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Ft. Lauderdale, FL July 29-Aug. 2, 2009; Broward Center/ America's Backyard
Topic Started: Jan 28 2009, 09:21 AM (537 Views)
mouser
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July 29 - August 2, 2009

The Broward Center Au-Rene Theater
201 SW Fifth Ave
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312
(954) 462-0222

TICKETS: Tickets go on sale 5/15/09 $67-$23

7/29 @ 8pm
7/30 @ 1pm & 8pm
7/31 @ 8pm
8/1 @ 2pm
8/2 @ 2pm

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SEATING CAPACITY: 2526


08/02/2009 9464 AI5-Taylor Hicks in “Grease” 8 shows
Highest Ticket: $67 - Gross Receipts: $550,452 - Percent Sold: 47% (2526 capacity)


SEATING CHART:

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THE VENUE:

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For some cities, the desire to build a major arts complex is a lifetime dream. For the City of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, that dream came true with the development of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

From concept to fruition, this world-class performing arts center was built with years of passion, planning and dedication. The passion began nearly four decades ago, when Fort Lauderdale’s War Memorial Auditorium, built in the 1940s, and the Parker Playhouse, constructed in the late 1950s, struggled to meet the changing performing arts needs of this expanding South Florida cultural community.

Recognizing the need for a more viable venue -- one with a much greater seating capacity, spacious backstage and meeting facilities -- and more than one stage, visionaries set forth to turn their dream into reality.

Although it would take nearly 30 years, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts opened it's doors on February 26, 1991 offering the community a future of the best in performing arts and entertainment

Broward Center for the Performing Arts is a large multi-venue theater and entertainment complex located in the heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. 0pened in 1991 on a 5.5-acre (22,000 m2) site at the North Bank of the New River at Sailboat Bend, the Center became a catalyst for major downtown revitalization efforts and an anchor of the Riverwalk Arts and Entertainment District. Designed by award winning architect Benjamin C. Thompson, the Broward Center is considered the cultural heart of Broward County. Hosting operas, ballets, concerts, plays, lectures and numerous community events in its four theaters, Broward Center is partners in the arts with several renowned organizations including the Symphony of the Americas, Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet, Concert Association of Florida, Gold Coast Jazz. National tours of Broadway productions are presented in partnership with Broadway Across America. Broward Center's mission includes a strong focus on integrating the arts into education and a substantial portion of annual programming is dedicated to educational and community endeavors.

Broward Center for the Performing Arts continues to anchor the downtown riverfront area and has served as both an engine for economic development and a beacon for cultural activities in the South Florida region. In the process, it has also become one of the nation’s most visited theaters, ranked number four in the world by Venues Today and seven worldwide by concert trade publication Pollstar for annual sales in 2007.

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Au-Rene Theater, the main performance space for major international, national and regional productions, including Miami City Ballet, Concert Association of Florida, Florida Grand Opera and Broadway Across America touring companies.


DIRECTIONS :

I-95 From Broward Boulevard and points North
I-95: Exit Broward Blvd. East. Turn right onto SW 5th Ave. Find the Arts and Science Parking Garage on your immediate right. Or proceed straight ahead, cross 2nd St. and continue to the top of the hill for valet service.

I-95 From Broward Boulevard and points South
I-95: Exit Davie Blvd. East. Turn left at SW 4th Ave. Turn right at SW 2nd St. Turn left at SW 5th Ave. Find the Arts and Science Parking Garage on your immediate left. Or proceed up the hill to the right for valet service.

Federal Highway (US1)
Turn onto Broward Blvd. West. Turn left onto SW 5th Ave. Find the Arts and Science Parking Garage on your immediate right. Or proceed straight ahead, cross 2nd St. and continue to the top of the hill for valet service.


RESTAURANTS AND HOTELS:

The Broward Center's Preferred Dining Picks...

3030 Ocean at the Marriott Harbor Beach
Maximum flavor, maximum freshness and maximum fine dining pleasures await at Chef Dean James Max's 3030 Ocean, a casual chic dinner bistro overlooking the Atlantic.

Mango's Las Olas
Show your ticket stub for 25% off * your entire bill after 10pm. Live entertainment nightly.
*Offer excludes bottled wine and bottled champagne.

Chima's
A beautiful Brazilian-themed restauraunt. America's Top Restaurants 2006 (Zagat's Survey Rated Excellent). Located at 2400 East Las Olas Boulevard.

Hotels:

The Marriott Harbor Beach is the Broward Center's preferred hotel partner, however there are many excellent lodging options in the area.
http://www.sunny.org/hotels/

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/FLLGRHH-Hilton-Fort-Lauderdale-Marina-Florida/index.do For an opulent stay

POINTS OF INTEREST:

1.
Jungle Queen Riverboat
801 Seabreeze Blvd.,
Fort Lauderdale, , FL. 33316

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One of the more entertaining sightseeing cruises in Fort Lauderdale, the 550-passenger Jungle Queen Riverboat offers more than just a float down the river. Guests will be treated to informative yet humorous commentary by the captain of the boat as they travel to Tropical Isle, and indulge in an all-you-can-eat dinner of ribs, chicken, and shrimp.

While savoring the meal, visitors will cruise down the New River to Jungle Queen Indian Village, passing along the way the historic downtown area with its beautiful homes and yachts. An exciting alligator show awaits at the Village, as well as encounters with exotic birds, monkeys, and iguanas. The cruise experience comes to an end with an on-board funny variety show and a lovely moonlit ride back to port

2.
Antique Car Museum
1527 SW 1st Ave
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315

Posted ImageCourtesy The Fort Lauderdale Antique Car Museum
Fort Lauderdale isn't just about beaches and blue Atlantic waters. Thanks to the Antique Car Museum, visitors here can travel back into the past see one of the most impressive collections of classic cars anywhere in the world.

Covering an expansive 30,000 square feet, the museum is the brainchild of collector Arthur Stone. He and his wife began collecting cars in the mid-1940s and have since accumulated enough vehicles to fill a full-sized commercial showroom. In fact, the museum itself was designed to resemble an authentic 1920s Packard showroom. Speaking of Packards, the collection is considered the world's largest. It features at least one model of each year of Packard's existence — 1900 to 1958. Some of the models on display include a 1909 Speedster and a 1939 Cyl Victoria convertible.

In addition to a display room that stuns with dozens of old-time cars, the museum also features a variety of memorabilia and its own library. Memorabilia includes an array of antique gasoline signs and other auto-related items.

All of the cars in the museum are maintained in full working condition. They are worked on by the museum's own in-house staff of mechanics to ensure the Stone collection remains in pristine condition. Now operating as a nonprofit organization, the museum is open every day but Sundays at 1527 Packard Avenue (Southwest First Avenue).

Fort Lauderdale might be best known for its sunshine and beaches, but this city offers much more. Vacationers with a passion for classic cars will find the Antique Car Museum will take them back to a time when touring vehicles ruled the roads.

Posted ImageCourtesy The Fort Lauderdale Antique Car Museum



MEDIA:


1 Miami Herald

Idol has a special encore

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/music/story/1155994.html

BY HOWARD COHEN

hcohen@MiamiHerald.com
American Idol's Season 5 champ Taylor Hicks has found a novel way to slide his new single into the public ear without help from radio, and he's applying a little Grease magic to do it.

Hicks, who plays Teen Angel in a road production of the Grease musical that opens Wednesday at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, will sing his current pop single, Seven Mile Breakdown, at the end of the production.

It's one thing for producers to tinker with Grease by adding songs like Hopelessly Devoted to You, the title tune, and You're the One That I Want from the popular film adaptation that featured John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

But the addition of a new song at this stage is something else, indeed.

``It's an interesting and cutting-edge way for an artist to release his or her music,'' Hicks says from Philadelphia. ``I'm the Teen Angel, but then I can incorporate the single into Grease. Very effective way for fans new and old to experience me.''

Of course, Hicks' big number, Beauty School Dropout, sung to the lovably loopy Frenchie character, remains the focus of the Teen Angel role he has been playing for 358 (and counting) performances since he debuted on Broadway in June 2008. It's the part played by Frankie Avalon in the 1978 movie version. But producers, perhaps recognizing the name value of a former American Idol, upped Hicks' part so that Teen Angel gets a little more face time on stage.

Hicks couldn't have a better showcase.

In Grease, set in fictional Rydell High, boys and girls make out, race cars and shimmy to exuberant pop morsels like the slightly naughty Greased Lightning and Born to Hand Jive. The musical, which began life on a Chicago stage in 1971 and lasted for 3,388 performances on Broadway, is a generational rite of passage like algebra, biology and -- egad -- showering with your classmates after P.E. class.

NO. 1 HIT

The original soundtrack first hit No. 1 in the summer of 1978, playing tag at the top of the charts with the Rolling Stones' raunchy Some Girls and Boston's arena rock Don't Look Back and has periodically enjoyed resurgences in popularity.

Grease, which has been certified for eight million sales domestically, spent practically the entire 1990s riding high on Billboard's Catalog Album chart. The CD still sells thousands of copies yearly according to Soundscan, and a remastered version of the movie is on DVD. The recent Broadway production found its leads via an American Idol-styled reality TV show, Grease: You're the One That I Want, on NBC in 2007.

``Grease is the word . . .'' goes the song's hook, and Grease will be the word for decades to come. It's human nature.

``There have been studies done, and marketers know this when they pull out vintage ads. People think the good old days were happier. Things were better in the past, so you want to cling to those good old days, and that's why nostalgia works,'' says Barbara Kahn, dean of the business school at the University of Miami.

Kahn says that is how memory works: ``You tend to remember the peaks; if something was positive, that's the net memory of it.''

And that's why Grease keeps coming around again. This is the musical's third appearance at the Broward Center.

Grease uncannily hits every happy button. It's a show about nostalgia. The action is set in the 1950s, but the project was created and released in the 1970s, and it seems boomers and their children have been nostalgic for the '70s for twice as long as the decade lasted.

Don't believe that? Listen to what your kids are playing on their Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games.

SIMPLER TIME

``Grease, in particular, is about the '50s, and there's this notion that that was a simpler time, a Leave It to Beaver time, more traditional homes,'' Kahn says. ``You see it now with the economic crisis. People want to think back to . . . when life was happier.''

Hicks, born in Birmingham, Ala., in the American Bicentennial year, agrees.

``Every American sees it along the way. I think the storyline is appealing still to this day,'' he says. ``It's about the trials and tribulations that you go through in high school and first love and all of that. It leads to a timeless show.''

In addition to his set-piece number, Hicks, 32, performs in a ``megamix'' of the Grease song and then his shuffling Seven Mile Breakdown from his second post-American Idol CD, The Distance, during encores.

Given that radio support for the independently released The Distance was meager, and the album hasn't exactly demolished the Billboard charts like previous releases from Idol winners such as Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, the exposure can't hurt.

Hicks, who sounds lively and engaged, jokes, ``this is the longest set-up for a tour of my own record!''

The new song is shoehorned into the conclusion, long after Danny and Sandy and Rizzo and Kenickie cavort at the fair to the original Grease staple We Go Together, so the storyline remains familiar and intact.




SOUL PATROL MEMORIES:


1. Barbieflausa

Vince Fontaine character starts to warm up- the rather empty theater....he sings a few numbers...starts asking where everyone is from...a young man said he was from Opa Locka...and thats when the fun began. The VF guy LOVED the sound of OPA LOCKA...and it became a running gag throughout he show...finallly the late commers filled mmost of the vacant seats...I think the place was 90% filled.

.......the accoustics in our theater are incredible...so the actors did not have to belt out...unlss that was what was called for...They could caress their notes...We had a sub for the Frenchy charachter...who reminded me of Kristen Wyatt...th broadway Frenchy...I liked how her hair color changed witth each new outfit. There were a lot of young children in the audience who were bug-eyed at each dance number...and the cherry red t-bird.


2. binijacob tweets
My husband,Brian,had a little of NYC today on FL.We enjoyed watching the Broadway Show "Grease" and may have a new liking for Taylor Hicks!

3. gomezalejandra on twitter

grease was amazing! just met taylor hicks and he was really nice :)

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