The Bay Saint Louis Little Theatre opened its 78th Season of Shows with ‘A Few Good Men’ to an incredible turnout. Due to overwhelming interest, the production has added two additional showtimes onto its run.
The story is about a group of military lawyers assigned to defend two Marines in Guantanamo Bay. During the course of the trial, they uncover a high-level conspiracy designed to eliminate the weaker soldiers in the name of patriotism.
Broadway hit about the trial of two Marines for complicity in the death of a fellow Marine in Guantanamo Bay sizzles on stage. “Plenty of wisecracking humor and suspense.” – Times
Join us October 5th, 6th, 18th and 20th. Tickets are available here or by calling the box office at (228) 467-9024.
Louis Michot & Swamp Magic plus Rising Stars Fife And Drum Band at the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre
Join us at the inaugural HALLOWEEN SWAMP STOMP! with LOUIS MICHOT & SWAMP MAGIC plus RISING STARS FIFE AND DRUM BAND!
This show is going to be an interactive evening of traditional music from South Louisiana & North Mississippi. The psychedelic Cajun sounds of Louis Michot & Swamp Magic will transport you straight to the bayou and beyond.. Rising Stars Fife And Drum Band’s story of traditional Mississippi roots music is sure to take you on a special journey through the birthplace of America’s music.
The Little Theatre will be lit up and decorated like a spooky, swampy cabin in the woods..complete with outdoor projections, lights and fog to set the haunted Halloween vibe.
Louis Michot, most recognized as fiddle player and lead singer for Grammy award winning Lost Bayou Ramblers, channels his passion for local folklore, sustainability, Louisiana’s rapidly eroding coastline into a new solo creative expression, Rêve du Troubadour.
Rêve du Troubadour is an epic feast of Francophone songwriting, specific to Louisiana, inspired by one man’s wild, fantastical dreams.
Louis’ new band Swamp Magic consists of fellow Lost Bayou Ramblers members – guitarist Johnny Campos with bassist and percussionist Bryan Webre plus non-Rambler drummer – Evan Ceaser.
Opening the show will be a very special set from North Mississippi’s own Rising Stars Fife And Drum Band.
Sharde Thomas has led fife and drum bands since her grandfather, Otha Turner, was alive, leading his own band that she was a part of. In 2003, Sharde started her own band, Rising Stars, to continue her grandfather’s legacy.
In recent years, the band has grown into a worldwide brand and monumental blues history sensation. The mixture of old-school songs with fresh, funky beats is bound to keep the young and the old on their feet!
The Rising Stars have played at some of the best venues in the USA, including the Lincoln Center (NYC), The Ryman (Nashville), and countless festivals around the world, including France, Switzerland, and the UK.
The Rising Stars just finished a tour in Africa and has gained the popularity of the new, youthful blues crowd. Feeding the world what they never knew they needed. Drums and Fife in the form of blues, R&B, Hip Hop and Dance.
The Rising Stars’ recent release, “Evolution of Fife and Drum Music,” is the winner of the Memphis Blues Society Self-Produced CD competition.
This is a COSTUME PARTY with the theme being SWAMP MAGIC! Costumes are recommended but not required.. The best costume of the evening gets a FREE pair of tickets to our next show!
There will be a full bar in the lobby with a special Halloween cocktail on the menu. Big Bertha’s Soul Food & Catering will be set up in front of the Little Theatre selling delicious FOOD for your SOUL!
Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 at the door. Get your tickets in advance here before this special Halloween show sells out!!
Sponsored by: Cathead Vodka, TBT Depot District, Long Beach Deli, Sorting Table Wine, Lagarde’s Fine Wine & Spirits, 100 MEN Hall, & Mississippi Arts Commission.
This show is made possible through a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC).
Bay Saint Louis Little Theatre Announces Auditions and Show Dates for ‘The Carol Burnett Show’
Auditions have been announced for the Bay Saint Louis Little Theatre production of ‘The Carol Burnett Show’. Auditions are open for all in the community, including all ages. The show will be a selection of comedic skits from the television show, ‘The Carol Burnett Show’. Please be prepared to perform cold reads from the script for auditions.
Auditions will be held on Monday, October 21 at 7 pm, Wednesday, October 23 at 7pm and Saturday, October 26 at 10am. The show will be performed on December 6 and 7 at 8 pm and December 8 at 2 pm. You can find your tickets for the show here.
An Evening of Creative Jazz Music with NOLATET (Johnny Vidacovich, James Singleton, Mike Dillon and Brian Haas)
An Evening of Creative Jazz with NOLATET (Johnny Vidacovich, James Singleton, Mike Dillon and Brian Haas)
NOLATET will play TWO SETS of prepared and improvised creative JAZZ music starting at 8pm ~ do not miss these four incredible and legendary musicians in this intimate and cozy venue! Bay St. Louis rarely has modern New Orleans ‘jazz’ musicians like these guys and we are proud to present them at the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre ~
Johnny Vidacovich has been the backbone and backbeat of New Orleans music for the past 50 years and his musical peers say he’s drumming at his absolute very best at this moment in time. The Maestro of the drums and cymbals, Johnny V will be “back in a flash..with more of this trash”.
James Singleton has also been holding it down on the low end, keeping time and slapping the bass in The City since the 1970s, including playing with legendary pianist James Booker alongside Johnny V as well as making musical magic in their long running group Astral Project.
Mike Dillon is the true master of the vibes – the vibraphone – from playing with Galactic at Jazz Fest and Tipitinas to touring with Les Claypool to fronting his own band, Punkadelic, Mike D is without a doubt, one of the very best to ever pick up mallets and strike tuned metal bars. Dillon’s one of a kind sound crosses the boundaries of Jazz, Punk, Funk and Rock to seamlessly blend it all together with precision.
Brian Haas is a very important modern link in the chain of talented, educated and creative pianists to ever walk the earth. Having released 30 albums over the last 30 years with his Oklahoma founded improvisational group, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Haas has made it clear that embracing tradition while honoring the musical masters is just as important as taking the music a step forward into another dimension and another direction.
******
Everybody knows about New Orleans’ rich musical tradition—but an even more deeply rooted tradition in the Crescent City is one of perpetual reinvention. It’s a city that’s been reborn countless times over the course of its multi-cultural history, a legacy vibrantly reflected in its music.
With the release of their debut album, Dogs, in 2016, the Nolatet – vibraphonist Mike Dillon, pianist Brian Haas, bassist James Singleton and drummer Johnny Vidacovich – added their own new twist to the New Orleans tradition. Now the quartet returns with their much-anticipated follow-up, ‘No Revenge Necessary,’ which takes the music through as many winding turns and colorful pathways as a Second Line parade route.
“‘Dogs’ was beginner’s luck,” says Singleton. “We had just started as a band, and we managed to somehow pull together a cohesive program. To me that small miracle was a good omen for the future.”
That omen proves true in myriad ways on ‘No Revenge Necessary,’ released via Royal Potato Family, which finds the band getting alternately (and often simultaneously) funky and ferocious, playful and profound, high-spirited and movingly solemn, irreverent, iconoclastic, and tapped into the bloodline that flows through the veins of every New Orleans musician.
After criss-crossing the country together touring behind ‘Dogs,’ Haas says, “we can take bigger musical risks in the studio and not fall on our butts. The more you play improvised music with the same line-up the luckier you can get as a band. This new album is WAY rowdier and riskier.” As Dillon adds, “a year of touring and festivals has made this band of unique improvisers stand on an island beyond the normal jazz arms race.”
While ‘Dogs’ was the first time these four came together as a unit, there was plenty of history already shared between them. Singleton and Vidacovich can boast more than four decades of playing together, during which they’ve established themselves as New Orleans’ most revered rhythm section. Dillon and Haas have crossed paths endlessly along the routes of their relentless touring schedules with bands like Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Garage a Trois, Critters Buggin and the Dead Kenny Gs.
“The wealth of music experience amongst ourselves is why Nolatet has its own voice,” says Haas. “After a few years you don’t learn the other person’s music—you learn the other person!”
That knowledge pays off in a sonic portrait like “Lanky, Stanky Maestro,” which Haas wrote in honor of Vidacovich and which evokes an explosive barrage of rakish outbursts from the drummer. Singleton calls it “pure slop/funk/mid-city/spaghetti-eatin’ grease”—and he’d know better than anyone. He continues that the “constant counterpoint conversation (including and especially the kit) is a contemporary flowering of the polyphony present in New Orleans music from 100 ears and years ago. That’s how we are able to reflect the complexities of adult lives with relatively simple materials.”
On the wildly spiraling “Bluebelly,” Singleton tips his hat to the more (post) modern sounds that he was confronted with through bandmate Dillon’s work in Garage a Trois alongside drummer Stanton Moore and saxophonist Skerik. Haas’ tumultuous “Homer and Debbie” was penned as an ode to two of his five dogs, and more expansively about life and death, youth and old age. Dillon’s “Elegant Miss J” commemorates a lost love and the pitfalls that follow when romance meets a life on the road. Landscape was also an inspiration for Haas, who wrote the imposing “Gracemont” under the sway of Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains and the down-home “Pecos Wilderness” while musing on the terrain near his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Then there are the inevitable passions that arise from a world in turmoil and the rebirth that (hopefully) can rise from it, as has happened time and again in New Orleans’ beleaguered past. Singleton’s “Dike Finger” is his response to Hurricane Katrina, erupting in anger and then giving way to optimism and solidarity. Haas’ title track “No Revenge Necessary” casts both a more intimate and a much wider net, sparked by the end of a relationship, but expanding to encompass the divisive times in which we all find ourselves these days.
“For me the over-riding theme moving forward is forgiveness,” Singleton sums up. “Hopefully the strength of the music can serve as a reminder of the possibility of growth and healing through forgiving.”
DOORS are at 6 pm with the first set starting at 8.
The lobby bar will be open at 6 with a full bar including beer, wine, cocktails, and non alcoholic options.
Big Bertha’s Soul Food will be available for purchase in front of the Theatre, so come hungry!
This ia a Good Earth Records production along with T-Fat Entertainment and the Bay St Louis Little Theatre.
Sponsored by – Cathead Distillery, The Sorting Table Wine, Lagardes Fine Wine and Spirits, Long Beach Market and Deli, the 100 Men Hall & the TBT Depot Deli / Beer Garden.
General Admission tickets are $40 ~
VIP tickets are $60, which gets you reserved seating on the first 2 rows, as well as a signed poster. Join us for this night of epic music from four visionaries with lots of wonderful, special, spiritual and improvisational energy to share with us through their music.
Find tickets here.
Bay Saint Louis Little Theatre Announces
78th Season of Shows
The Bay St. Louis Little Theatre announces its 78th Season of Shows. It is another fantastic season of shows for the community. The Theatre Guild reviews shows for nine months and submits its final choices to the Theatre Board of Directors for final approval. The diligent performance of the Guil continues the success of the Little Theatre.
The season opener is a reprisal of the 2007 production of “A Few Good Men” by Aaron Sorkin. This show was a sellout for each production when it was being performed at the Ground Zero Museum before the new Little Theatre was rebuilt. The story tells about the defense of two young Marines who are charged with the killing of a fellow Marine at Guantanamo Bay. Was the killing a result of an order by a commanding officer? The famous quote “You can’t handle the truth!” originated from this play. Show dates are September 27, 28, 29, October 4, 5, 6.
The Christmas season means light hearted humor. “The Carol Burnett Show” will bring the joy of the holiday season by adapting the hilarious comedy skits sure to put the audience in the holiday spirit. Show dates are December 6, 7, 8.
The second season show is “Agnes of God” which was a hit Broadway show and hit movie. A re-examination of the meaning of faith and the power of love leading to a dramatic, compelling climax. “Riveting, powerful, electrifying drama……the dialogue crackles.” – NewYork Daily Times.
The 15th Annual Stella Yelling Contest called “the perfect community event” is scheduled for March 22.
Then the Little Theatre presents a light-hearted comedy “A Bench in the Sun” by Ron Clark. A story about two longtime friends who live in a retirement home and spend their days on a bench in the garden bickering. A once famous actress has just moved in, giving them something new to argue over. It is rich with one-liners. “Many laugh out loud moments…” – New York Times. Show dates are March 28, 29, 30, April 4, 5, 6.
The final show of the season is “The Mousetrap”, a murder mystery by iconic author Agathe Christie. It opened in London’s West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 2020. It is truly a testimony to a great play. A who-done-it about seven strangers staying in a countryside guest house. Which one is the killer? Who will be next? For seventy years, this show has kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Show dates are June 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29.
As an added announcement, the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre is proud to announce the season opener for the following 2025 – 2026 “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
For season tickets go to www.bsllt.org or call 228-467-9024.