the week of january 19 - 25, 2024

now is the winter of my content

Jan 19, 2024

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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Ryan Adelsheim

This week's newsletter is sponsored by The White Chip.
January 23 - March 9 at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in NYC

Sean Daniels’ riveting comedy (inspired by his own life) about love, loss, and the road to addiction recovery is coming back to New York. This New York Times Critic’s Pick is produced by Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Jason Biggs, and John Larroquette.

Nothing for the Group readers get 15% off through The White Chip's entire run with the code nothing15.

BUY TICKETS HERE

new readers!

There’s an influx of new subscribers this week, thanks to two very kind endorsements:

DC Theater Arts listed Nothing for the Group in its latest feature about the post-Peter Marks local theater news landscape. Marks, the Washington Post’s long-time theater critic, accepted a buyout at the end of last year. The Post has yet to appoint a replacement, leaving the legacy paper (and one of the most robust arts communities in the country) without a chief theater critic. It’s a real act of clownery! But as I wrote in December, the paper has been slowly gutting its arts coverage for years: before these recent cuts, The Post discontinued Rebecca Ritzel’s Backstage column in 2016, failed to hire a second full-time theater critic after Nelson Pressley’s retirement in 2019, and laid off Pulitzer-winning dance critic Sarah Kaufman in December 2022. I’m very flattered to be included in DC Theater Arts’ round-up of alternatives, as Jeff Bezos is too busy with cringey Vogue photoshoots, union-busting, and yeeting himself into outer space to oversee a newspaper worthy of the DC theater community.
Fergus Morgan’s The Crush Bar is my favorite newsletter about UK theatre. His annual Edinburgh Fringe coverage is indispensable and I recently became a paid subscriber to access “Shouts & Murmurs”, his weekly subscriber-only round-up of UK-based reviews, interviews, and internet delights. It’s worth the cost, which I’d say even if he didn’t write a lovely recommendation for Nothing for the Group.

productions

Vinny DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg’s Mindplay starts performances January 19th at Arena Stage in DC. Andrew Neisler directs the mentalist DePonto’s new theatrical event “masterfully blurring the line between illusion and reality.”
Sharr White’s Pictures from Home runs January 19-February 11 at The Alley Theatre in Houston. The “heartfelt memory play about what happens when photographer Larry Sultan turns the lens on his parents to ferret out the truths beneath their home movies” is directed by Rob Melrose.
Dana Delany, Mike Donahue, Dane Laffrey and Jen Silverman’s Highway Patrol runs January 20 - February 18 at The Goodman in Chicago. Donahue directs the “new thriller—part love story, part ghost story—crafted from hundreds of tweets and DMs.”
Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel starts previews January 20th at Arizona Theatre Company. Oz Scott directs the 1905-set drama following “an African-American seamstress and her forbidden relationships with an Orthodox Jewish fabric vendor, her privileged and struggling clientele, and a long-distance suitor who will profoundly change her life.”
John Kolvenbach’s Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight runs January 20 - March 3 at The Huntington in Boston. Kolvenbach directs Jim Ortlieb in “a tour-de-force performance as a man desperate for connection, bent by isolation, and deeply in love with the audience itself.”
Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me starts performances January 20th at Portland Center Stage. The Pulitzer finalist about a now-adult former debate champion “resurrecting her teenage self to investigate the Constitution’s profound effect on four generations of women in her family” is directed by Marissa Wolf.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Dial M for Murder starts previews January 20th at The Guthrie in Minneapolis. The fast-paced, five-actor spin on Frederick Knott’s suspense thriller is directed by Tracy Brigden.
Plexus Polaire’s Moby Dick runs January 23-28 at ArtsEmerson in Boston. Yngvild Aspeli directs the Norwegian theatre company’s visual adaptation of Melville’s classic novel with “seven actors, fifty puppets, video projections, a drowned orchestra and a life-sized whale.”
Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Next to Normal starts previews January 24th at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD. The Tony and Pulitzer-winning “cathartic and empathetic musical about a suburban mom struggling with bipolar disorder” is directed by Alan Paul.
Derek Goldman and Clark Young’s Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski runs January 23 - February 18 at Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta. The “dazzling, tour de force solo performance tells the story of Jan Karski, a Polish diplomat and freedom fighter during WWII who battled his way across Europe to bring evidence of the Holocaust to Western governments.”
Katie Hileman’s I Will Eat You Alive starts performances January 25th at Interrobang Theatre in Baltimore. Drawn from a series of interviews with self-identified fat people, Hileman also directs the “dinner party confronting diet culture, fatphobia, and what it’s really like to be a fat woman in the age of Ozempic.”
Francisco Mendoza’s Machine Learning runs January 25 - February 25 at Central Square Theater in Boston. Gabriel Vega Weissman directs the new work about a computer scientist reckoning with responsibility and accountability over the development of his AI creation.
Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul starts performances January 25th at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, IL. The drama about a former military translator in Afghanistan in hiding from the Taliban is directed by Hamid Dehghani.
Jessica L. Hagan and Ryan Calais Cameron’s Queens of Sheba runs January 25-27 at Oklahoma City Rep. Presented in partnership with the Under the Radar Festival, the “knowingly sharp and riotously funny choreopoem meditating on Black Women’s identity, suffering and joy” is directed by Jessica Kaliisa.
Lolita Chakrabarti’s Hymn starts previews January 25th at Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh, NC. marcus d. harvey directs the drama about “the growing friendship between two men who meet for the first time at the funeral of their father.”
Aya Ogawa’s The Nosebleed runs January 25-27 at Theater Mu in Minneapolis. Ogawa also directs the “series of absurd autobiographical vignettes as a trip to Ogawa’s home country of Japan, a child’s nosebleed, and the reality TV show The Bachelor come together in a darkly comical and psychologically insightful theatrical tribute to Ogawa’s father.”
Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy starts previews January 25th at The Vineyard in NYC. Darko Tresnjak directs the “office comedy meets political satire…a shape-shifting examination of the power, seduction, and danger of a good story.”
The world premiere of Minna Lee’s My Home on the Moon runs January 25 - February 24 at San Francisco Playhouse. The new work about “a waiter realizing that the pho restaurant they work at is trapped in the metaverse” is directed by Mei Ann Teo.

workshops & readings

EllaRose Chary and Brandon James Gwinn’s TL; DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix will have a workshop presentation on January 19th at Out of the Box Theatrics in NYC from Diversionary Theatre. The new queer rock musical reimagining the story of Thelma & Louise is directed by Sherri Eden Barber.

digital/streaming

The Young Vic’s 2016 production of Yerma is now available to stream from NT at Home. Billie Piper stars in Simon Stone’s radical adaptation of Lorca’s classic tragedy.
Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre’s This is a Classic! 36 Plays By Women You Should Know will livestream January 22nd. The annual event featuring curators and aficionados celebrating classic plays by women & underrepresented genders is part of Hedgepig’s Expand the Canon initiative.

end of an era

Parallel 45 Theatre in Traverse City, MI is closing after 13 years. The company, which produced a surprisingly eclectic mix of new plays, musicals and classics, cited pandemic-related financial challenges as the reason for the closure.

awards

Deepa Purohit is the winner of the 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. The award includes a six-week fellowship and a $35,000 commission to create a new work of theatre.

Nothing for the Group