Ted Otten

Once again, summer came early with two heatwaves already and a third one looming in the next week. To cool things down a bit, we’re turning to the musicals for songs about “summer” on this week’s Dress Circle (6/28 7:00 p.m.), and we’ve been able to cull together fourteen pieces even though, oddly enough, there aren’t as many songs about summer as you might have thought.

We’re following up on an earlier program on this week’s Dress Circle (6/21 7:00 p.m.) with a program we’ve titled “Songs of Inspiration, Determination, and Hope. The previous program was in April which has been dubbed the “Month of Hope,” and that program contained an entirely different playlist of songs with “hope” in the title. This time, the songs offer inspiration and hope for characters and listeners, as well as show determination to overcome adversity. We believe that these are things that are truly needed just now.

There are “dog” people, and there are “cat” people, and we are definitely “cat” people. To that end, this week’s Dress Circle (6/14 7:00 p.m.) will be taking a look at our feline and feline-adjacent friends as seen through a variety of musicals.

It’s June, and people, especially television weather-people, just can’t “believe it.” We don’t know why not; it happens every year around this time, so that means we’re going to celebrate it on this week’s Dress Circle (6/7 7:00 p.m.) with pieces from ten of the shows that opened in New York in June.

To continue with our Memorial Day celebration, we’ve turned to a variety of musicals about American servicemen and women and their experiences for this week’s Dress Circle (5/31 7:00 p.m.).

In 1868, Decoration Day was proclaimed a holiday to honor Union soldiers who died in the Civil War. In 1971, Memorial Day was established to honor all branches of the Armed Forces who have died in service. On this week’s Dress Circle (5/24 2026), we’ll not only be honoring the military personnel whom we lost, but we’d also like to extend the day to remembering everyone who was lost in service to others by combining their “memorial” days which occur earlier in May (nurses, police, and firefighters) and March (doctors) along with others, in our thoughts.

For a few years after 2020 hit, people became obsessed with once again being able to travel. Now, with the price of oil and gas (and rising prices in general), many have started to bemoan the fact that traveling might not be in the cards once again this year. To help remedy this, we’re looking at songs about traveling on this week’s Dress Circle (5/17 7:00 p.m.) in the hopes we can vicariously ease the angst many are feeling.

With his various writing partners, Richard Rodgers composed over 40 musicals, and many of those shows contained ballets – some more than one, and on this week’s Dress Circle (5/10 7:00 p.m.) we’re going to look at two ballets from musicals Rodgers wrote with Lorenz Hart as well as a ballet he wrote to be performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Each month has an animal associated with it, and May is associated with the squirrel. Who knew? Well, this week’s Dress Circle (5/3 7:00 p.m.) is definitely not squirrelly in any stretch of the imagination as we look at overtures and opening numbers from 11 of the musicals that opened this month.

Like all months, April is a month of many celebrations. We’ve already looked at shows that opened in 1965 in order to celebrate National 8-Track Tape Day – We are fully committed to our calendar art, and on this week’s Dress Circle (4/26 7:00 p.m.), we’ll be looking at something we think everyone needs right now: Songs of hope from the musicals as April is the National Month of Hope.