Entertainment and performing arts
Cleveland is home to Playhouse Square Center, the second largest performing arts center in the United States behind New York's Lincoln Center. Playhouse Square includes the State, Palace, Allen, Hanna, and Ohio theaters within what is known as the Theater District of Downtown Cleveland. Playhouse Square's resident performing arts companies include the Cleveland Opera, the Ohio Ballet, and the Great Lakes Theater Festival. The center also hosts various Broadway musicals, special concerts, speaking engagements, and other events throughout the year. One Playhouse Square, now the headquarters for Cleveland's public broadcasters, was originally used as the broadcast studios of WJW Radio, where disc jockey Alan Freed first popularized the term "rock and roll". Located between Playhouse Square and University Circle are the Cleveland Play House and Karamu House, a well-known African American performing and fine arts center, both founded in the 1920s.
Cleveland is also home to the Cleveland Orchestra, widely considered one of the finest orchestras in the world, and often referred to as the finest in the United States. It is one of the "Big Five" major orchestras in the United States. The Orchestra plays in Severance Hall during the winter and at Blossom Music Center during the summer.
There are two main art museums in Cleveland. The Cleveland Museum of Art is a major American art museum, and its collection is comprised of more than 40,000 works of art ranging over 6,000 years, from ancient masterpieces to contemporary pieces. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland does not maintain a permanent collection, instead choosing to showcase established and emerging artists through hosting and producing temporary exhibitions.
Cleveland has served as the filming location for several noteworthy movies, including The Fortune Cookie (1967) with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, the Academy Award-winning Deer Hunter (1978), Antwone Fisher (2002), and the holiday favorite A Christmas Story (1983). Scenes for Spider-Man 3 were filmed in Cleveland in April 2006. Cleveland is the lifelong home of cartoonist Harvey Pekar and the setting for most of his autobiographical comic books. Additionally, the city was also the setting for the popular sitcom, The Drew Carey Show which starred Cleveland native Drew Carey.
Cleveland was the home of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created the comic book character Superman in 1932. Both attended Glenville High School, and their early collaborations resulted in the creation of "The Man of Steel".
Cleveland is the home of rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Eric Carmen and his band, The Raspberries. R&B singer Gerald Levert also was a lifelong resident of Cleveland, and it was the hometown of R&B groups the Dazz Band and The Rude Boys, as well as R&B singer Avant. It was also home to protopunk bands Pere Ubu, Rocket From the Tombs, and Electric Eels.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
