the week of april 18-22, 2022
i'm waiting for it, that green light, i want it
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in-person theatre
Richard Chang’s Citizen Wong is now playing at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. Ernest Abuba and Chongren Fan co-direct the world premiere inspired by Wong Chin Foo, the late 19th-century activist and journalist who fought the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Alice Childress’ Wedding Band: A Love-Hate Story in Black and White starts performances April 23rd at Theatre for a New Audience. Awoye Timpo directs the first New York revival of the Spanish flu-set drama since the play’s 1972 premiere at the Public.
Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield begins previews April 26th at Manhattan Theatre Club. The Thai-Australian playwright’s legal drama about the “loyalties, intrigue and the delicate art of translation” is directed by May Adrales.
Chelsea Marcantel’s The Upstairs Department runs April 26 - June 2 at Signature Theatre in Virginia. Holly Twyford directs the “enlightening tale of an unlikely psychic.”
Morgan Gould’s Jennifer, Who Is Leaving and Mary Kathryn Nagle’s On the Far End will have developmental readings April 28 - May 1 as part of Round House’s National Capital New Play Festival. Gould directs her own work about the expectations placed on women (set in a Dunkin’ Donuts, which is music to my New England soul), while Nagle’s one-woman play tracing the family history of Muscogee leader Ella Jean Hill is directed by Laurie Woolery.
Dave Harris’ Exception to the Rule runs April 28 - June 26 at Roundabout Theatre Company. Miranda Haymon directs the world premiere about six Black students stuck in detention at the worst school in the city, which “confronts the tactics for surviving institutions that were not built for you.” (I have been getting nonstop Instagram ads for this play and I feel very seen by the algorithm.)
Yasen Peyankov’s Seagull starts performances April 28th at Steppenwolf. Peyankov also directs his lyrical Chekhov adaptation.
Naomi Iizuka’s At the Vanishing Point runs April 28 - May 22 at the Gift Theatre in Chicago. The Louisville-set memory play set is directed by Lavina Jadhwani.
The world premiere of Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain runs April 27 - June 5 at Studio Theatre. Marti Lyons directs the coming-of-age story about a rural Georgia high school class’ exploration of The Crucible and “a generation in mid-transformation, running on pop music, optimism, and fury.”
I read John Proctor is the Villain in May 2019 and by the third scene I was flooding my colleague Adrien-Alice Hansel with all-caps texts about my ardent love for the play and how I would not rest until Studio Theatre produced it. (My endless gratitude to Hannah Wolf, who sent it to us.) Kimberly’s contact information wasn’t on the script, so I sent her a very gushy Twitter DM and asked her to send me everything she’d ever written.
I also started scheming with Adrien on how we were going to tag-team pitch John Proctor in a season planning meeting. I was the Resident Zero-Chill Teen Girl Play Enthusiast at Studio and knew I’d have to make the case of “Yes, we all know I’m immediately in the tank for plays that let young women be their fullest, wildest selves, but here are all of the valid institutional reasons why we should do it beyond my exquisite personal taste and obvious bias because I played Elizabeth Proctor in my high school production of The Crucible.” Here’s how that meeting started:
David Muse, Studio’s AD: This is a very Lauren and Adrien play
Adrien: Why, because of my past as a museum tour guide in Salem
Lauren: Why, because there’s cathartic dancing to Lorde’s “Green Light” in bonnets
I read Kimberly’s five other plays over that Fourth of July weekend. My script reports emit a palpable giddiness at the discovery of a kindred artistic spirit. Her work is peppered with moments that felt specifically constructed for my interior lexicon of cultural touchstones. (In Gondal, Emily Bronte slow dances with Slender Man to K-Ci and Jojo's "All My Life"; I’ve since referred to this interlude as the center of my Venn diagram of interests.) There’s so much to love about Kimberly’s plays: nuanced depictions of contemporary Appalachia, intricate textures of adolescent friendships, acute observations on how the internet permeates our existence, and the interrogation and reframing of classic texts to center female protagonists’ wants and desires. Her writing radiates with a ferocious mix of heart, intellect, and sincerity that’s never cloying, built on a bedrock of love and respect for her characters.
There are plenty of things I don’t miss about the unrelenting grind of institutional dramaturgy: the slush-pile guilt, the general cat-herding, writing program notes about John Patrick Shanley. But every once in awhile, a play came along that validated all my invisible labor, affirming that the greatest joy and privilege of my job was advocating for work I fervently believed in. Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain was that play for me. If you’re in DC in the coming weeks, I hope you’ll see it.
digital theatre
River L. Ramirez's Theories of God & Love premieres in-person and online at Ars Nova on April 28th. Ramirez curates the performance series, “gathering highbrow and lowbrow authorities alike, from musicians to characters, comedians to writers, [for] an unhinged meeting of minds for the ages.”
Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm is now streaming through May 8th from Forward Theater in Madison, WI. Jennifer Uphoff Gray directs the workplace comedy that “imagines the daily lives of [professional Russian internet trolls] as they invent characters, stage conflicts, and create conspiracies.”
the brits
Mike Bartlett’s Scandaltown is now playing at the Lyric Hammersmith. The modern-day, irreverent Restoration satire is directed by Rachel O'Riordan.
Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie is now playing on the West End. Justin Martin directs and Jodie Comer stars in the one-woman play that’s “an unsparing study of the Australian legal system's treatment of sexual assault cases.”
Anne Odeke’s Princess Essex is now running at the Bush Theatre. The one-woman play, also performed by Odeke, is “a funny and dynamic tale of the first black woman to ever enter a beauty pageant in the UK.”
David Eldridge’s Middle starts performances April 27th at the National Theatre. The world premiere, directed by Polly Findlay, is the second of three plays by Eldridge to explore love and relationships. (The first was aptly titled Beginning.)
2022-23 season updates
Steppenwolf announced its 2022-23 season. The line-up includes James Ijames’ The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington (directed by Whitney White), Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ Last Night and The Night Before (directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton), Pinter’s No Man’s Land (directed by Les Waters), and four world premieres: Vichet Chum’s Bald Sisters (directed by Patricia McGregor), Kate Arrington’s Another Marriage (directed by Terry Kinney), J. Nicole Brooks’ adaptation of Eve Ewing’s 1919 (directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent and Tasia A. Jones), and Mahogany L. Browne’s Chlorine Sky (directed by Ericka Ratcliff).
Roundabout announced the season season of the Refocus Project, which will highlight Latinx playwrights. The multi-year effort to elevate and restore marginalized plays to the American canon will present a summer reading series featuring René Marqués’ The Oxcart (translated by Charles Pilditch and directed by Christina Angeles), Fausto Avendaño’s El Corrido de California (directed by Galia Backal); María Irene Fornés’ Sarita (directed by Rebecca Aparicio), and Rosalba Rolón’s Harlem Hellfighters on a Latin Beat.
The Young Vic announced its summer-autumn season. The London theatre’s line-up includes Laiona Michelle, Greg Dean Borowsky, and Shaun Borowsky’s new musical Mandela (directed by Schele Williams); The Five Lesbian Brothers’ The Secretaries (directed by Deirdre McLaughlin); Sonali Bhattacharyya's Chasing Hares (directed by Milli Bhatia); and Ivo van Hove's production of Édouard Louis’ Who Killed My Father.
Northlight Theatre in Skokie, IL announced its 2022-23 season. The season includes Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists (directed by Cody Estle); Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley (directed by Marti Lyons); Brent Askari’s Andy Warhol in Iran (directed by BJ Jones); Sherry Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse & David M. Lutken’s The Porch on Windy Hill: A New Play with Old Music (directed by Lutken); and George Brant’s Marie and Rosetta (directed by E. Faye Butler).
the regional theatre game of thrones
Susan Dalian and Santiago Iacinti are the new associate artistic directors of PlayPenn. The two artist-leaders join newly appointed artistic director Che’Rae Adams, who took over the Philadelphia-based new play development conference this past January.
things I read this week besides kathryn schulz’s lost and found*
Brittani Samuel’s American Theatre interview with Awoye Timpo on Alice Childress’ legacy, directing the upcoming revival of Wedding Band, and her work with CLASSIX, a collective dedicated to bringing a contemporary vision to classic Black plays.
Elizabeth Vincentelli’s months-spanning conversation with A Strange Loop star Jaquel Spivey, from the musical’s first run-through at Woolly Mammoth through the first preview on Broadway (The New York Times)
*People keep asking me how I read so many books and the answer is that it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have to read 150 plays a year!
that’s not a living wage: canadian edition
Our neighbors to the North make their underpaid debut! Thank you to the anonymous Canadian NFTG reader for this submission:
Executive Assistant to Commercial Theatre Producer: $32-$36K USD
Living Wage for Toronto: $38,480 USD (via Ontario Living Wage Network)
Based on my casual understanding of Toronto housing costs (source: House Hunters International), that living wage estimate feels awfully low, even with universal healthcare. (Other red flags: the position requires 5+ years of experience and the submitter told me it’s rumored to be for a certain troubled producer but you didn’t hear that from me!)
