Broadway News Round Up 23

Tia Altinay, Khori Michelle Petinaud & Rhea Patterson in Aladdin, Photo by Cylla Von Tiedemann

Welcome to another news round up for Broadway's Aladdin!  A shorter edition this week but there's still plenty going on in the magical land of Agrabah.

Broadway World is reporting that Aladdin's Tia Altinay (who understudies Jasmine) will be appearing in tomorrow night's At This Performance... at The Lion Theatre, New York.  At This Performance... is a musical showcase created to highlight the talents of Broadway's standbys, understudies and alternates.  Tickets are $26.25 each and are available from the box office.  For the talent you'd be seeing that's an incredible price so if you're able to attend I'd highly recommend checking it out.

Also on Monday night, Aladdin alumni Andrew Keenan-Bolger will join other Broadway stars performing The Songs of Adam Wachter at Broadway's 54 Below.  Further information can be found here.  Again, it's a fantastic price to see some extremely talented Broadway performers, so if you are in NYC and looking for something to do tomorrow night you really can't go wrong with either of these events.

Timeout is reporting that Aladdin's Yurel Echezeretta (who understudies Kassim) spent time last week visiting Harrison School of the Arts, talking with the students and even directing and choreographing some scenes for their production of West Side Story (including the classic school dance and rumble scenes) which is being put on as part of the school's 25th anniversary celebration.  I guess that technically makes it his directorial debut (or at least co-director), congratulations Yurel!

Ok, now everyone knows that Aladdin's dancers are pretty much the best on Broadway.  They dance their butts off 8 shows a week.  So if you want to learn then you want to learn from the best.  Well, Aladdin's Dance Captain Michael Mindlin is teaching a Dance Audtion Technique Seminar this week on 13th November in NYC.  More details can be found at Playbill.

Even when he's on holiday it seems I can't go a week without posting something about James Monroe Iglehart!  If you missed Freestyle Love Supreme's show (which JMI is a part of) and you live in the USA then the show is now available on iTunes.

And finally, Broadway.com is asking you to rank your Top 10 Must See Performances on Broadway right now.  Aladdin's Adam Jacobs, Courtney Reed, James Monroe Iglehart and Jonathan Freeman have all made the nominations so please give them some support!

From Agrabah to Paris!  It's been an exciting week for The Hunchback of Notre Dame as the show last night completed its preview performances.  Of course the biggest news of the week was our first official look at the cast.  But that wasn't the only news to come out of the La Jolla Playhouse last week.

Theater Mania reported that Ciara Renee (Esmeralda) will be taking part in Broadway Sings P!NK in January 2015.  Ciara will be joined by other Broadway stars singing new arrangements of P!NK's pop hits at two concerts to be held in New York on 19th and 25th January.  More information, including tickets, can be found here.

In addition to our first look at the cast the La Jolla Playhouse also gave us our first look at the fantastic show merchandise that is available to anyone going to see the show.  Since I'm an absolute sucker for Disney's show pins I'll definitely be picking up the pin badge when I see the show next year!

As well as showing off cast and merchandise photos, the La Jolla Facebook team also found time to speak briefly with Hunchback's Tony Award winning Lighting Designer Howard Binkley to discuss the production's tech rehearsals.

And finally, the San Diego Jewish Journal spoke with Director Scott Schwartz about the show.  I swear, the more I read about this show the more excited I get to finally see it!

Ok, that's pretty much it for today.  Except for one final thing I'll be back with in a few minutes...