Four Great Musicals for You

By: Stephen Gallagher and Kevin Wong

Preparing a party for their beloved high school drama teacher on the eve of her retirement, a group of students describe how she changed their lives in this funny, heartwarming and inspiring musical. This musical features a cast of young artists aged 13-19. It’s sure to touch the hearts of theatre kids of every age.

Tickets: $15; 5% discount

By: Barbara Johnston and Suzy Wilde

When fifteen-year-old Deirdre is sent to live with her cousins in 1995, she gets a job at the local video store where she falls in love with movies. The story is funny and heartwarming. This musical shines a light on growing up in the mid-90’s and honors the now-extinct video store. For those who are missing life in the 90’s, like songs and movies at that time, this show will touch them.

Tickets: $20; 20% discount

By: The TITA Collective

The show centers around the women in our lives like our aunts, moms, daughters and partners. Through this musical, many of you will see more clearly their struggles and heartaches, and also how they deal with comedy and songs. In the musical, the performers sing and dance. They’re humorous, enjoying making jokes.

Tickets: $18; 5% discount

By: Andrew Seok

Three of the greatest love stories of all time(Romeo & Juliet, Orpheus Eurydice, Della & Jim in The Gift of the Magi)are wonderfully retold and re-imagined to create an entirely new story of love. All three stories begin as they always have, but quickly intertwine(紧密相连)“The idea of writing one musical with all three separate stories never occurred to me until I wanted to write a completely different show,” said Seok.

Tickets: $16; 10% discount

It’s rare that the main character in a Chinese movie wins the audience’s hearts with an emotionally uplifting message, rather than by showing off his or her good looks. But Wolf Warrior II is putting China in the ‘global spotlight. It’s also the first film to taste success both in terms of box office earnings and promoting Chinese values.

Kung fu artist Wu Jing both starred in and directed the action movie. ’Since its release on July 27, 2017, it’s earned an unimaginable 4. 5 billion yuan, setting ‘a record for domestic movies at the box office.

Based on the massive evacuation(撤离) of Chinese people from Libya when the civil war broke out there in2011, and from Yemen in 2015, as well as from West Africa when the Ebola virus created the challenges from2 013 to 2016, the film links art to reality in which a former Special Forces soldier Leng Feng played by Wu leads Chinese workers and local Africans to flee from a war-torn and plague-ravaged (饱受瘟疫折磨的) country.

The film describes how the Chinese government aims to protect overseas Chinese citizens. Just as the message reads when the film comes to an end: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China, when you are faced with danger in a foreign land, do not give up! Please remember, at your back stands a strong motherland.”

Thanks to China’s increasing participation in global affairs, now it could be considered the right moment to introduce a modem Chinese hero.

“Holding up a banner (旗帜) of peace, friendship and responsibility , Wolf Warrior II should be seen as a brave effort to promote Chinese values around the world,” columnist Zhu Ping wrote, in China Daily.

It’s time Chinese filmmakers produced films that tell good stories and carry the right spirit. Wolf Warrior II is the very film that has started that trend.

They say that picture is worth a thousand words, but the briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great words end up being turned into cinematic “turkeys”.

Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the earliest and greatest works in Western storytelling, Homer’s The Odyssey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The Great Gatsby never been praised as “great”? Movies of course need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only resulted in movies best described as “interesting”?

One of the key reasons behind this is that while a book usually takes a few days to read, a movie typically lasts under two hours. This means that great books can lose plot details and characters when they move to the big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter movies can^’t escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see some of their favorite characters in the movie versions.

Movies also disappoint us when things don’t look the way we imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie Troy, which is in part based on Homer’s The Iliad and was met with mixed reviews from the audience. The most questionable issue was the actress chosen to play the part of Helen. Many people thought she didn’t live up to Helen's title of “the most beautiful woman in the world”, influencing opinions of the movie to some extent.

There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Furthermore, books and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules. With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not against its original source. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to television series such as Sherlock or Mad Men, which can have many characters and gradual plot development. Perhaps, one day, readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most admired work will find themselves glued to their screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.