the week of april 29 - may 5, 2023

cotillions, bullfighting, immersive wrestling

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icymi: bills, bills, bills

This month’s money diary is from an MFA candidate in dramaturgy making $23,000 a year as they juggle a relentless teaching & rehearsal schedule with RuPaul’s Drag Race and Ursula Le Guin:

bills, bills, bills #12

The full archive of past money diaries is available here. A big thank you to everyone who responded to our call for new contributors! (It’s not too late to apply!)

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productions

• The world premiere of David Israel Reynoso/Optika Moderna’s La Lucha is now playing through June 4th at La Jolla Playhouse as part of the WOW Festival. The immersive theatrical experience, inspired by Lucha Libre, “transports visitors to a realm of ringside thrills and backstage secrets.”

• Colette Robert’s The Cotillion is now playing through May 27th in a co-pro from The Movement Theatre Company and New Georges. Robert also directs the world premiere, a real-time exploration of a Black debutante ball, featuring music and lyrics by Dionne McClain-Freeney and choreography by nicHi douglas. (The play’s full title is The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel.)

• The world premiere of Kenneth Lin’s Exclusion is now playing at Arena Stage in DC. The comedy about an acclaimed historian’s book on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 being optioned by a hit-making Hollywood producer is directed by Trip Cullman.

• Monsoon Wedding is now playing through June 25th at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Conceived and directed by the 2001 film’s director Mira Nair, the musical adaptation tells the story of “two families converging on Delhi for an arranged marriage as festivities unfurl in song and dance, expectations and reality collide, and chaos ensues.”

• Jenny Connell Davis’ Matinicus: The Story of Abigail Burgess is now playing at Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA. Set in 1850s Maine, Katie Chidester directs the monologue play following a lighthouse keeper’s teenage daughter after a violent winter storm forces her to assume her father’s duties.

• E.M. Lewis’ True Story is now playing at Artists Rep in Portland. Luan Schooler directs the noir-inspired mystery about a grieving writer hired to ghostwrite the biography of a wealthy man acquitted of murdering his wife.

• Tectonic Theater Project’s Here There Are Blueberries runs May 7-28 at Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC. Moisés Kaufman directs the piece he co-wrote with Amanda Gronich, which centers on an album of never-before-seen concentration camp photos and the archivists and descendants unraveling the story behind the shocking images.

• James Ijames’ Good Bones starts performances May 10th at Studio Theatre. The world premiere exploring “gentrification and belonging, displacement and upward mobility, and being haunted by a legacy you’re only just beginning to understand” is directed by Psalmayene 24.

• Annie Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer runs May 11-13 from New York Live Arts, Chocolate Factory Theater and Media Art Exploration. The lecture-performance “uses the predictive text model GPT-3 (a precursor to ChatGPT) to generate speculative versions of Aeschylus’ Prometheia trilogy. Each night a chorus of AI-generated Greek masks performs a different iteration, while Dorsen engages the audience in reflections on power, knowledge, and doubt.”

• The world premiere of Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s Torera runs May 12 - June 4 at Houston’s Alley Theatre. Tatiana Pandiani directs and choregraphs the story of a young Mexican woman’s quest to break into the male-dominated world of bullfighting.

festivals

• The Pacific Playwrights Festival runs May 5-7 at South Coast Rep. Readings include Anika & Britta Johnson and Nick Green’s musical Dr. Silver (directed by Logan Vaughn and dramaturged by Otis Cortez Ramsey-Zöe); Clarence Coo’s Chapters of a Floating Life (directed by Jesca Prudencio and dramaturged by Sonia Desai); Bleu Beckford-Burrell’s Crasiss (directed by Lili-Anne Brown and
  dramaturged by Gabrielle Randle-Bent); Galilee, 34 (written and directed by Eleanor Burgess with creative collaborator Lisa Rothe); and Noa Gardner’s The Staircase (directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch).

• Artemis Montague’s She Sings Me Home will have a reading on May 6th as part of Round House Theatre’s National Capital New Play Festival. Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi directs the “modern queer-, trans, and Black-led story in the African American musical tradition about young love and alliances in a mental health institution’s under-21 ward.”

workshops & readings

• Jennifer Barclay and Hannah Khalil’s Murdered Men Do Bleed and Drip will have a workshop reading May 6 & 7 at Mosaic Theater Company in DC. Jared Mezzocchi and Jim Culleton direct the cross-continental collaboration — the two-person show features one actress in DC, one in Dublin — that “affirms the strength of women of all nationalities and the universal need for connection, with the play’s action taking place simultaneously in two countries during a global live performance-meets-digital theater event made specifically for this moment.”

streaming

• The world premiere of Nathan Alan Davis’ Eternal Life Part 1 is now available to stream on demand through May 14th from the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Morgan Green directs the new fable following a future-set American family navigating “space travel, talking animals, a state-of-the-art home, while attempting to answer the same big question: how to live a meaningful life.”

• San Francisco’s PlayGround Festival will be simulcast online May 8-28. This year’s line-up features developmental staged readings and premiere presentations from Christian Wilburn, Lauren Gorski, Jennifer Le Blanc, Akaina Ghosh, Anne Yumi Kobori, and Jacob Marx Rice.

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2023-24 season announcements

• Oklahoma City Repertory Theater announced its 2023-24 season. The company will present Eric John Meyer’s The Antelope Party (directed by Jesse Jou), Anthony Hudson’s Looking for Tiger Lily, Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone (directed by Nikki DiLoreto), Under the Radar: On the Road, and the audio-guided theatrical walking tour Of A Mind: Oklahoma City (created by Kelly Kerwin, Emily Zemba, and Listen&Breathe Movement by Hui Cha Poos).

• Theatrical Outfit announced its upcoming season. The Atlanta theatre will present Stew & Heidi Rodewald’s Passing Strange, A Christmas Story, Clark Young and Derek Goldman’s Remember This: The Lessons of Jan Karski, Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, and Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (directed by Matt Torney).

• Indiana Repertory Theatre announced its 2023-24 season. The line-up includes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (adapted by David Catlin), Cheryl L. West’s Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, R. Eric Thomas’ The Folks at Home, Vanessa Severo’s Frida…A Self Portrait, and Little Shop of Horrors.

• Writers Theatre announced its upcoming season. The Glencoe, IL theatre will produce Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (directed by Braden Abraham), The Band’s Visit (directed by Zi Alikhan), Hershey Felder’s Monsieur Chopin: A Play with Music (directed by Joel Zwick), Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King (directed by Lili-Anne Brown), and Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol.

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residencies & commissions

• Yale Rep announced four new commissioned artists. The theatre will develop new works from  Guadalís Del Carmen, Dave Harris, Rachel Lynett, and Sanaz Toossi.

• Rattlestick Theater announced its inaugural Terrence McNally New Works Incubator fellows. Molly Bicks, HyoJeong Choi, and Haygen-Brice Walker will receive “a $5,000 stipend, personalized mentorship, and a three-week incubation period, followed by a one-week developmental workshop and presentation of their work.”