the week of january 11-15, 2021
Welcome to Nothing for the Group, the newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes.
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Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
virtual theatre
NYTW hosts Reflections of Native Voices Festival from January 25th - February 7th. Curated by Safe Harbors NYC and featuring theatre, music, and native dance performances by Indigenous artists from across the country, presentations include Everything is a Circle by Ikidowin, Este Cate by Nicholson Billey, Duke by Moses Goods, and Tipi Tales from the Stoop by Murielle Borst-Tarrant. The festival is presented in partnership with La MaMa Indigenous Initiative.
NYTW also recently launched a digital archive of its 2020 virtual productions, including What the Hell is a Republic, Anyway?, The Seagull on The Sims 4, Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall, and The Cooking Project.
Rachel Bonds’ Bird is now available to stream for Playing on Air. The play, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt, runs a cool 27 minutes and I somehow missed it when it originally dropped last month, because I’m a terrible former Bonds dramaturg.
The first episode of Berkeley Rep’s Place/Settings: Berkeley debuted this week. The audio series features ten playwrights—Eisa Davis, Sarah Ruhl, Philip Kan Gotanda, Daniel Handler, Aya de León, Adam Mansbach, Richard Montoya, Kamala Parks, Sean San José, and Itamar Moses—crafting a story around a place or a setting within the city that is significant to them.
Atlantic Theater Company’s African Caribbean MixFest starts streaming performances on January 19th. The free reading series, co-produced by Guadalís Del Carmen and Kwame Kwei-Armah, features Kwei-Armah’s Let There Be Love;Whitney White’s Auction and Jasmine Lee-Jones’ I Used to Love Her (both directed by Dominique Rider); an evening of short plays by Jeff Augustin, Julissa Contreras, Dane Figueroa Edidi, and Patrice Johnson Chevannes, all directed by Danielle A. Drakes; France-Luce Benson’s Tigress of San Domingue, directed by Awoye Timpo; and Del Carmen’s A Shero’s Journey Or What Anacaona and Yemayá Taught Me, also directed by Timpo.
Lauren Gunderson’s The Catastrophist virtually premieres on January 26th. The cinematic digital experience, a co-production of Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre, is “a time-jumping tale based on the life and work of virologist Nathan Wolfe (who also happens to be [Gunderson’s] husband)…an interactive deep dive into the profundities of scientific exploration and the harrowing realities of facing your own mortality.”
assorted news
Bleu Beckford-Burrell is the 2021 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. The fellowship provides various artistic and financial resources, including an unrestricted $10,000 award and additional development budget. Page 73 will also extend 2020 fellow Emma Goidel’s fellowship for a second year due to the pandemic.
Samuel Hunter’s screen adaptation of his play The Whale will be directed by Darren Aronofsky and star Brendan Fraser.
Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical raised over $2 million for The Actors Fund. Turns out producers can prioritize access and make money.
2021 reopening updates
Dr. Fauci suggested that theatres could safely reopen “some time in the fall”. The prediction depends on the rollout of the vaccine and the country reaching herd immunity (70-85% of the population vaccinated), and Fauci noted that audience members might still be required to wear masks.
Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew is going to Broadway in winter 2022. The MTC production will be directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. MTC also announced a winter 2022 Off-Broadway world premiere of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic.
things I read this week
Vinson Cunningham on the virtual Adrienne Kennedy Festival at Round House Theatre (The New Yorker)
Jason Farago on how the Biden administration can revive the arts industry, from a new WPA-style initiative to expanded unemployment to the formation of a federal arts council (NYT)
Alex Marshall on how eight countries—France, Germany, UK, Poland, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, and Brazil—have kept artists afloat during the pandemic. (NYT)
Kelly Burke on the misappropriation of Australian arts bailout funds (The Guardian)
This thread charting former Serendbe Playhouse AD Brian Clowdus’ transformation from disgraced Atlanta horrorshow to clout-chasing MAGA jagweed. (You may recall that Serendbe shuttered in June because the theater was that racist.) Clowdus’ previous greatest hits include producing A Christmas Carol with an actor in blackface and adding extra uses of the N-word in Ragtime. Anyway, I love a messy Twitter deep dive:
