the week of april 5 - 9, 2021
we need to talk about scott rudin and by talk I mean the man's got to GO
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Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
online theatre
The world premiere of Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley’s This American Wife will stream May 20–June 6, produced by FourthWall Theatrical, in association with Fake Friends and Jeremy O. Harris. The multi-camera dark comedy will be directed by Rory Pelsue, with dramaturgy from Cat Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert. Streaming live from a Long Island mansion, This American Wife “investigates the obsession, idolization, and all-consuming-hunger the women of The Real Housewives engender in many of us.”
Anna Deavere Smith’s performance of her new LCT commission By One Route, and By Another will stream April 10th at 4 PM ET. Smith “explores kindness, hospitality, and hope…featuring individual portraits of real-life figures, Margaret Mead, Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, Ntozake Shange, Trudy Howell, and Matthieu Ricard.”
Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s audio play Shadow/Land premieres April 13th at the Public Theater. Directed by Candis C. Jones, the drama is “the first installment of a 10-play cycle traversing the Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of disaster, evacuation, displacement, and urban renewal rippling in and beyond New Orleans.”
Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This Is Who I Am will be available on demand April 13-25 at Woolly Mammoth. The commission, directed by Evren Odcikin, explores “the unpredictable nature of grief and the delicacy of family connection across geographical and generational divides.”
this week in debacles: L.A. Stage Alliance
Before the awards ceremony: LASA had been criticized for “refusing to recognize co-productions, favoring instead to credit a single entity, usually the producing partner who provided the stage.” East West Players was not named during the awards, despite being a co-producer on several nominated productions, including Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap at Pasadena Playhouse and Jiehae Park’s Hannah And The Dread Gazebo at the Fountain Theatre.
LASA also made no efforts to provide ASL translation or captioning of the ceremony, despite the request of nominated company Deaf West Theatre. (I feel like this detail is getting buried in a lot of the coverage and not providing basic accessibility for the most prominent Deaf theatre company in the country is beyond the pale.)
March 30: During the awards ceremony, Hannah And The Dread Gazebo star Jully Lee’s name was mispronounced, and LASA used a photo of her castmate Monica Hong during the listing of nominees in her category.
March 31: East West Players, one of the largest Asian-American theatre companies in the country, issued a statement revoking their membership to the organization. AD Producing Artistic Director Snehal Desai wrote:
You have stood behind an embarrassingly outdated policy of only recognizing one theatre per production—a patently false assertion and an exclusionary situation that you have set up. Every time East West Players co-produces in an effort to bring Asian-American actors more visibility in L.A. theatres, only the other, predominantly white organization is listed and uplifted. This is what erasure of our work and our community looks like. To the Ovation Awards and LA Stage Alliance we do not exist, nor does our artistic voice matter. Our craft and our artistic community are secondary to the predominantly white institutions and can swiftly be ignored and forgotten
In response, dozens of L.A. theatres posted similar statements in solidarity.
March 31: LASA responded with an “apology”, along with an action plan to create a task force, advisory board, and an operations strategy in response to its mistakes. (Plot twist: the organization had actually been sitting on this institutional plan for months, which had been initially developed by the LASA staff before they were all furloughed in June 2020.)
It’s such a mess, but if a purported service organization isn't willing to do the bare minimum of anti-racist work to serve its community then it shouldn't exist. (If you want to read more, I highly recommend LA-based playwright/composer Howard Ho’s American Theatre essay on the greater systemic issues and leadership failures that lead to LASA’s implosion.)
2021-22 season updates
Williamstown Theatre Festival announced its summer 2020 live outdoor season. Productions include Outside on Main: Nine Solo Plays by Black Playwrights (a short play series curated by Robert O’Hara), the world premiere of Dawn Landes and Daniel Goldstein’s musical Row (directed by Tyne Rafaeli), and the world premiere immersive experience Alien/Nation (devised by The Forests of Arden in collaboration with Eric Berryman and Jen Silverman; directed by Michael Arden).
St. Ann’s Warehouse announced its first indoor performances. The theatre will host a pair of concerts from The Bengsons, performing their new work-in-progress The Broken Ear Setlist: Songs from Ohio.
South Coast Rep announced its 2021 spring/summer season. The line-up includes Allison Gregory’s digital, immersive TYA adaptation of Red Riding Hood; an outdoor performance of José Cruz González’s American Mariachi; and a digital Pacific Playwrights Festival, featuring readings of York Walker’s Covenant, Charlie Oh’s Coleman ’72, Shayan Lotfi’s Park-e Laleh, Christine Quintana’s Clean, and Harold & Lillian, based on the documentary by Daniel Raim, with book and lyrics by Dan Collins and music by Julianne Wick Davis.
Milwaukee Rep announced its 2021-22 season. The line-up includes Antonio's Song/I Was Dreaming of a Son and Four Women Prove That Age Is Just A Number, two world premieres from Dael Orlandersmith; Lydia R. Diamond’s Toni Stone (directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden); Titanic: The Musical (directed by Mark Clements); Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (adapted by Ken Ludwig, directed by Marti Lyons); As You Like It (adapted by Daryl Cloran); Steel Magnolias (directed by Laura Braza); and the world premiere of Matt Zembrowski’s Dad's Season Tickets, a musical comedy directed by Ryan Quinn.
Barrington Stage announced its 2021 indoor and outdoor season. The season includes Joseph Dougherty’s Chester Bailey (directed by Ron Lagomarsino), Mark St. Germain’s Eleanor (directed by Henry Stram), Alec Wilkinson’s Sister Sorry (directed by Richard Hamburger), Mark St. Germain and Zoe Sarnak’s musical A Crossing (directed and co-conceived by Joshua Bergasse), and the world premiere of Jessica Provenz’s Boca (directed by Julianne Boyd).
assorted news
Erika Dickerson-Despenza is the winner of the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The honored play, cullud wattah, traces the effects of the Flint water crisis on three generations of Black women. The judges also awarded special commendations to finalists Kimber Lee for The Water Palace and Ife Olujobi for Jordans.
The Guggenheim Foundation announces its 2021 fellows. Theatre recipients include playwrights Mike Lew and Kaneza Schaal, and performance artist/director Sarah Cameron Sunde.
things I read this week
The Hollywood Reporter’s long-overdue coverage of Scott Rudin’s abusive behavior, which doesn’t even qualify as a “worst-kept secret” because it was common knowledge and repeatedly chronicled by the press. For over two decades, Rudin’s cruelty has been simultaneously lionized and downplayed — because people value proximity to power over the safety of vulnerable workers, and because we accept stories about monstrous bosses as necessary currency in the theatre industry — and it’s gross and shameful. (And it’s completely unsurprising that so many online theatre publications are silent on this news. Grow a spine and a conscience, Playbill!)
Esmé Weijun Wang on how streaming productions during the pandemic made theatre accessible to her for the first time (The NYT Magazine)
Joey Sims’ behind-the-scenes account of the triumphs and tech issues of Theatre in Quarantine’s creative process (The Brooklyn Rail)
Diep Tran on the theatre industry’s anti-Asian problem, and how the racist stereotypes and erasure perpetuated on white-dominated stages have real-world consequences (American Theatre)
Helen Shaw’s review of the sound installation Blindness — read the whole thing, but especially the last paragraph (Vulture)
Anita Gates’ NYT obituary for playwright Arthur Kopit, who died last Friday at the age of 83.
