the week of april 5-11, 2024

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Ryan Adelsheim

Note: This edition is almost as long as the Adrienne Rich biography I finally finished reading last week. (I also read Jessica Simpson’s memoir; I am large, I contain multitudes.) It may cut off in your email, so you can also read it on the full site.

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icymi: bills, bills, bills

This month’s money diary — from a freelance sound designer juggling tech rehearsals, various critters, and building a tiny house for their father — dropped on Wednesday:

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world premieres

• Uncommon Productions’ The Poisoner runs April 6 - 21 at La MaMa. The neo-noir thriller “unraveling the deception, abuse of power, and utter negligence of early 2000s Midwestern water politics” is written by M. M. Haney and directed and developed by Lee Sunday Evans.

• Tony Meneses’ A Thousand Maids starts previews April 6th at Two River Theater in Red Bank, NJ. Aneesha Kudtarkar directs the new comedy about “Cordelia, who needs to design a maid’s costume, but she can’t stop thinking about The Help and Maid in Manhattan and Gone with the Wind and more as she tries to find a way to show these women for who they really are.”

• Majkin Holmquist’s Stargazers starts previews April 8th at Page 73 in NYC. Colette Robert directs the new work about “a grieving mother contemplating selling her Kansas farm—guided, she says, by the ghost of her daughter. While her ex-husband and neighbors fight to keep the land, an East Coast developer hopes to build a progressive utopia that would alter the landscape forever.”

• Inda Craig-Galván’s A Jumping-Off Point runs April 10 - May 5 at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD. The dark comedy about a young Black screenwriter battling plagiarism accusations from her white grad school classmate “forcing a reckoning on representation, privilege, and who gets to tell what kinds of stories” is directed by Jade King Carroll.

• Bekah Brunstetter’s The Game starts performances April 10th at Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill, NC. Vivienne Benesch directs the “hilarious modern adaptation of Lysistrata” centered on “a massively engrossing online game that’s wreaking havoc on the lives of couples everywhere.”

• Ife Olujobi’s Jordans runs April 11 - May 5 at The Public Theater in NYC. The “bitingly funny, wildly imaginative new play set in an overwhelmingly white workplace…as two young, Black social climbers are forced together and torn apart by their race, ambition, and otherworldly circumstances” is directed by Whitney White.

• Lisa B. Thompson’s The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body starts performances April 12 at The VORTEX in Austin, TX as part of the 2024 Fusebox Festival. Rudy Ramirez directs the choreopoem “meditating on Black women’s experiences from the perspectives of mind, body, and spirit, culminating in an audience dance party and an invitation for Black women to share their own contributions to Black feminist wisdom.” (It will also livestream on April 25th; I’ll remind you.)

productions

• Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane is now in previews on Broadway. Anne Kauffman directs Rachel McAdams (who should’ve been Oscar-nominated for last year’s film adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I’m 1000% serious) in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Herzog’s 2017 play about “a single mother faced with seemingly insurmountable odds who relies on unflagging optimism and humor, along with the wisdom of the women around her who have become a makeshift family, to take on each new day.”

• Sarah Kane’s Cleansed runs April 5-27 at Catastrophic Theatre in Houston. The “explosively aching, hauntingly poetic, and disarmingly tender fever-dream fable of unimaginable brutality and miraculous beauty” is co-directed by T Lavoid Thiebaud and Jason Nodler.

• Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma starts previews April 5th at The Denver Center. Meredith McDonough directs the “zany, refreshingly contemporary, joyous, irreverent take in conversation with the Regency novel.”

• The US premiere of Zinnie Harris’ Macbeth (an undoing) runs April 5 - May 4 at NYC’s Theatre for a New Audience. Harris also directs the 1930s Scotland-set reimagining of “what might be the gaps in Shakespeare’s story, undoing the play as we know it and retelling it with Lady Macbeth at its center.”

• Mike Lew’s Tiger Style! runs April 6-28 at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. The “claws-out look at the triumphs and traumas of tiger parenting and what it takes to make it out the other side alive” is directed by Jeffrey Lo.

• Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Macbeth starts previews April 9th in a 40,000 square foot soundstage at 1301 W St NE in DC. Simon Godwin directs Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in “the thrilling account of how our minds deceive us and how a guilty conscience can undo us all.” (The first wave of tickets sold out, but STC is releasing more inventory right now — literally now, 10 AM on Friday, April 5th. There will also be a daily TodayTix lottery. Get thee to Brentwood!)

• Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King runs April 11-28 at Baltimore Center Stage. The Pulitzer-winning comedy about a raucous friend group juggling family drama while preparing for a high-stakes Memphis cook-off is directed by Christopher Betts.

• Stewart Melton and Finn Anderson’s Islander: A New Musical starts previews April 11th at Olney Theatre Center in Maryland. Conceived and directed by Amy Draper (with staging & associate direction by Eve Nicol), the “modern myth features two actors who use live mixing and looping technology to create a sonic landscape as dramatic as the Scottish coastline.”

workshops & readings

• T. Adamson’s No Nothing will have a reading on April 9th as part of The Vineyard’s Works in Progress series. Keenan Tyler Oliphant directs the “family play featuring serpents, Arthurian legends, disembodied voices, and a malfunctioning robotic cat.”

festivals

• La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival is now running through April 7th. Presented at various locations on UC San Diego’s campus, the four-day festival is a “celebration of immersive, interactive and breathtaking experiences from local, national and international artists.”

• The 2024 Fusebox Festival runs April 7-14 at various sites across Austin, TX. The annual performance festival’s line-up includes Tania El Khoury’s Cultural Exchange Rate, Sam Green’s 32 Sounds, Justin Talplacido Shoulder’s Anito, Abby Z and the New Utility’s Radioactive Practice, Dorian Wood’s Canto de Todes, and three days of eclipse-related programming entitled In the Path of Totality.

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2024-25 season updates

• The Wilma Theater announced its 2024-25 season. The Philadelphia theatre will produce Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance (directed by Morgan Green, co-pro with Woolly Mammoth), Inua Ellams’ The Half-God of Rainfall (directed by Lindsay Smiling), Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke (directed by Blanka Zizka), and Sarah Cameron Sunde’s translation of Jon Fosse’s A Summer Day (directed by Yury Urnov).

• The Goodman announced its 2024-25 season. The Chicago theatre’s line-up includes Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Inherit the Wind (directed by Henry Godinez), Eboni Booth's Primary Trust (directed by Malkia Stampley), James Ijames's Fat Ham (directed by Tyrone Phillips), Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (directed by Susan V. Booth and starring Helen Hunt), the musical The Color Purple (directed by Lili-Anne Brown), and two world premieres: Zora Howard's Bust, An Afrocurrentist Play (directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz) and an untitled play from Jordan Harrison (directed by David Cromer).

• Signature Theatre in NYC announced its 2024-25 season. The line-up includes Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (directed by Les Waters), a developmental presentation of Melis Aker’s Fish (directed by Tatiana Pandiani), and two world premieres: Dominique Morisseau's Bad Kreyol (directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene) and Samuel D. Hunter's Grangeville.

• Actors Theatre of Louisville announced its 2024-25 season. The company will produce Candrice Jones’ Flex (directed by Kendra Ware), Kate Hamill's Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy (directed by Jennifer Pennington), Kentucky Shakespeare's production of The Importance of Being Earnest (directed by Amy Attaway), Redline Performing Arts’ production of the musical The Color Purple, a to-be-announced Hanukkah tale (directed by Amelia Acosta Powell), Indian Ink Theatre Company’s Mrs Krishnan's Party (directed by Justin Lewis), a Juneteenth concert from UNIVERSES, and two world premieres: Larry Muhammad’s Who Killed Alberta Jones? and Andrew Newton Schafflein and Eric Sharp’s Won't you be my May-bor? (directed by Emily Tarquin, co-pro with Drag Daddy Productions).

• Round House Theatre announced its 2024-25 season. The Bethesda, MD theatre’s line-up includes Mfoniso Udofia’s Sojourners (directed by Valerie Curtis Newton), Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, Rajiv Joseph’s King James, and the world premieres of Sharyn Rothstein’s Bad Books (directed by Ryan Rilette) and A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical (directed and choreographed by Marlo Hunter).

• George Street Playhouse announced its 2024-25 season. The New Brunswick, NJ theatre will produce Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me (directed by Laiona Michelle), Cary Gitter’s Gene & Gilda (directed by Joe Brancato), Robert Montano’s Small (directed by Jessi D. Hill), Rajiv Joseph’s King James, Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon’s The Shark is Broken (directed by David Saint).

• Boise Contemporary Theater announced its upcoming season. The line-up includes Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me; Benjamin Scheuer’s The Lion; Daf James’ On the Other Hand, We're Happy; Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God; and the world premiere of Novid Parsi’s The Life You Gave Me.

a 2024-27 (!) season update

• Ten Baltimore theatre companies will produce all of August Wilson’s Century Cycle over a three-year period. Presenting the late playwright's ten iconic plays about Black American life in chronological order, a different Baltimore company will present one play each throughout the 2024 to 2027 seasons. The participating theatres are Arena Players, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Baltimore Center Stage, ArtsCentric, Fell’s Point Corner Theatre, and others to be announced.

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award season

• The 2024 Lucille Lortel Award nominations were announced. John J. Caswell Jr.’s Wet Brain (Playwrights Horizons/MCC) received eight nominations, while the musical Buena Vista Social Club (Book by Marco Ramirez, The Atlantic) and David Adjmi’s Stereophonic (Playwrights Horizons) both received seven.

• Beth Hyland’s Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia is the 2024 recipient of Williamstown Theatre Festival's L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. Hyland will receive both a $10,000 award and a $10,000 commission to write another play. Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia — Hyland’s “tragicomic play exploring women's creativity and madness as love and art collide with supernatural consequences” — will have a reading this summer at Williamstown.

• Christopher Chen and Sonya Kelly are two of the recipients of the 2024 Windham-Campbell Prizes. The annual award recognizes eight writers for literary achievement across four categories (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama); each individual receives $175,000 to support their work. (One of my favorite writers and cultural critics, Hanif Abdurraqib, also won. His latest book came out last week and his entire oeuvre is worthy of your time, but my faves are Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest or A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.)

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call for submissions

• Tom O'Connor Consulting Group is now accepting applicants for its All Rise Initiative through April 9th. The program provides individually tailored, pro bono mentorship to arts administrators of color and from all populations historically excluded and underrepresented in the arts.

• Page 73’s 2025 Playwriting Fellowship and Writers Group are accepting applications through April 28th. The two development programs are for early-career playwrights. Fellows receive $20,000, plus a $10,000 development budget and a public workshop; Writers Group members receive $3,000.

• The 2024-2025 BIPOC Critics Lab Cohort is accepting applications through May 15th. Hosted by The Public Theater, The Lab is a mentorship and training program created by Jose Solís as a first-of-its-kind program designed to train and create work by emerging BIPOC theater journalists.

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what i read/watched this week when i wasn’t listening to cowboy carter like everyone else

• Alexis Soloski’s NYT obituary for playwright Christopher Durang, who died this week at age 75 (gift link)

• The trailer for Annie Baker’s debut film Janet Planet, coming to select theaters June 21st.

• An interview with two of my favorite DC artists, Tom Story and Holly Twyford, about their current collaboration (Bryna Turner’s At the Wedding at Studio Theatre, which I’m seeing this weekend), the necessity of queer stories, and why still-recovering DC theatres need to be investing in local talent.