A Night with Janis Joplin A Night with Janis Joplin A Night with Janis Joplin is a Broadway musical that includes works of singer-songwriter Janis Joplin (1943–1970). After 22 previews, it officially opened at the Lyceum Theatre on October 10, 2013, and closed in February, after 141 performances. The musical is presented as Janis Joplin, backed by a band of hippies, performing a concert in 1970, shortly before she in fact died of drug overdose, at age 27. Among other reviews, "The New York Post" characterized it as sanitizing Janis Joplin and serving as a vehicle for "power-piped" Mary Bridget Davies to mostly "stick to
Janis Joplin "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die" (1967). At the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone, whom Joplin admired greatly, commented on Joplin and referred to the documentary "Janis" (1975) that evidently was screened at the festival: The film "The Rose" (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled "Pearl"—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday,