the week of july 4 - 10, 2025
ethiopian circus, manic powerpoints, ghost stories
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icymi: bills, bills, bills
This month’s money diary is from a 23-year-old Broadway producer’s assistant juggling acting classes and opening night gifts during a hectic week:
world premieres
Will Van Dyke and Jeff Talbott’s fuzzy: a new musical runs July 8-27 at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, MA. Ellie Heyman directs the “big-hearted, bittersweet comedy about a furry little puppet who has come home to take care of his ailing mother—and what begins as a reluctant reunion becomes a touching tangle of the complex ties that bind us.”
Daniel Holzman’s Berlindia! starts performances July 5th at The Tank in NYC. The “epic family quest into the heart of the many cities/nightclubs/couches/people we call home—and what happens when they move” is directed by Noah Latty and produced by Emma Richmond.
Terry Curtis Fox’s Transgression runs July 10 - August 2 at HERE Arts Center in NYC. Avra Fox Lerner directs the “bold new drama” about a photographer’s widow “forced to wrestle with the question of what you do with art that is both important and itself a violation.”
Gavin Dillon Lawrence’s The Death of Chuck Brown is now running through September 25th at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI. Lawrence also directs the “vibrant elegy for a community in transition” set in a barbershop in a once-predominantly Black neighborhood in Washington, DC as “a father and son lock heads about the future of the business.”
productions
Josh Sharp’s ta-da! runs July 7 - August 23 at The Greenwich House Theater in NYC. Sam Pinkleton directs the “one-man comedy show inside of a manic 2,000 slide PowerPoint [with] dumb but erudite jokes and sad but sweet stories alongside the Herculean feat of stupidity that is memorizing a slide every 2.4 seconds.”
Crystal Skillman’s Open runs July 8 - 27 in a Midnight Theatricals presentation Off-Broadway at WP Theater. The “powerful, funny, and deeply moving play about love’s ability to defy hate in magical ways” is directed by Jessi D. Hill and stars Megan Hill. (I do not normally cite actors in these blurbs but knowing Megan is in a show makes me want to see it and you should also operate this way.)
Riki Lindhome’s Dead Inside runs July 9 - 27 at Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC. Presented by Ali Wong and Bill Hader, the “part musical, part solo stand-up spiral offering an unfiltered glimpse into one woman’s journey through infertility” is directed by Brian McElhaney.
Conor McPherson’s The Weir starts performances July 9th at Irish Rep in NYC. Ciarán O’Reilly directs Irish Rep’s fourth revival of the 1997 work set in a rural Irish pub “as newcomer Valerie finds herself drawn into an evening of ghost stories shared by the local bachelors who gather there to drink—and what begins as playful blarney soon drifts into the supernatural realm when she shares her own haunting tale.”
Mehari “Bibi” Tesfamariam, Binyam “Bichu” Shimellis, and Cal McCrystal’s Circus Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dreams starts performances July 10th at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The “stunning feats of heart-stopping acrobatics, juggling, high-flying hilarity, and death-defying tricks—all set to the irresistible beats of Ethiopian music” is directed by Shimellis with choreography by Kate Smyth.
Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists is now running through July 26th at Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts. Rebecca Bradshaw directs the “rousing buddy comedy” about the unlikely friendship between two wildly different NYC sanitation workers.
readings, workshops, festivals
PlayPenn runs July 5-20 at The Drake in Philadelphia. The annual development conference—now co-produced with six Philadelphia theatre companies— features free readings of seven new plays: Bee Kanofsky’s Field of Flowers (director: James Kern, dramaturg: Madeline Charne), Chaz T. Martin’s I'll Eat You Whole (director: Jessica Holt, dramaturg: L M Feldman), Zahra Patterson’s Talking to Og (director: C. Ryanne Domingues, dramaturg: Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon), Lex Thammavong’s The Company (director: Brett Ashley Robinson, dramaturg: Walter Bilderback), L M Feldman’s hand foot hand (director: MK Tuomanen, dramaturg: Kellie Mecleary), Lori Felipe-Barkin’s Ama. Egg. Oyá. (director: Erlina Ortiz, dramaturg: Aly Gonzalez), and Andrew Saito’s Harlem Canary/Tokyo Crow (director: Cat Ramirez, dramaturg: Autumn Storm Blalock).
Paloma Nozicka’s Both will have readings July 10-12 at Cape Cod Theatre Project in Falmouth, MA. The new work is a “thrilling examination of family, love, memory, loyalty, and the power of believing.”
Anthony King and Scott Brown’s Gutenberg! The Musical runs July 10-18 at Adirondack Theatre Festival in Glens Falls, NY. Martha Banta directs the musical comedy about “wannabe composers Doug and Bud on the most important night of their lives: a backer’s audition to pitch the worst concept for a show ever—a musical about the inventor of the printing press Johann Gutenberg.”
The director Mark Brokaw passed away on June 29th at age 65 after a battle with cancer. Brokaw directed the 1997 premiere of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, for which he won a Drama Desk, Obie, and Lucille Lortel Award. His many notable credits include the original Off-Broadway stagings of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth and Lobby Hero, as well as Broadway productions of Reckless, The Constant Wife, Cry-Baby, After Miss Julie, The Lyons, Cinderella, Heisenberg, and the long-overdue Broadway production of How I Learned to Drive in 2022.