the week of february 2-8, 2024
"this is a world premiere" - kendrick lamar and every theatre's winter line-up
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icymi: bills, bills, bills
This month’s money diary from a near-retirement general manager (with a buyout) dropped yesterday:
Note: I’m experimenting with new ways to split up the Productions section. I don’t want to contribute to the premiere-itis epidemic1; I’m just trying to thoughtfully break up a massive block of text and there is an abundance of new work this week. Consider this my formal plea to theatres to program second and third productions (and to host playwrights in residence for those rehearsals!)
world premieres
M Sloth Levine’s The Interrobangers is now playing through February 24th at Company One in Boston. The “queer coming-of-age story about exploring identity, creating community, and finding that men in masks are the scariest monsters of all” is directed by Josh Glenn-Kayden with dramaturgy by Regine Vital.
Mona Pirnot’s I Love You So Much I Could Die is now playing at New York Theatre Workshop. Lucas Hnath directs the part concert, part play “wrestling with the private and unspeakable in a very public way” and told “through monologues performed by a computer and songs performed by the playwright.”
Kate Douglas’ The Apiary is now in previews at Second Stage Theater in NYC. Set 22 years in the future, the “raucous and provocative [new work] about sacrifice, ambition, and honeybees” is directed by Kate Whoriskey.
James Anthony Tyler’s Into the Side of a Hill runs February 2-18 at Flint Repertory Theatre in Michigan. Ken-Matt Martin directs the new work set at a historically Black university “where six fraternity brothers rehearse for a homecoming step show, [as] mental illness, toxic masculinity, and war bring all the young men into battle with each other.”
Catya McMullen’s Arrowhead runs February 3 - March 4 at IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles. The comedy about an “unexpectedly pregnant lesbian who throws a secret abortion party at a lake house with her straight friends from college” is directed by Jenna Worsham.
Vanessa Severo and Joanie Schultz’s adaptation of Dracula starts performances February 3rd at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Schultz and Severo also co-direct the “bold, highly theatrical re-telling breathing new life and new blood into the most famous vampire story of all time.”
Kate Hamill’s adaptation of The Scarlet Letter runs February 3-25 at Two River Theater in Red Bank, NJ. The re-imagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel “showcasing the strength of a woman who will not let the rules of an unjust society define her” is directed by Shelley Butler.
Vivian J.O. Barnes’ The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes starts previews February 4th at Woolly Mammoth in DC. Taylor Reynolds directs the new work about a high school dance team “days away from their Homecoming half-time performance, as the women must contend with flaring tempers, bodies pushed to their limits, and what it means to be a team.”
Phillip Howze’s Self Portraits (Deluxe) runs February 6-24 at Bushwick Starr. The “inventive, impressionistic new work that blurs the lines between personal and collective memory, refracting and reframing how we spectate in America” is directed by Dominique Rider.
Marshall Pailet’s Private Jones starts previews February 6th at Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. The “gripping, inspiring and unexpectedly funny musical adventure about a deaf Welsh sniper in World War I” is directed by Pailet with artistic sign language direction by Alexandria Wailes.
Jordan Seavey’s The Seven Year Disappear starts performances February 6th at The New Group. Scott Elliott directs Taylor Trensch and Cynthia Nixon in the “funny, deeply human mystery about mothers and sons, coming of age, and coming apart.”
Damon Chua’s Warrior Sisters of Wu runs February 7 - March 10 at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in NYC. The adaptation of the classic Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms is “centered on two Han Dynasty swordswomen who battle tradition to gain love, respect, and self-determination” and is directed by Jeff Liu.
Kristen Adele Calhoun’s Black Cypress Bayou starts previews February 7th at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Tiffany Nichole Greene directs the new work about “a family of Black Texan women gathering down at the edge of the bayou to get to the bottom of the unexpected death of richest, meanest man in town.”
Karen Zacarías’ adaptation of The Age of Innocence runs February 8 - March 10 at The Old Globe in San Diego. The new spin on Edith Wharton’s lush Gilded Age novel is directed by Chay Yew.
productions
Cristina García’s Las Hermanas Palacios (The Palacios Sisters) is now playing through February 25th at GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC. The 1985 Miami-set Three Sisters adaptation about four Cuban siblings “clinging to memories of their beloved homeland while grappling with the dizzying new reality that surrounds them” is directed by Adrián Alea.
Katie Bender’s Instructions for a Séance runs February 2-11 at Amphibian Stage in Fort Worth, TX. Lily Wolff directs the “DIY séance party where Bender attempts night after night to escape her own life by summoning the spirit of master escapologist Harry Houdini.”
Richard III, starring Tony nominee and Paralympic champion Katy Sullivan, starts performances February 2nd at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Edward Hall directs the first major US production of Richard III to feature a woman with a disability in the title role.
Ben Power’s adaptation of Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy starts performances February 2nd at The Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, SC. The “epic tale of one family's passionate pursuit of the American Dream and the piercing cost of greed, excess and unbridled power” is directed by Jay Briggs.
Taylor Mac, Matt Ray, and Machine Dazzle’s Bark of Millions runs February 5-10 at BAM. The “rock opera meditation on queerness [and] an electrifying collision of performance, live music, and drag spectacle” is co-directed by Niegel Smith and Faye Driscoll.
Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me starts performances February 6th at Milwaukee Rep. Laura Braza directs the Pulitzer finalist where Schreck “revisits her fifteen-year-old self to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the lasting impact of the document that shaped their journey.”
The US premiere of The 7 Fingers’ Duel Reality runs February 7 - 18 at ArtsEmerson in Boston. The Canadian circus troupe’s latest work is an “acrobatic tour-de-force inspired by the star-crossed tale of the Montagues and Capulets.”
Beto O'Byrne and Meropi Peponides’ Loving and Loving runs February 7-18 at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Amelia Acosta Powell directs the collaboration that “weaves together the story of the Richard and Mildred Loving’s landmark civil rights struggle and interviews with mixed-heritage folks in the Kentuckiana community — thoughtfully exploring the joys and challenges of multiracial identity, and exuberantly celebrating our right to love who we choose.”
The Alley Theatre’s production of Liz Duffy Adams’ Born with Teeth starts performances February 9th at Asolo Rep in Sarasota, FL. The fictional riff on William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe’s tumultuous relationship and the “palace intrigue, high stakes spy craft, and cutthroat betrayals of a ruthlessly ambitious age” is directed by Rob Melrose.
Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field is now playing through March 24th at TimeLine Theatre Company in Chicago. Mikael Burke directs a three-actor version of Smith’s one-woman show “utilizing verbatim dialogue pulled from more than 250 accounts from students, faculty, prisoners, activists, politicians, and victims’ families that takes audiences on an emotional journey through the faults and injustices of an American criminal justice system.”
Donald Steven Olson’s The Christine Jorgensen Show starts performances February 8th at 59E59 in NYC. The “musical re-telling of America’s first transgender celebrity’s story” is directed by Michael Barakiva and Zoë Adams.
workshops & readings
James Caverly and Andrew Morrill’s Trash will have readings on February 5, 6, & 8 at Out of the Box Theatrics in NYC. Nathaniel P. Claridad directs the new work about “two polar opposite Deaf roommates with different views on what it means to be Deaf in a hearing world.”
Daniel Aukin and Emily Feldman’s adaptation of Lore Segal's Other People's Houses will have readings on February 5 & 6 at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. The “theatrical epic spans eighty-five years and examines the puzzle of human survival in a world that distinguishes us and others.” (The reading will be available to stream on demand February 19-25.)
Bernard Pollack’s Little Peasants will have a two-performance immersive workshop run from Food Tank on February 7 & 21 at The Burren in Somerville, MA. Dori A. Robinson directs the “theatrical journey taking you behind the closed doors of a food workers' union organizing campaign.”
the regional theatre game of thrones
Nicole A. Watson is the new producing artistic director of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. She was most recently the associate artistic director at the McCarter Theatre Center. Watson succeeds Jeremy B. Cohen, who departed last year to lead the Ojai Playwrights Conference.
Erin Daley is the new artistic director of Primary Stages. Daley has been with Primary Stages since 2016, serving as associate artistic director since 2018 and interim AD since Andrew Leynse passed away last January.
City Theatre Company’s co-artistic director Marc Masterson will retire in June. Masterson founded the Pittsburgh theatre in 1980, left in 2000 for stints at Actors Theatre of Louisville and South Coast Repertory, then returned in 2018. The organization transitioned to a shared leadership model in 2021; his co-artistic directors Clare Drobot and Monteze Freeland will continue in their roles after his retirement.
award season
The Obie Award winners were announced. The American Theatre Wing also announced that it ditched the annual awards ceremony in favor of cash grants to sustain the winners’ work. (I’m a raging sober introvert, but who wouldn’t choose money over attending a party?) You can see the list of winners & their video acceptance speeches here.
On a final note, I just got over a week-long bout with COVID. Being sick when you’re working out of town on a project you’ve wanted to dramaturg for five years is physically and emotionally rough, so a big public thank you to the Huntington Theatre’s company management team (Meagan Garcia, Chamari White-Mink, and Lee Forrest) and resident producer Kevin Schlagle, as well as stage management and my fellow artists on John Proctor is the Villain, for taking care of me — from grocery deliveries to rehearsal Zoom access to daily check-ins to top-tier reality TV recommendations. (My entire personality now revolves around The Traitors.)
Explanatory comma for all my non-theatre professional readers! I’m referring here to the unfortunate practice of theatre companies being more interested in premiering a brand new play, rather than producing a play’s second or third production. This was one of the key findings in Todd London’s Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (published in 2009 but still salient today!): “When it comes to new play production, an emphasis on premieres—by artistic directors, the press, boards of directors and funders—is the operating principle. This ‘premiere-itis’ means that plays rarely get the continued life they need to reach the kind of artistic completion that results from second and third productions. It also means that playwrights can't earn from their plays in an ongoing way, as there is often no income stream because of the field's ‘one (production) and done’ practices.” Many initiatives have emerged to combat this problem, most notably the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere program.
The Traitors is a new classic