the week of august 2-8, 2024

e-blast from the past

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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Morton | Editorial Support: Ryan Adelsheim

* This edition was written & pre-scheduled last week before I went out of town, so if there are egregious omissions, that’s why.

world premieres

• Kyle Bass’ Citizen James, or the Young Man Without a Country starts performances August 2nd at Syracuse Stage. Joann Maria Yarrow directs the one-man show about a “young James Baldwin seeking refuge in Paris from the racist violence of America in the 1940s.”

• Star Finch’s Shipping & Handling runs August 8 - September 7 at Crowded Fire in San Francisco. The “theatrical experience constructed as a night out at the theatre told in reverse, scrambling our historical expectations around Black plays and unmapping our limited vision of a future AI world” is directed by Lisa Marie Rollins and dramaturged by Leigh Rondon-Davis.

• Larry Muhammad’s Who Killed Alberta Jones? runs August 8-10 at Actors Theatre of Louisville in partnership with Redline Performing Arts and the Parks Alliance of Louisville. LaShondra Hood directs the gripping drama about “the first Black woman to pass the bar in Kentucky, the attorney who negotiated Muhammad Ali's first boxing contract, and Louisville’s first woman prosecutor whose 1965 unsolved murder still haunts the city.”

productions

• David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power starts performances August 6th at Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. Ethan Heard directs the “visionary musical fantasia and exhilarating ride through political absurdity with a face-off between Chinese and American exceptionalism.”

summer festivals

• Sofia Alvarez’s KILL CORP will have a reading on August 2nd at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Portia Krieger directs the “dark comedy about a newly pregnant woman who realizes that the only way to be a working mom in Corporate America is to kill all of her bosses.”

• New York Stage & Film continues through August 4th at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. The final weekend’s offerings includes a musical workshop of Kait Kerrigan, Anne Eisendrath, and Ian Eisendrath’s The Heart (directed by Christopher Ashley) and readings of Adam Chanler-Beret and Grace McLean’s After Peter (directed by Tyler Thomas) and Zack Fine, Bryce Pinkham, Kirya Traber, and Rona Siddiqui’s Dignity, Always Dignity (directed by Zack Fine).

• The South Carolina New Play Festival runs August 8-11 in Greenville, SC. The line-up includes Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ The Josh White Project (directed by Tamilla Woodard), Adam Gwon’s All the World’s a Stage (directed by Jonathan Silverstein with music direction by Andrea Grody), Jake Brasch’s Trip Around the Sun (directed by Shelley Butler), Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour’s The Dark Lady (directed by Sarna Lapine with music direction by Anessa Marie), and Melvin Tunstall III and Greg Borowsky’s Stuntboy (directed by Banji Aborisade with music direction by Nick Wilders).

• LimeFest 2024 is now running through August 17th at The Tank in NYC. Highlights of the festival, which features over 50 events, include Ariel Stess’ Kara & Emma & Barbara & Miranda (directed by Meghan Finn), Caitlin Beitel’s A Vulva Named Carol, Anike Sonuga’s Girls! Girls! Girls, Madi Fabber’s Best in Show, Courtney Taylor’s revelations from the first and last ever rehearsal of THEY SAY I DID SOMETHING BAD: an unauthorized taylor swift parody musical about the life of the unabomber ted kaczynski presented by the bridgebrook college drama club (directed by Abby Davis), Jordanna Hernandez’s Por Lo Que Soy (directed by Gregory Keng Stresser), and multiple productions from the new collective Dyke Theater Co. and the artist-led collaboration group TAG.

2024-25 season updates

• HERE Arts Center announce its upcoming season. The line-up includes Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s A Meal; John Glover and Kelley Rourke’s new opera Eat the Document (directed by Kristin Marting with music direction by Mila Henry), Joshua William Gelb and Theater in Quarantine’s [Untitled Miniature], and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s RHEOLOGY (co-pro with Ma-Yi and Bushwick Starr).