the week of july 26 - 30, 2021
we've got UPDATES
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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Identity Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton || Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim
updates on WTF, the o’neill, & walnut street
In last week’s newsletter about the Williamstown walkout, I excerpted an open letter from a current WTF employee offering clarification on the LA Times article and ongoing issues at the organization. You can now read the full letter on the @changeberkshireculture Instagram.
I also wrote about The O’Neill summer apprentices and writer’s assistants organizing for better wages, hours, and institutional support. The group posted an update on Twitter on Wednesday night, expressing satisfaction with the response while acknowledging there is still much work to do. The major takeaways, beyond collective action works:
Apprentice pay was raised to $200/week, with back pay. Hours were reduced to 40 hours/week with a second day off. Additional summer staff received raises.
The O’Neill delisted its upcoming yearlong apprenticeships in order to reevaluate the program. The board will meet with current apprentices as part of the reassessment.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Walnut Street Theatre, America’s oldest and most litigious theatre, and the cease-and-desist letter it sent to a local actor after she questioned the organization’s commitment to workplace safety on social media.
This week, American Theatre published Philadelphia writer Cameron Kelsall’s excellent deep dive on the allegations of insularity, wage inequity, and disregard for artist safety. Here’s the paragraph that made me want to start a class war:Asked whether salary cuts were put into effect for staff who remained on the payroll during the pandemic, [Producing Artistic Director and President Bernard] Havard wrote that “[a]ll staff, including myself, had a reduction in compensation.” True enough: Havard earned $566,569 in the fiscal year 2019-20.
that’s not a living wage
Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area. (You can read more about the methodology here.) Feel free to submit because looking at ArtSEARCH depresses me!
If you care about pay equity and transparency, check out and contribute to the Theatre Salaries Spreadsheet, an incredible resource created by the great Jenna Clark Embrey. (I only associate with dramaturgs who love data and care about fair pay!)
Artistic Administrative Coordinator, House Theatre of Chicago:$30,000 - $34,000
Chicago Living Wage: $38,605Patron Experience & Rentals Manager, Round House Theatre: $35,000 - $40,000
Montgomery County, MD Living Wage: $53,385Education Assistant, A Noise Within:$37,500
LA Metro Area Living Wage: $42,825Assistant Production Manager, Manhattan Theatre Club: “low $40K range”
NYC Living Wage: $51,323
Many theatres think if they offer apprenticeships with housing, it gives them a free pass on fair compensation. (It doesn’t.) Milwaukee Rep’s year-long Literary Residency’s listed compensation is: “$150/week stipend, housing plus utilities, Milwaukee Bus Pass or 50% contribution to parking costs.” Here’s the math:
The living wage for Milwaukee is $33,533, or $2,794 per month.
Subtract estimated housing costs ($611) and a monthly buss pass ($72), and you’re left with $2,111 to earn.
Apprentices earn $600 a month, coming up $1511 short of the monthly living wage.
I also want you to divide the weekly rate of $150 by 40 hours, which puts their hourly rate at $3.75. (Wisconsin’s minimum wage is $7.25, and I guarantee you these apprentices work more than 40 hours a week.)
digital theatre
Applied Mechanics’ serial multimodal play OTHER ORBITS EPISODE ONE: PlaNet Radio is now available through July 31st. The Philadelphia artist collective’s latest creation is “an eclectic radio broadcast about the obscure festivals, slow jams, and scandals of a cooperative, sci-fi world.”
Caridad Svich’s Memories of Overdevelopment will stream live on July 31st at 7 PM CDT as part of the Goodman Theatre’s Future Labs. Directed by Lavina Jadhwani, the play is “a documentary about what people remember about dictatorships where they grew up and how they left and how they survived.”
The Ojai Playwrights Conference starts next week with streamed readings of Ramiz Monsef’s The Ants (August 5) and Yilong Liu’s Good Enemy (August 6). The Ants, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, follows three people trapped in a safe (?) house during a violent uprising; Chay Yew directs Good Enemy, a father confronts his past as a young cop in China during the 1980s during a cross-country road trip to reconnect with his daughter.
in-person theatre
Whitney White’s socially distant installation experience Definition runs through August 1st at the Mercury Store. Presented by the Bushwick Starr, the multimedia event is inspired by an upcoming musical that takes a surrealist look at an African-American woman's inner awakenings
Michael R. Jackson’s White Girl in Danger plays July 31 - August 1 at New York Stage and Film. The new musical satire is directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz and follows “Keesha Gibbs, a young woman who lives in the "Blackground" of a melodramatic soap opera town called Allwhite. Tired of repetitive Blackground stories of enslavement and police violence, Keesha sets out to become Allwhite's leading heroine by appropriating the storylines of her three main rivals, Meagan, Maegan and Megan. But as she gains power for herself, she also attracts the attention of the Allwhite Killer, putting her story and her life in more danger than ever.” (I usually excerpt blurbs but this one deserves to be read in full.)
Monica Bill Barnes & Company’s Many Happy Returns starts in-person performances on August 4th at WP Theater. Created by Robbie Saenz de Viteri and Barnes, the inventive and intimate new dance piece “combines language and movement that reflect back on the internal interactions that populated our pandemic minds and celebrate the awkward first steps as we move forward and decide again, who do we want to be now?”
Jessica Siân’s Klippies starts in-person performances at the Young Vic on August 4th. The South African-set, coming-of-age drama about an unlikely friendship and the intensity of first love is directed by Diyan Zora.
Kae Tempest’s Paradise opens at the National Theatre on August 4th. The new version Philoctetes by Sophocles is directed by Ian Rickson and features an all-female company.
Boise Contemporary Theater’s inaugural BIPOC Playwright’s Festival runs August 2-14. The plays include Juan Alfonso’s Middle of the World, Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters’ Half of Chopsticks, and M’Balia Singley’s Turn.
2021-22 season updates
The Wilma Theater announced its 2021-22 season. The line-up includes New Saloon’s Minor Character (Six Translations of Uncle Vanya At The Same Time) (directed by Yury Urnov), The Cherry Orchard (directed by Dmitry Krymov), and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (directed by AD James Ijames).
Chicago Shakespeare Theater announced its 2021-22 season. Projects include Daryl Cloran’s Beatles music-infused As You Like It, Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (directed by Derek Goldman), Belgian theater company Ontroerend Goed’s new interactive production TM, Ingrid Michaelson and Bekah Brunstetter’s musical adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook (co-directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams), and Shana Cooper directing All’s Well That End’s Well.
Iowa Stage announced its 2021-22 season. The line-up includes Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake, Joe Landry’s It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, and the world premiere of Karen Schaeffer’s Girls’ Weekend 2.
the regional theatre game of thrones
Pirronne Yousefzadeh is the new producing artistic director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre Company. She was most recently associate artistic director and director of engagement at Geva Theatre Center.
Jesse Cameron Alick is the new associate artistic director of the Vineyard Theatre. Alick recently left the Public Theater after 15 years in the artistic department.
Ronee Penoi is the new director of artistic programming at ArtsEmerson. The Laguna Pueblo and Cherokee producer was most recently at Octopus Theatricals, and plans to bring an Indigenous lens to her work: “I am really interested in planting seeds of … not just Indigenous representation, but kind of readying ArtsEmerson and the city of Boston for how to get in right-relationship with Indigenous folks, both in an artistic context and not.”
award & honors
The six winners of the 2021 Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting were announced. Eboni Booth, Ty Defoe, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Daaimah Mubashshir, and Andrea Thome each received cash prizes of $25,000.
William S. Yellow Robe Jr. was awarded $40,000 in recognition of his playwriting career and contributions to building the field, in particular among Native American theatres. (Yellow Robe died on July 19th at the age of 61, just a few days after the award announcement. The Bangor News Daily’s obituary provides an overview of his career and explorations of “the racial, cultural and emotional fault lines of Native American life through his more than 45 published plays.”
Preston Choi received a nine-month artistic residency at Sideshow Theatre Company. Sideshow will provide Choi with artistic and dramaturgical support as he develops his full-length play Drive-In to the End of the World. His primary mentor will be Marti Lyons, the newly announced artistic director of Remy Bumppo.
The American Theatre Critics Association announced its New Play Awards. Douglas Williams won the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award for Ship (Philadelphia’s Azuka Theatre) and J. Nicole Brooks received the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award for Her Honor, Jane Byrne (Lookingglass Theatre Company). Two Steinberg/ATCA citations were also awarded to khat knotahaiku’s Graveyard Shift, (The Goodman) and Jason Narducy and Brett Neveu’s musical Verböten (House Theatre of Chicago).
