the week of january 12-18, 2024
here comes the 2024-25 season announcements
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Rescripted, 3Views on Theater, and Nothing for the Group co-published the next response in our ongoing series from prominent thinkers and leaders in the field who are thinking beyond crisis and toward transformation. This month’s essayist is Daniel Alexander Jones and you can read his two-part response “Playing Changes” below:
productions
The world premiere of Jason Robert Brown and Jonathan Marc Sherman’s The Connector starts previews January 12th at MCC Theatre. Daisy Prince directs the 1990s-set musical about “two talented young journalists on increasingly diverging paths on a rapidly changing media landscape.”
Florencia Lozano’s Fun with Panic Attacks runs January 12-27 at INTAR Theatre. The world premiere is a “psychological funhouse meets choose-how-immersive-you-want-it-to-be theatrical event.”
Tami Dixon’s South Side Stories Revisited starts performances January 13th at City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh. Matt M. Morrow directs the sequel to Dixon’s 2012 one-woman play telling the stories of the titular neighborhood’s residents. (I lived in South Side for a year after college and I miss Beehive coffee and Zenith brunch and all of my clothes smelling like fried chicken because I used a laundromat next to a Popeye’s.)
The world premiere of Deneen Reynolds-Knott’s Babes in Ho-lland runs January 13 - February 4 at Shotgun Players in San Francisco. Leigh Rondon-Davis directs the 90s-set work following two Black students at a predominantly white college creating their “own bubble of self-discovery, music, and sanctuary — even as the tensions of love, financial hardship, and future uncertainty threaten to destroy it.”
Mando Alvarado, Jaime Lozano, and Tommy Newman’s El Otro Oz starts previews January 13th at The Atlantic. The new salsa, merengue, and Mexican folk-infused bilingual musical inspired by The Wizard of Oz is directed by Melissa Crespo.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Dial M for Murder runs January 16-February 11 at Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY. Rachel Alderman directs the five-actor spin on Frederick Knott’s classic suspense thriller.
Selina Fillinger’s POTUS starts previews January 17th at The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The “riotous and irreverent farce about the men who hold the power vs. the women who get the job done” is directed by Jennifer Chambers.
The world premiere of Martín Zimmerman’s Simona's Search starts previews January 18th at Hartford Stage. Melia Bensussen directs the “riveting exploration of the bond between fathers and daughters, love and sacrifice, nature and nurture.”
Jami Brandli’s O: A Rhapsody in Divorce runs January 18 - February 3 at Mildred’s Umbrella in Houston. The reimagining of The Odyssey centers “O, a childless female neurobiologist in her 40s, whose life is upended after her husband demands a divorce and she’s thrown into an epic couch-hopping odyssey.”
Orlando Hernández’s La Broa’ (Broad Street) starts previews January 18th at Trinity Rep in Providence, RI. Tatyana-Marie Carlo directs the new work about the real-life stories of Rhode Island’s Latinx community drawn from Marta V. Martínez’s oral history Nuestras Raíces (Our Roots).
workshops & readings
Janaki Ranpura’s Cyranoid, an adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac will have a reading on January 12th at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. The new work “through onstage interactions with actual artificial intelligence, offers ways to fathom the Robot Revolution.”
Jeremy J. King and Sam Salmond's Eighty-Sixed will have a reading on January 16th as part of Second Stage’s The Next Stage Festival. Kevin Newbury directs the pop musical set in 1980s NYC at the dawn of the AIDS crisis, unearthing “an epidemic that shook the world to reveal a community’s ferocious fight to reclaim its future.”
Jonathan Payne’s Narrative of the Life of Cedric Bartholomew will have a reading on January 13th as part of Nashville Rep’s Ingram New Works Project. Inspired by Wuthering Heights, the new work chronicles “a failed journalist hired by the Federal Writers Project in 1932 who catches hold of a highly sought meeting with a former slave who mysteriously acquired his former master's fortune, including over 100 acres of land.”
festivals
The Fire This Time Festival runs January 18-28 at The Wild Project in NYC. This year’s programming includes new ten-minute plays focused on Black women from Taylor A. Blackman, Kamilah Bush, Leelee Jackson, Monique Pappas-Williams, Nia Akilah Robinson and Joël René Scoville.
digital/streaming
The Wilma’s production of James Ijames’ Fat Ham is now available to stream on demand through January 27th. The Pulitzer-winning riff on Hamlet set at a Southern barbecue is directed by Amina Robinson.
2024-25 season updates
Roundabout announced its 2024-25 season. The line-up includes three Broadway productions — David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face (directed by Leigh Silverman), Sanaz Toossi's English (directed by Knud Adams), and a New Orleans jazz-infused reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (directed by Scott Ellis) — and two world premieres Off Broadway: Meghan Kennedy’s The Counter (directed by David Cromer) and Bess Wohl’s Liberation (directed by Whitney White).
