the week of july 11-17, 2025

the scott rudin rehabilitation tour stops here

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It was announced this week that Samuel D. Hunter's Little Bear Ridge Road will start performances on Broadway in October. The play premiered at Steppenwolf last year, but the Chicago theatre is not producing the Broadway transfer.

Instead, it will be produced by Scott Rudin. The disgraced producer retreated from the industry in 2021 after The Hollywood Reporter and Vulture reported on his workplace culture of relentless intimidation, bullying, and abuse; the permanent physical and psychological damage suffered by his employees; and the complacency of celebrities who witnessed Rudin’s extravagant cruelty.

None of this was new information at the time. Rudin’s sadistic management style had been industry folklore for decades, repeatedly documented in the press and just as repeatedly dismissed as the cost of artistic excellence. For over twenty years, his actions were simultaneously lionized and minimized because we accept stories about monstrous bosses as necessary currency.

Rudin launched his carefully orchestrated contrition tour in March, with a New York Times profile that read like a Mad Libs mea culpa: therapy, personal apologies, reflective solitude, newfound humility. "I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago," Rudin claims, insisting he's "learned I don't matter that much." Yet the theatre industry's eagerness to welcome him back—he has over a dozen shows in active development—suggests that he matters quite a lot.

Little Bear Ridge Road will move into the Booth Theatre, currently home to John Proctor is the Villain. Kimberly Belflower's play is a primal scream of teenage ferocity and tenderness, examining how systems of power perpetuate themselves and ultimately asserting that we must take care of each other because institutions exist primarily to protect themselves.

The irony of this succession is not lost on me, nor on anyone else paying attention. It's simply irrelevant to an industry that has mastered the performance of accountability, moving seamlessly from critiquing abusive power to rehabilitating its most prominent practitioners, all while congratulating itself on its commitment to progress.

I want to believe in the individual capacity for genuine change. I want to believe that people can transform and that redemption is possible. But belief and recognition are different things, and I recognize true accountability is a practice that requires more than therapy and strategic PR—and that some forms of power, once abused, should not be restored.

I wrote the following in August 2021, but my subscriber count has quadrupled since then, so I'll indulge in a reshare. My feelings haven't changed:

Vulture published a new article on Scott Rudin, tracing the origins of his career, the open secret of his abusive conduct, and whether or not he can stage a comeback. (Don’t call it a comeback, he’s just been hiding out in the Hamptons.) I don’t want to rehash my previous thoughts here, but I should be less surprised that people value proximity to power—no matter how diminished—enough to still fawn over Rudin’s purported genius and merit:

“There’s this glib assumption,” says the Pulitzer-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley, whose Doubt Rudin adapted for the screen, “that anyone is replaceable. I don’t see it. I don’t see another Scott out there.”

I hesitate to discuss these statements, because giving them space is a form of amplification. But I can’t shake how all of these defenses always cite the financial and creative triumphs—the revenue, the awards, the capital-A art—without considering the invisible losses. Scott Rudin allegedly harassed and bullied people over decades, and you can't tangibly measure the impact of that behavior: the careers derailed, the ambitions quashed, the opportunities lost. He’s lauded as a champion and cultivator of theatre, but all I can think about is the potential art he destroyed.

world premieres

• Mfoniso Udofia’s Kufre n' Quay runs July 10-26 at Boston Arts Academy and Wheelock Family Theatre. John ADEkjoe directs the fifth play in Udofia’s Ufot Cycle, which “explores childhood experiences and how we navigate the contrast between African and Black American Culture.”

• Atra Asdou’s Iraq, but Funny is now running through July 20th at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago. The “chaotic new satire following five generations of Assyrian women attempting to reclaim their story as it’s being narrated by some British guy” is directed by Dalia Ashurina.

productions

• Adil Mansoor’s Amm(i)gone runs July 11-13 in a co-presentation between Theater Mu and the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. The “journey of heartbreak and repair between mother and son as they embark on an examination and translation of Sophocles' Antigone into Urdu” is co-directed by Mansoor and Lyam B. Gabel.

• Rachel Wagstaff​’s adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd​ starts performances July 11th at The Alley Theatre in Houston. Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs the “whodunit set in a quaint village, where the filming of a star-studded movie leads to a chilling murder.”

• A Midsummer Night's Dream is now running through October 5th at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI. The “iconic Shakespearean fairy tale” is directed by David Daniel.

• Terry Guest’s The Magnolia Ballet starts performances July 12th at Shotgun Players in Berkeley, CA. AeJay Antonis Marquis directs the “tale of four men—a son, a lover, an ancestor, and a father—as they dance in the sticky heat of a rural, Southern Gothic landscape fraught with secrets and possibilities.”

• Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus is now running through July 26 at Little Island in NYC. The “epic myth of Oedipus reborn as a Pentecostal ritual that remakes prophecy as testimony and brokenness as transcendence” is directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury.

summer festivals

• Contemporary American Theater Festival runs July 11 - August 3 in Shepherdstown, WV. The season features five world premieres: Kevin Kling’s Kevin Kling: Unraveled (directed by Steven Dietz), Lisa Sanaye Dring and Rogue Artists Ensemble’s Happy Fall: A Queer Stuny Spectacular (directed by Ralph Peña), Lisa Loomer’s Side Effects May Include…(directed by Meredith McDonough), Cody LeRoy Wilson’s Did My Grandfather Kill My Grandfather? (directed by Victor Malana Maog), and Mark St. Germain’s Magdalene (directed by Elena Araoz).

• District Fringe runs July 11-27 at UDC in Washington, DC. A joint producing venture between Pinky Swear Productions, Theatre Prometheus, and Nu Sass Productions, the new fringe festival’s line-up includes Caro Dubberly’s A Guide to Modern Possession; Oren Levine & Barbara Papendorp’s Are You Out of Your Mind? Songs of Obsessing, Confessing, and Second-guessing; Rodin Alcerro & Pablo Guillen’s GO; Gigi Cammaroto’s Lotus: A Quarantine Solo Show; Nora Dell’s Out of My Wheelhouse; Sad Druid Productions’ Prey Most Difficult; Hope Campbell Gundlah’s The H Twins; and eight one-night-only performances.

• New York Stage and Film’s summer season runs July 11 - August 3 at Marist University in Poughkeepsie, NY. The first week’s workshops and presentations include Christina Pumariega’s Vidas Privadas (directed by Eddie Torres), Donja R. Love’s The Teetee and Lala Show, Carly Mensch’s Gertrude (directed by Liz Flahive), and Hansol Jung’s Backyard Boys (A Pack Play directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, with songs by Chris Bannow, Brian Quijada, and Mitchell Winter).

workshops & readings

• Roger Q. Mason’s Night Cities will have a reading on July 14th as part of the National Queer Theater’s Cherry Picked Reading Series in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. Karl Hawkins directs the new work “embracing the musicality, dream imagery, and liberation of jazz playwriting” that explores how a “young Bayard Rustin—before Civil Rights Movement fame—must choose between his private desires as a queer Black man and his public calling as an agent of social justice and civic change.”

• Jake Brasch’s How to Draw a Triangle will have readings July 17-19 at the Cape Cod Theatre Project in Falmouth, MA. The “comedy about coming of age, the wreckage of our past, and the heroes who go out on a limb to help us become ourselves” is directed by Sivan Battat.

digital & streaming

• The Wilma Theater’s production of Jon Fosse’s A Summer Day is available to stream on demand July 7-27. The Norwegian playwright’s haunting drama “delving into the depths of human connection, memory, and existential longing” is directed by Yury Urnov.

2025-26 season updates

• IAMA Theatre Company announced its 2025-26 season. The Los Angeles theatre will produce a workshop production of Mathilde Dratwa’s Esther Perel Ruined My Life (directed by Jeremy B. Cohen), the world premiere of Matthew Scott Montgomery’s Foursome (directed by Tom DeTrinis), a workshop production of JuCoby Johnson’s …But You Could’ve Held My Hand (directed by H. Adam Harris), and the annual New Works Festival.

• The Keegan Theatre announced its 2025-26 season. The Washington, DC theatre will produce Chelsea Marcantel’s Everything is Wonderful; Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner, & Alan Stevens Hewitt’s Lizzie The Musical; Matthew J. Keenan’s An Irish Carol; Tracy Letts’ The Minutes; Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, & Henry Shields’ The Play That Goes Wrong; and two world premieres: Angelle Whavers’ John Doe and Drew Anderson & Dwayne Lawson-Brown’s Midiculous.