Curtain Up! 1999: An online view of Buffalo's theater season

Theater in Western New York again kicks off another varied stage season with the 17th annual Curtain Up! celebration on Friday. More than ever, local theaters have gone online to promote their productions, provide information and sell tickets.

UB's Center for the Arts offers a concise preview of the Curtain Up! gala festivities at http://wings.buffalo.edu/arts/html/curtain_up_99.html. The site offers an itinerary for the formal ceremonies, a full list of opening-night performances and some brief history-for example, Buffalo was the first city to offer such a widespread celebration of its theatrical activity.

The oldest residential theater organization, Studio Arena http://www.studioarena.org/ will open its 34th season with Alan Aykbourn's "Things We Do For Love." The Brecht-Weill masterpiece "The Threepenny Opera" will be offered by the Irish Classical Theatre http://www.irishtheatre.com/. The Alleyway Theatre http://www.alleyway.com/ will premiere an offbeat comedy called "Celebrity Fish-Purveyors to the Stars." Perennial musical hits "Guys and Dolls" at D'Youville College's Kavinoky Theatre http://www.dyc.edu/Kavinoky/ and "The King and I" on Oct. 5 at the recently renovated Shea's Performing Arts Center http://www.sheas.org/ are guaranteed crowd-pleasers. The Tennessee Williams classic "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" is co-produced by Buffalo Ensemble Theatre http://freenet.buffalo.edu/arts/pac/bet/ and Women in Theatre.

Press reviews and articles about Western New York plays can be found online as well. The UB community can access reviews published by The Buffalo News via the Dow Jones Interactive site. (To get there from the UB Libraries page http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries: click on Online Resources, then Databases by Title, then Dow Jones Interactive.) You can narrow the list of publications to Buffalo, and using Boolean operators, search with words from specific play titles, personnel or the names of local theaters. Other publications that cover local theater listings and articles include Artvoice http://www.artvoice.com/ and Buffalo Beat http://www.buffalobeat.com/.

Western New York theater is as vibrant as ever. Newcomers to the region and longtime residents alike are encouraged to attend the festivities of Curtain Up! 1999 and patronize the local playhouses throughout the 1999-2000 season. The Web can help you choose which performances to attend. However, for all its wonders, not even the Internet can provide a substitute for good live theater.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the ASCIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Deborah Husted Koshinsky and Rick McRae, University Libraries