Two Multi-Million Dollar Musicals in China “The Joker’s Game” and “The Monkey King” Open the Artistic Doors

 Louis St. Louis, the Detroit musical entrepreneur and Broadway innovator, is breaking all the rules and opening up artistic possibilities for others as he works on two World Premiere musicals for China’s cultural answer to both Broadway and the West End – Bai Lao Hui.

Louis first will serve as the Musical Supervisor, Arranger and Musical Director for the World Premiere of the multi-million dollar extravaganza “The Joker’s Game,” which opens in Dongwuoan in early September of this year. Asked to contribute six new songs to the score, his first one ‘Magic,’ is already garnering notice in China.  Directing is the internationally renowned Tony Stimac. “The Joker’s Game” is being presented by the Oriental Songlei Musical Company and produced by Li Dun.
Weaving around a modern day Chinese magician and his spellbinding ways, he passionately paints the soul of a dedicated Chinese performer.  We follow the romantic journey of the two star-crossed lovers, as sparks ignite and we witness pyrotechnics of the heart.  First written in English, “The Joker’s Game” was adapted into Chinese. What makes this a first, is the director and his teams are American, working with a Chinese team in their own native language.    

In December Louis will collaborate with lyricist James Racheff to write the first American-Style score (Rhythm & Blues, Hip Hop, New Jack Swing and Dance) for China’s first musical theatre presentation of the ancient Chinese Legend, “The Monkey King.” Produced at the Water Cube Building that was designed and built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, The director is none other than Broadway baby Gabriel Barre. Louis will team again with Mr. Stimac and co writer for, “The Joker’s Game” Kemin Zhang in this endeavor.  Inspired by the famous mythological legend “Journey to the West” written in the sixteenth century, this "Monkey King" depicts the Taoist themes of Yin and Yang and the five elements of nature allow this historic Chinese tale to be appreciated by international audiences. This story is complicated but basically, the "Monkey King “is prideful, irritates heaven and saves the day with a Buddhist monk and his friends. This is a tale of the clash between good and evil and finding a "universal hero," while discovering one’s self inside the eternal power of nature.

Louis, was recently honored with a host of awards for his transforming Gospel version of Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Atlanta’s historic Alliance Theatre.   The cast featured 60 of the entertainment industry’s finest singers. Louis is the recipient of a Grammy, for “Smokey Joe’s Café.”  He produced the Movie Soundtrack for Grease, wrote ‘Sandy’ for John Travolta - garnering him his first Grammy nomination as Producer of the Year. He wrote Hand-Jive for the Broadway production. He also produced the Soundtrack for Grease 2, for which he wrote five original songs.  As Music Director/ Arranger, he lent his musical talents to the Emmy winning TV Specials, Lily Sold Out, and Lily For President. Just before he became a sought after Conductor/Music Director/ Arranger on Broadway he was an original vocal soloist in the Premiere Production of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ at Kennedy Center and can be heard accompanying himself on the Original Cast Album in the Blues Suite.   Chita Rivera, Ann-Margret, Debbie Allen, Lily Tomlin, Gladys Knight, Betty Buckley and others have been conducted by Louis and he can be seen accompanying Meryl Streep in the Movie, Ironweed. If this wasn’t enough,in the works is a new Musical “Apaixonado” a musical set in Rio De Janeiro. Seduction, deception and the sensuous sounds of Brazil will soon be making its way to a stage.

Museum and Gallery Listings for April 29-May 5

American Folk Art Museum: ‘Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Freelance Artist — Poet and Sculptor — Inovator — Arrow maker and Plant man — Bone artifacts constructor — Photographer and Architect — Philosopher,’ through Oct. 9. Whether photographing his wife as a sweetly chaste pinup girl; fashioning plant forms from scrounged clay or little thrones from salvaged turkey bones; or making delicate ballpoint-pen drawings or hallucinatory paintings rife with intimations of exotic undersea or sci-fi worlds, this self-taught, self-proclaimed multitasker (as made clear in the show’s subtitle) never wavered in his sense of his own greatness. Mounted 27 years after his death, his first American museum survey doesn’t quite do him justice and especially shortchanges the paintings, but it presents the fruits of his ceaseless labors with a clarity that makes them feel of a piece, and like a gift.

Bronx Museum of the Arts: ‘Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists,’ through May 29. This celebration of the artist Elizabeth Catlett, 96, includes contributions by a stellar array of younger colleagues from two generations. But Ms. Catlett herself, with her formally assured and expressively commanding art, is the life of the party just by being the quietest, wisest voice in the room. (An exhibition titled “Digame: Elizabeth Catlett’s Forever Love” is on view in the Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, through May 26.)

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: ‘Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay,’ through June 19. Examining the more practical side of Delaunay’s pioneering achievement, this beautiful, enlightening exhibition offers some alluring artworks, garments and accessories, especially a passel of radiant scarves. But it bets most of the house on fabric swatches — Delaunay’s textile designs — and succeeds with a display of some 90 gouache studies for textiles and their equally vibrant commercial results: more than 120 hand-printed silks, velvets and cottons laid out in large vitrines. Patterns ranging from geometric to floral variously revisit, amplify and presage much of the history of modern painting and may even deserve a place in that history.