the week of april 25-29, 2022

must be the season of the new works festival

Apr 29, 2022

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in-person theatre

The world premiere of Karissa Murrell Myers’ On the Greenbelt is now playing at Strawdog Theatre in Chicago. Jonathan Berry directs the serio-comic, wildly unpredictable family drama exploring love, memory, and grief.
59E59’s inaugural VOLT festival, featuring three Karen Hartman plays, is now playing. The productions include The Lucky Star (directed by Noah Himmelstein); Goldie, Max and Milk (directed by Jackson Gay); and the world premiere of New Golden Age (directed by Jade King Carroll).
Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists runs April 30 - May 22 at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre Company. A co-world premiere with Philadelphia Theatre Company, the unconventional buddy comedy following two NYC sanitation workers is directed by Monteze Freeland.
Flint Rep’s New Works Festival runs April 29 - May 1. The featured staged readings are Karen Saari’s Rain on Fire, Ken Urban’s Danger and Opportunity, Nandita Shenoy’s The Future is Female…, and James Anthony Tyler’s Into the Side of a Hill.
Bedlam’s Do More: New Play Series runs April 2 - May 1. The reading series aims to cultivate “a more just, equitable, and inclusive next generation of classics” and includes Eleanor Burgess’ Sparks Fly Upwards, a.k. payne’s love i awethu further, Zack Fine’s Dennis, Emily Breeze’s Mother Says She's Shocked, and Talene Monahon’s The Good John Proctor.
Playwrights Realm’s 2022 INK’D Festival of New Plays runs May 2 - 5. The works-in-progress readings are Audley Puglisi’s the salt women (directed by abigail jean-baptiste), Will Brumley’s Pulling Leather: A Queer Rodeo Fantasia (directed by Carlos Armesto), Emma Horwitz’s MARY GETS HERS (directed by Josiah Davis), and Jeesun Choi’s Lost Coast (directed by Nana Dakin).
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Marys Seacole starts performances May 4th at Mosaic Theater Company in DC. Erin Ruffin directs the regional premiere “inspired by the real life of Mary Seacole, a British-Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who cared for soldiers during the Crimean War.”
JR ‘Nexus’ Russ’ Crossroads, Detours, and Exits starts performances May 4th for The Welders. The “part-storytelling, part-stand-up, part-history lesson” solo performance is the first in-person show for the rotating DC playwrights collective since 2019.
Gracie Gardner’s Athena starts performances May 5th at Writers Theatre. Jessica Fisch directs the kinetic two-hander about the nascent friendship between competitive high school fencing rivals.
Mfoniso Udofia’s Adia and Clora Snatch Joy and Marvin González De León’s Madre de Dios will have developmental readings May 5 - 8 as part of Round House’s National Capital New Play Festival. Udofia directs their own musical work, which is the conclusion of their Ufot Cycle, a multi-generational, nine-play meditation on American immigration through the story of one Nigerian family. Ricky Ramón directs De León’s post-environmental-apocalyptic family-drama-slash-biblical-myth.

digital theatre

The West End revival of Nick Payne’s Constellations — with four different cast options — is now available to stream on demand from the Donmar Warehouse through May 25th. Michael Longhurst directed all four duos: Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah, Peter Capaldi and Zoë Wanamaker, Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey, and Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O’Dowd.
BBL: Black Beginning Live premieres in-person and streams online at Ars Nova on April 30th. The “multidisciplinary variety cocktail” is curated and hosted by LEGACY, a Black Queer Production Collective.
The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown will stream the three-day festival The Gathering on Howlround from May 4-7. The multi-day event features “productions, readings, discussions and workshops focusing on climate change, immigration and indigeneity, with comprehensive live-streaming for all of our community.”
Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege, a virtual reading of one-acts, streams May 5th. The program showcases “four emotionally revealing short plays, all but one composed in a fury over the past six weeks...that bring to light the corruption and brutality of authoritarian regimes.”

2022-23 updates

Chicago Shakespeare Festival announced its initial 2022-23 line-up. Projects include All’s Well That Ends Well (directed by Shana Cooper), Measure for Measure (directed by Henry Godinez), Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights (adapted and directed by Emma Rice), The Comedy of Errors (adapted & directed by Barbara Gaines), and two world premiere musicals: Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s It Came From Outer Space (directed by Laura Braza) and Bekah Brunstetter and Ingrid Michaelson’s adaptation of The Notebook (directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams).
Yale Rep announced its 2022-23 season. The line-up includes Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (directed by James Bundy); Luis Alfaro’s Mojada (directed by Laurie Woolery); Christina Anderson’s the ripple, the wave that carried me home (directed by Tamilla Woodard); and the world premiere of Leah Nanako Winkler’s The Brightest Thing in the World (directed by Margot Bordelon).
Manhattan Theatre Club announced additional titles for its 2022-23 season. Projects include a Broadway production of Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living (directed by Jo Bonney), Jeff Augustin's Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (directed by Joshua Kahan Brody and featuring music by The Bengsons), Qui Nguyen's Poor Yella Rednecks (directed by May Adrales), and the world premiere of David Auburn's Summer, 1976 (directed by Daniel Sullivan).
Round House Theatre announced its 2022-23 season. The line-up includes the US premiere of Natasha Gordon’s Nine Night (directed by Timothy Douglas), Aaron Posner & Teller’s adaptation of The Tempest, August Wilson’s Radio Golf
(directed by Reginald Douglas), the musical Fela! (directed by Lili-Anne Brown), and two world premieres: Mary Kathryn Nagle’s On the Far End (directed by Margot Bordelon) and Jennifer, Who Is Leaving (written and directed by Morgan Gould).
Arena Stage announced its 2022-23 season. Projects include Frederick Douglass, Charles Randolph-Wright, and Marcus Hummon’s musical American Prophet; Philip Barry’s Holiday (directed by Anita Maynard-Losh); Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City; Brooke Maxwell & Jacob Richmond’s musical Ride the Cyclone (directed by Sarah Rasmussen, co-pro with McCarter); Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches (directed by János Szász) and two world premiere plays: Nathan Alan Davis’ The High Ground (directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian) and Kenneth Lin’s Exclusion.

award season

The Drama League Award nominations were announced. This year’s ceremony will feature two new categories — Outstanding Direction of a Play and Outstanding Direction of a Musical — and the previously announced Special Recognition Award recipients are Hugh Jackman, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Billy Crystal, and Willette Murphy Klausner.
The Outer Critics Circle Award nominations were announced. As a DC resident, I would be remiss not single out local legend Nancy Robinette’s nomination for Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic. (The way Nancy delivered “It’s a kimono” in Nina Raine’s Tribes back in 2014 deserved its own Helen Hayes Award.)
NJ Agwuna is the winner of the 2022 Barbara Whitman Award. The prize recognizes a female, trans, or non-binary early-career director and comes with a $10,000 cash award.

things I read/watched this week when I wasn’t reading melissa febos’ body work

Helen Shaw’s incisive review of Funny Girl, a real master class on how to critique a miscast performance without resorting to snark (Vulture)
Soraya Nadia McDonald’s interview with A Strange Loop’s creator Michael R. Jackson, actor Jaquel Spivey, and producer Barbara Whitman (Andscape)
Jen Silverman’s essay wrestling with the idea of art as moral guidance (Macdowell)
Mark Tiarks on the Exodus Ensemble, an immersive experience company that recently relocated to Santa Fe from Chicago (The New Mexican)
Alexis Soloski’s NYT review of The Skin of Our Teeth. Real ones have known for a long time that Gabby Beans is a star — I think about her performance as the goalie in Studio’s 2018 production of The Wolves on a weekly basis — and now everyone knows, as it should be.
Speaking of The Wolves: Sarah DeLappe wrote the screenplay for Bodies Bodies Bodies, a horror-comedy about “what can go wrong when a group of extremely online rich kids loses access to the Internet” and the trailer dropped this week:

that’s not a living wage

Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area and the most recently available 990 data. (You can read more about the methodology here.)

Carpenter, Olney Theatre Center: $40,000 (via Theatre Washington’s weekly newsletter)
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $53,074
Expenses (2020): $6.7 million / Executive Compensation: $139,053 (Artistic Director) / $137,681 (Managing Director)
Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Shakespeare Theatre Company: $42,640
Living Wage for DC: $52,549
Expenses (2020): $19.7 million / Executive Compensation: $280,005 (Executive Director)

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