CHECK OUT MORE COOKIES FROM THE BROADWAY PROJECT!

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WHAT I'M UP TO: The Other Place

I'm currently in rehearsals as the Production Assistant for my 3rd Broadway play, The Other Place by Sharr White at Manhattan Theater Club. The play is fantastic, as is the cast. We start previews December 11. Come check it out! And take a look at some great photos from our press event yesterday!

From Broadwayworld.com:

            Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway premiere of The Other Place, the new play by Sharr White, directed by Joe Mantello starring Laurie Metcalf, Daniel Stern, Zoe Perry, and John Schiappa will start previews Tuesday, December 11 and will open Thursday, January 10 at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street).

            Three-time Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee Laurie Metcalf (“Roseanne,” November, Long Day’s Journey into Night in London’s West End, and a founding ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company) stars in MTC’s Broadway premiere production of The Other Place, a riveting new thriller by fast-rising playwright Sharr White and directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello (Other Desert Cities, Wicked, Love! Valour! Compassion!).

            Metcalf gives a “dazzling, must-be-seen performance” (Variety) as Juliana Smithton, a successful neurologist whose life seems to be coming unhinged. Her husband (Daniel Stern) has filed for divorce, her daughter (Zoe Perry) has eloped with a much older man (John Schiappa) and her own health is in jeopardy. But in this brilliantly crafted work, nothing is as it seems. Piece by piece, a mystery unfolds as fact blurs with fiction, past collides with present and the elusive truth about Juliana boils to the surface.

Read more: http://broadwayworld.com/article/MTCs-THE-OTHER-PLACE-Starring-Laurie-Metcalf-John-Schiappa-and-More-Begins-Rehearsals-20121119#ixzz2DS7o7Blu

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Happy Halloween: Tales from the Hurricane

Well, this has been an eventful week. Hurricane Sandy's come and gone. My street's flooded. My apartment has no power. But nothing will stop me from making cookies!

Sunday night my apartment was evacuated, so I packed up my cats and my rolling pin and made my way uptown to my friend Angie's where we were safe and sound throughout the storm. While the wind was a'blowin outside I kept busy making these 

Cocoa Halloween Cookies.

These are my favorites:

I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday!

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BROADWAY PROJECT: September - An Enemy of the People OPENING NIGHT

My show, An Enemy of the People at Manhattan Theatre Club, opened last night!

It was such a great time, and I somehow found time to make cookies for everyone!

The premise of the play, by Henrik Ibsen, is that the doctor of a small Norwegian spa town (played by Boyd Gaines) has discovered that the spa water is contaminated, but the Mayor of the town (Richard Thomas), who is the doctor's brother, refuses to clean up the water for fear of the town losing its reputation and its income.

The doctor collects samples of the spa water in small beakers, so I thought it would be fun to make beakers with Doctor Stockmann labels that read "Happy Opening" with the date as a barcode.

I wanted to stamp the message and the date onto the "label" with black food coloring, but it turns out that food coloring does not like to adhere to a stamp, so I just ended up stamping the letters right into the icing. Luckily it was still slightly soft, having only dried for a few hours, so the effect was achieved, even if you have to look a little closer to see it.

Here are some pictures from opening!

WHAT I'M UP TO: An Enemy of the People

CHECK OUT MORE COOKIES FROM THE BROADWAY PROJECT!

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BROADWAY PROJECT in the Park: August - Into the Woods

Every summer in NYC the Broadway buzz travels north to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park where The Public Theater presents Shakespeare in the Park. While technically not Broadway, the shows are beautiful Broadway-caliber productions, and Shakespeare in the Park is one of my favorite things to do in the summer, so I wanted to honor them with the August spot for the Broadway Project. 

The Dealcorte is an 1,800 seat theater under the stars in the middle of Central Park. It's simply breathtaking to listen to Shakespeare with the moon looking down on you, and this year along with "As You Like It," they are presenting a revival of "Into the Woods", the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical.

I had never seen a production of "Into the Woods", since I've only recently had my Sondheim awakening (where have I been all my life?), so I was thrilled to get to go to Opening Night, and the show is so much fun and so incredibly moving, the music just beautiful. The cast is incredible and includes Amy Adams as the Baker's Wife, Donna Murphy as the Witch, and Original Broadway Cast Member Chip Zien (who played the Baker in the original production and plays the Mysterious Man in this one).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, as I was, it is a fairy tale, or rather all of the fairy tales. The Baker and his wife want a child. Cinderella wants to go to the ball. Jack wants to get his cow back. Little Red wants to get to Grandmother's house. And they all have to go into the woods to get what they want.

The Baker and his wife live next to a witch who has cast a spell on them, preventing them from having children. She tells them that the only way to lift the spell is to go into the woods and fetch her four items.

The cow as white as milk,

The cape as red as blood,

 The hair as yellow as corn,

The slipper as pure as gold.

At the end of Act I everyone has what they wished for and they all live happily ever after. But there's an Act II...

If you haven't seen "Into the Woods", this production only runs until September 1, but PBS released a video of the original Broadway production that you can get on Netflix!



This month I also decided to give a Step-by-Step look at the creation of the cookies on my Twitter account @CurtainUpCookie (Follow me!). Check it out to see how I went from

                                             this:                                             

to this:

And what everyone had to say when I went into the woods to deliver the cookies!

CHECK OUT MORE COOKIES FROM THE BROADWAY PROJECT!

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