the week of december 13 - 17, 2021

we made it through another year

Dec 17, 2021

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in-person theatre

Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew starts Broadway performances on December 21st. The production is directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson — who also directed the world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2016 — and stars Phylicia Rashad.
Glasgow-based theater company Vox Motus’ Flight opened at Studio Theatre on December 16th. The theatrical installation mixes “graphic novels with exquisite diorama” as audience members view the journey of two Afghan orphan refugees in miniature from individual booths with headphones.
Keen Company’s Hear/Now: LIVE runs through December 19th. The reinvented radio broadcast for the stage features two world premieres by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and Deb Margolin.

digital theatre

Jonathan Spector’s Jared and Ivanka’s Parent-Teacher Conference at the Maurice J. Feldman Day School is now available from Playing on Air. Directed by Daniel Aukin, the short audio play commission features Paul Sparks, Cindy Cheung, Tracee Chimo Pallero, and Thomas Jay Ryan.

awards

The 2021 Steinberg Playwright Awards were announced. This year’s recipients are Jeff Augustin, Clare Barron, Eboni Booth, Idris Goodwin, Ike Holter, Paola Lázaro, Haruna Lee, Mike Lew, Ife Olujobi, and Jiehae Park. Each writer receives $10,000.
Dominic Colón is the inaugural winner of the Write It Out! prize. The award, founded by one in two scribe Donja R. Love, is for playwrights living with HIV and includes a $5,000 award (funded by Billy Porter) and additional support from GLAAD to hire a dramaturg in order to develop a new work.
Radha Blank is the inaugural recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award. The honor includes “a $35,000 cash prize to create a new work, as well as a residency at the Hermitage in Sarasota County, Florida, and a developmental workshop in New York.” (This is also an excellent reminder that I need to watch The Forty-Year-Old Version already.)

2022 season updates

Roundabout announced its 10th annual Underground Reading Series. The plays, which will run January 18-21, include Liz Appel's Bells Like Hooves (directed by May Adrales), Daria Miyeko Marinelli’s Beautiful Blessed Child (directed by Miranda Cornell), York Walker’s Covenant (directed by Lili-Anne Brown), and Noah Diaz’s You Will Get Sick (directed by Will Davis).
Second Stage announced its 2022 Judith Champion New Voices Reading Series. The selected plays for one-night-only readings are Danny Tejera’s Toros (directed by David Mendizábal, January 18), Vivian J.O. Barnes’ The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes (directed by Cristina Angeles, January 24) and Susan Xu’s Yellow Dream$ (directed by May Adrales, January 31).

assorted news

Chicago’s Sideshow Theatre Company announced ten new company members. The new ensemble members are estrellita beatriz, Adelina Feldman-Schultz, Hanna Kime, Tina Muñoz Pandya, and Shariba Rivers; the new artistic associates are Sam Boeck, Olivia Canaday, Sydney Charles, Micah Figueroa, and Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom. Now under the artistic leadership of Regina Victor, this is the second company expansion this year to include predominantly BIPOC artists.

that’s not a living wage

Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area. (You can read more about the methodology here.)

Press Assistant, Matt Ross PR: $39,000
Living Wage for NYC: $51,323
Production and Rental Coordinator, Imagination Stage: $35,500-$38,000
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $53,385
Logistics Coordinator, National Council for the Traditional Arts: $40,000
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $53,385
Literary Manager, Boston Court Pasadena: $39,000 ($25/hour, 30 hours/week)
Living Wage for Los Angeles County, CA: $42,825 (I’m not an economist but this feels rather low for L.A.!)

In related news: Actors’ Equity released a national study of nearly 50 state and local grant-making agencies and found that “fewer than 10 percent required performers to be paid a living wage as part of their grantmaking.” Fewer than 12 percent of these agencies required a commitment to diversity and inclusion from applicants, yet “82 percent used a rubric that included some diversity and inclusion criteria.” Makes total sense! No glaring issues there!

Once more, for the people in the back: if you want to create an anti-racist, equitable work environment: pay your workers more money and enact policies that respect their lives in and outside of work. It's not that hard but it requires a shift in resources, philosophy, and power, which devoted Nothing for the Group readers know is a next-to-impossible ask for some artistic and executive leaders in this country.

the one thing I read this week besides undergraduate papers & succession thinkpieces

Jenna Clark Embrey on re-thinking the dreaded talkback and how theatres can build healthy, sustainable engagement initiatives that manage expectations and reduce harm. (American Theatre)

This is the last weekly round-up of the year. I’m currently drafting a “highs and lows of 2021” post for paid subscribers, which I’ll send out sometime in the next two weeks. (I will be decompressing from a hectic few months by doing absolutely nothing except maybe watching my top three Christmas movies — Die Hard, While You Were Sleeping, and Batman Returns.)

The pandemic has warped my experience of time — 2021 felt like it lasted five years and five minutes, somehow both excruciatingly slow and speed-of-light fast. There was a giddiness in the air at this time last year, as everyone longed to hurl 2020 into the nearest dumpster like week-old trash. We were riding the pre-insurrection high of Trump’s loss, the promise of vaccines, and the dream of warm, crowded rooms with friends and strangers.

This year, I feel a low-hum exhaustion and looming dread. Any hard-won successes — especially the gradual return to live theatre after a year-and-a-half shutdown — feel tenuous and flimsy. (There was a surge of cancelled performances this week in London, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, and on Broadway due to COVID outbreaks.) I don’t know how to reconcile living in a country drunk on myths of self-reliance and individual action with my desire for collective care and systems that benefit vulnerable communities. I haven’t figured out how to grieve the tangible tragedy of an escalating death toll alongside two years’ worth of ambiguous losses. I’m a misery chick by default, but it’s easy to slip into nihilism right now.

The abolitionist Mariame Kaba talks about hope being a discipline — a daily practice, co-existing with your rage, sorrow, and disappointment. I’ve always found this philosophy more appealing than America’s default optimism, as it acknowledges the emotional complexity of being a person in a crumbling world. It’s understandable to feel hopeless as we approach our third pandemic year, but sometimes you have to force yourself to look for shards of possibility in the rubble. I’ll see you in January.

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