the week of august 22-26, 2022
HR is not your friend
You’re reading Nothing for the Group, a newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes. If you like this sort of thing:
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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim
some housekeeping
I'm taking a real vacation next week! I'm spending ten days driving and hiking around the west coast of Norway. Looking forward to weeping at the majesty of the natural world and being in a country where everyone knows how to spell my last name.
Here's what you can expect in terms of content during my absence:
Next week's round-up will drop early on Thursday, September 1st
The fourth installment of Bills, Bills, Bills will be out on Wednesday, September 7th
No usual weekly round-up on September 9th, but I'll be back in action on September 16th
if you read one thing this week
Playwright Mashuq Mushtaq Deen published an open letter on why he resigned from his New Dramatists residency, citing the discrimination, gaslighting, and punitive treatment he experienced after raising equity concerns to the Board. (Deen was also a Board member and served on the EDAI subcommittee.)
It’s a wrenching, clear-eyed read and a reminder that HR exists to protect companies, not the well-being and humanity of workers. As many theatres are establishing or refining their internal accountability structures, it’s not enough to declare “it’s okay, we have HR now!”, as if its mere presence is a get-out-of-jail-free card. These systems can still perpetuate harm. As Deen writes:“Most corporate systems are white supremacist systems, and pandemic or no pandemic, New Dramatists’ corporate structure is no different. The HR process I was forced through, for example, concentrated power and information at the very top, within a small group of people who were mostly white; it kept information from the playwrights, and isolated me from my peers; it refused to meaningfully include playwrights and/or BIPOC people within the process; and the board chair became most angry when I started sharing my experience of what was happening to me with my colleagues…
These corporate, white-supremacist processes are not equitable, are not driven by community values — and they are soul crushing. We heal the fabric of the community not by excising any one part, but by reweaving the threads of the fabric so they are stronger. We do this with both anger and love. I hope as a theater community we can hold both, and hold the fact that they are inextricably linked.
in person theatre
Anna Deavere Smith’s revised Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 starts performances August 28th at ART. Taibi Magar directs the new, five-person version of Smith’s original solo performance derived from interviews with more than 350 Los Angelinos on the civil unrest following the acquittal in Rodney King’s police brutality case.
Andrea Thome’s Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) runs August 30 - September 25 at La Jolla Playhouse. José Zayas directs the bilingual En Garde Arts production inspired by interviews with undocumented Latine immigrants that “takes the form of a fandango, a community celebration where stories are brought to life through live performance, music, and dance.”
Ethan Lipton’s No Place to Go starts previews August 30th at Signature Theatre in Virginia. Artistic director Matthew Gardiner directs Bobby Smith in the “musical ode to the unemployed with an enterprising twist.”
James Ijames’ The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington runs September 1 - October 9 at Steppenwolf. Whitney White directs the dark comedy about the recently widowed, bed-ridden ‘Mother of America’ and the “form-shifting fever dream that takes us deep into the uncomfortable and horrific ramifications of this country’s original sin.”
Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists starts previews September 1st at Northlight. The unconventional buddy comedy about two NYC sanitation workers is directed by Cody Estle.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody runs September 2 - October 2 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. The adaptation of the 15th-century morality play is co-directed by Susan V. Booth and Tinashe Kajese-Bolden.
digital theatre
Playwrights Horizons is releasing a bunch of audio content next week:
The Detour Series — two commissioned, site-specific audio journeys through Hell's Kitchen — premieres September 1st. Kathleen Capdesuñer directs Opalanietet’s West Side Quest and Christin Eve Cato's The Mayor of Hell's Kitchen Presents: A Time Traveling Journey Through NYC's Wild West. The three-week-long project is a collaboration with The Parsnip Ship.
Agnes Borinsky’s The Marriage of Earth and Sky, directed by Brooke O’Hara, drops August 30 as part of the fiction podcast Soundstage. PH is also producing the world premiere of Borinsky’s The Trees next winter.
across the pond
London’s New Diorama Theatre announced that it will deliberately cease producing in 2023 as part of the radical initiative Intervention 01: A Season of No Shows. New Diorama will also go dark on social media until next year and directs all fundraising towards a private season of artist development. The company hopes “to break the current short-term programming and development cycles that are exhausting artists and stifling creative risk.” Artistic director David Byrne elaborates further:
“Post-pandemic, we promised to listen more and do better. The sheer catalytic energy required to ‘bring theatre back’ has left artists on the brink of burn-out and exhaustion. So New Diorama are going to do the most radical thing we can imagine: stop. Marking a once-in-a-generation moment, we’ll work behind the scenes to return in 2023 with a renewed artistic vision, a re-energised artist family, and our boldest-ever slate of work.”
My friend John King, Nothing for the Group’s unofficial Dublin correspondent, also sent this news from Ireland:
“The Arts Minister Catherine Martin launched a Basic Income for Artists pilot scheme this year, which will see 2,000 artists receive €325 per week for three years. Places on the scheme will be appointed by lottery: 9,000 applied in May and the shortlist of those who meet the eligibility criteria will be announced in September. The scheme comes after years of campaigning from arts lobby group National Campaign for the Arts, who have been really effective since their formation in 2009. There has been criticism of how the scheme is being set up; specifically, that artists with disabilities have been de-facto excluded (at the risk of losing Disability Allowance), that the research criteria and timeframe set out by the department is too narrow, that certain arts jobs have inexplicably been deemed ineligible to apply (stage managers can't apply, while architects can). Praxis, our Artist Trade Union, set up in 2020, lays out all these problems here.”
call for applications: artistic caucus
The shared Artistic Caucus — comprised of Readers and Think Tank members — will actively engage in reading new plays and proposals and facilitating relationships with artists on behalf of all four theaters. Applications close this Sunday.
Full disclosure: For the last eight months, I’ve been working with these theatres to document the process of building this program. (I’ll be writing something more public and substantial about this in the coming months.) But trust me: you want to collaborate with these people.
have a great vacation! sounds beautiful