the week of january 1 - 6, 2023
new year, same newsletter
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
icymi over the holidays
For paid subscribers, I wrote my annual year-in-review: the best and worst accountability updates, who girlbossed too close to the sun, the scam of the year, and why everyone needs to stop producing [redacted]:
This month’s Bills, Bills, Bills money diary is from a freelance director in NYC making $22,000 a year and features an abundance of benefits and discounts, overseas egg freezing, and a cameo from Little Amal:
On a related note from across the pond: Stage Directors UK’s recent census reported that over one-third of UK theatre directors are “seriously considering” leaving the industry because of low wages, terrible hours, and unethical practices.
nyc & all the january festivals
Adil Mansoor’s Amm(i)gone runs January 12-14 in NYC in a co-presentation from Pittsburgh’s Kelly Strayhorn Theater and The Performance Project @ University Settlement. The Antigone adaptation “explores queerness, the afterlife, and obligation using canonical texts, teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations between [Mansoor] and his mother.”
Wakka Wakka’s The Immortal Jellyfish Girl starts performances January 10th at 59E59. The NYC/Oslo-based visual theatre’s post-apocalyptic work is a “hilarious, ridiculous, and virtuosic coming-of-age story and dystopian tragedy.” (If you want to talk about the delight of Wakka Wakka’s Baby Universe, come sit by me.)
Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment runs January 12 - February 4 at WP Theater. The Philadelphia-based company’s “satirical musical examining the absurdity and hypocrisy of the American abortion debate” is written by Alice Yorke, Scott R. Sheppard, Alex Bechtel, and Eva Steinmetz, who also directs.
The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival is now running through January 22. The line-up includes 36 artists and companies from nine countries presented across six venues: 600 Highwaymen’s A Thousand Ways (Part Three): An Assembly, Ontroerend Goed’s Are we not drawn onward to new erA, Jasmine Lee-Jones’ seven methods of killing kylie jenner, Annie Saunders and Becca Wolf’s Our Country, Roger Guenveur Smith’s Otto Frank, Rachel Mars’ Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters, Migguel Anggelo's LatinXoxo, Salty Brine’s Bigmouth Strikes Again: The Smiths Show, Julian Fleisher, Eszter Balint’s I Hate Memory, Negin Farsad’s The Case For American Exceptionalism by a Lady Muz, Timothy White Eagle and The Violet Triangle’s The Indigo Room, Kaneza Schaal’s KLII, Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey’s Protec/Attac, Plexus Polaire’s Moby Dick, Nouveau Riche and Soho Theatre’s Queens of Sheba, King Gilgamesh & the Man of the Wild, Back to Back Theatre’s Shadow, and New York City Players’ Field of Mars.
The Public’s Devised Theater Working Group will also present Savon Bartley’s Holes in the Shape of My Father, Nile Harris’ Testify (the worst is yet to come), Mia Rovegno’s ELEVATOR, Eric Lockley’s Sweet Chariot, Miranda Haymon’s bb brecht & THE WORK-IN-PROGRESS 2022 EPIC ADVENTURE WORLD TOUR, Raelle Myrick-Hodges’ He Has the Prettiest Handwriting, Justin Elizabeth Sayre’s Three Little Girls Down a Well, and Mariana Valencia’s Jacklean.
The Prototype Festival’s 10th anniversary season is now running through January 15. Featured productions include Du Yun and Michael Joseph McQuilken’s chamber opera In Our Daughter’s Eyes; Gelsey Bell’s experimental opera mɔsːnɪŋ (pronounced as “mourning”/ “morning”) (directed by Tara Ahmadinejad); Emma O’Halloran’s double-bill chamber opera TRADE/Mary Motorhead (directed by Tom Creed); and the world premiere of Silvana Estrada’s Marchita.
The Exponential Festival is now running through February 8th. The annual experimental performance festival features in-person and online work, including Barnett Cohen’s The Complaint Society, Tristan Allen’s Tin Aso and the Dawn, Dmitri Barcomi’s A Jury of Our Queers, an_outskirt’s saklob, Ella Davidson’s The Ben Shapiro Project, Sarah K. Finn’s Our bodies like dams, Tank’s Mx. Piggy Makes an OnlyFans, Evan Silver aka Tiresias’ cryptochrome, Cosimo Pori and Travis Amiel’s Das Sofortvergnügen (THE INSTANT PLEASURE), and Joey Merlo’s On Set with Theda Bara.
in-person theatre
Kareem Fahmy’s American Fast is now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Chip Miller directs the rolling world premiere about a young Muslim college basketball star juggling family and faith during a national championship.
The world premiere of Carol Mazhuvancheril’s Song of Joy runs January 12-29 at The Tank. The autobiographical solo performance exploring “how perpetually immigrating as a child shapes an individual's family and definition of home” is directed Nick J. Browne.
digital theatre
Allyson Dwyer’s Arrow of Time premieres January 9th as part of the Exponential Festival. The “tender-odyssey audio drama heard through sixty scenes, sixty years, of a life” is directed by Dwyer and designed/edited by Steven Matarazzo.
Stefanie Janssen, Sjaron Minailo & Michaël Brijs’ Undine is now streaming on demand until January 15th as part of Prototype Festival. The 30-minute animated opera is about “the disruptive power of a mermaid addicted to plastic.”
the regional theatre game of thrones
Matt August is the new artistic director of Arizona Theatre Company. The director and educator succeeds Sean Daniels, who departed to lead the Recovery Project at Florida Studio Theatre.
award season
Grill & Chowder’s How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia is the winner of the 2022 Relentless Award. The writing duo Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Laura Grill Jaye will receive $65,000 to develop their new musical. The finalists were Joe Stevens and Keaton Wooden’ Hills On Fire, John-Michael Lyles and David Gomez’s Shoot for the Moon, and Oliver Houser’s XY. The Relentless Award was created in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman; musical submissions were selected this to honor the late Adam Schlesinger.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury also won the Mark O'Donnell Prize. The award for emerging artists includes a $15,000 cash prize, new work development, and support in applying for affordable housing and securing health insurance.
Imani Uzuri is the latest recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award. She will receive $35,000 and a residency at the Hermitage’s Florida campus to develop a multidisciplinary piece called Lighthouse of the Singing Birds.
