the week of april 12-16, 2021
"The silence about Scott Rudin? Unacceptable. That’s the easy one, y’all. That’s a monster."
You’re reading Nothing for the Group, a newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes. If you like this kind of thing:
This newsletter is free — no gods, no masters, no paywalls — but if you’d like to sustain this project, you can support me on Venmo (@halvorsen) or Paypal.
If you want to say hi, you can email me, tweet @halvorsen, or just reply to this email.
If you’re an artist or administrator in financial need, or if you’d like to directly support theatremakers in your community, here’s a great round-up of local and national grants and resources from Creative Capital.
Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
online theatre
Rona Siddiqui’s A More Perfect Union is now streaming as part of Arena Stage’s newly commissioned filmed music series, Arena Riffs. Drawing on concept albums, the visual audio piece centers on acceptance, identity and America’s racial reckoning.
The Reverb Theatre Arts Festival is streaming through May 20 at Roundabout. The festival presents the voices of artists with disabilities on the virtual stage and features 24 collaborative projects based on creative prompts on the theme of connection.
A filmed production of Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood starts streaming April 16th at Studio Theatre. Director Reginald L. Douglas “reimagines Orlandersmith’s solo play with a cross-generational ensemble of three Black women.”
Angelica Chéri’s Berta, Berta streams at Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre April 26-June 6. The play, also directed by Reginald L. Douglas, is a fictional origin story “inspired by the prison chain gang song ‘Berta, Berta’ which originated on Parchman Farm, Mississippi State Penitentiary.”
Rinne Groff’s The Women’s Party will be adapted into “a three-part video tale” for Clubbed Thumb starting April 22nd. Originally scheduled for 2020 Summerworks, the 1947-set play about the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment will be directed by Tara Ahmadinejad.
2021-22 season updates
The outdoor, immersive theatrical anthology series The Seven Deadly Sins is coming to New York in June. The project premiered in November at Miami New Drama in a series of vacant storefronts. The New York production will be staged in the Meatpacking District and feature seven new 10-minute plays by Ngozi Anyanwu, Thomas Bradshaw, MJ Kaufman, Jeffrey LaHoste, Ming Peiffer, Bess Wohl and Moisés Kaufman, who will also direct.
The Edinburgh International Festival will happen this year in three outdoor pavilions. The pavilions are “specially built to maximize air flow and allow social distancing” and the festival anticipates a reduced slate of international artists. (Edinburgh Fringe is still debating its format for this summer.)
The Kennedy Center announced its in-person season, which will start performances in mid-October. The season includes touring productions of Hadestown, Beautiful, Ain’t Too Proud, The Prom, Jesus Christ Superstar, Riverdance, Mean Girls, Daniel Fish’s revival of Oklahoma!, Jersey Boys, The Band’s Visit, Dear Evan Hansen, Hamilton, and To Kill A Mockingbird. The company also announced joint commissions for plays by Ike Holter, Molly Smith Metzler, Marco Ramirez, Martyna Majok and the team of Hansol Jung and Brian Quijada. The aggressive agenda was built “on a presumption of inviting full-capacity ticket-buying audiences, with no requirement for social distancing.”
Center Theatre Group pushed the start of its in-person season to November 30, 2021. The pre-Broadway run of Diane Paulus’ 1776 revival is postponed and the company has added the North American premiere of West End musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
prize watch
Jordan E. Cooper, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Sylvia Khoury Won 2021 Whiting Awards. Each artist will receive a $50,000 prize.
Brittany K. Allen’s Happy Happy Joy Joy won the 2021 Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award. The award includes a year-long residency at The Lark.
Rachel Lynett’s Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson) won the Yale Drama Series Prize. The prize, which includes a $10,000 award, play publication, and a staged reading, is selected by a single judge. This year’s judge, Paula Vogel, also selected three runners-up: Timothy X Atack for Babel’s Cupid, Molly Bicks for Miss Atomic Power, and Francisco Mendoza for Machine Learning.
people over profits
Karen Olivo announced they will not return to Moulin Rouge! after the pandemic, citing the theatre industry’s complicity with injustice. In a five-minute Instagram Live video, Olivo specifically referenced the broad silence after The Hollywood Reporter’s story on Scott Rudin’s violent treatment of his employees:
“I don’t need to be on a stage. I need to be out here. Building a better industry is more important than putting money in my pockets…The silence about Scott Rudin? Unacceptable. That’s the easy one, y’all. That’s a monster. That should be a no-brainer. Those of you who say you’re scared, what are you afraid of?Shouldn’t you be more afraid of not saying something and more people getting hurt?…I want a theater industry that matches my integrity. It’s not here, obviously. Let’s go make it. Let’s divest and invest in ourselves.”
For Vulture, Chris Lee wrote why there’s been industry-wide silence on the Rudin allegations and the possibility of actionable consequences:
“The theater world has recently been undergoing a reckoning to correct historical imbalances in the industry. Insiders say it may be the sphere most likely to topple the producer’s career. The primary threat to Rudin’s monolithic Broadway standing, they say, would be a Weinstein-style pile on of accusations. If fellow former assistants and creative artisans continue detailing the producer’s toxic behavior in the press, as the thinking goes, top talent will be forced to come out against him. And that will exert a top-down pressure on the creative community to finally thwart Rudin’s power and influence.”
The onus should not fall on former assistants airing their trauma en masse to persuade movie stars and artistic leaders to divest from a bully with a decades-long history of rampant, unchecked abuse and harassment. But this is what always happens: we rely on workers on the margins of power to tell their stories — risking their individual livelihoods — for the promise of a more just future for everyone.
