the week of june 10-16, 2023
this is not a tony awards recap
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:
The Friday weekly round-up is always free, but if you’d like to sustain this project (and get access to occasional bonus content), you can upgrade to a paid tier.
If you want to say hi (or send me a press release), you can email me, tweet @halvorsen, or just reply to this email.
Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim
productions
The Taming of the Shrew starts performances June 16 at American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA. The “fast-paced staging of Shakespeare’s comic play-within-a-play, set in modern-day Padua” is directed by José Zayas.
The world premiere of Ramiz Monsef’s The Ants starts June 20th at The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The horror play asking “why we spend so much money protecting ourselves instead of investing in our shared humanity” is directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh.
Fedna Jacquet’s Black Mother Lost Daughter runs June 21-25 from National Black Theatre at The Flea. Stevie Walker-Webb directs the “searing and haunting” exploration how the aftermath of a police killing echoes across three women’s lives.
Kareem Fahmy’s A Distinct Society runs June 22-July 23 at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL. Fahmy also directs his play set in a library straddling Canada and the US that becomes a meeting place for an Iranian father and daughter separated by the international border.
August Wilson’s Radio Golf is now playing at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD. The final work in Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle is directed by Reginald L. Douglas.
Sisi Reid’s Rock Paper Scissors runs June 22-25 at the Atlas, produced by the DC playwright collective The Welders. Reid weaves together movement and poetry to “embody the joy, beauty, curiosity, liberation; internalized competition, invisibility, hypervisibility, and oppressions she lives with as a Black Queer Woman.”
The world premiere of Ari'el Stachel’s Out of Character starts previews June 23rd at Berkeley Rep. Tony Taccone directs the solo performance exploring how Stachel hid his Middle Eastern background in a post-9/11 America, “setting off a years-long journey of trying on different identities, code switching, and navigating debilitating anxiety.”
The world premiere of Keiko Green’s Sharon is now playing through July 2nd at Cygnet Theatre in San Diego. The “comedic psychological thriller about a strange mother and son duo who are the landlords of a crumbling apartment building in Everett, WA” is directed by Rob Lutfy.
workshops & readings
Readings of Jan Rosenberg’s Pluck and jose sebastian alberdi’s bogfriends kick off the O’Neill Playwrights Conference in Waterford, CT on June 21 & 22. bogfriends is “a play about power-dynamics, love, and preserving dead things (or trying to) that traverses place, time, and culture”, while Pluck is “a dark coming-of-age play about the feelings we have as teens that we're not given words for, so we make up monsters and myths instead.”
Adam Ben-David, Jessica Penzias, and Christyn Budzyna’s musical adaptation of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Fankweiler will have an invite-only workshop reading at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ on June 16 & 17. Artistic director Sarah Rasmussen directs the adaptation of E.L. Konigsburg’s young adult novel about two siblings who hide out in the Met as “the art in the museum comes to life and the siblings set out to unravel a mystery surrounding a stunning statue with rumored ties to Michelangelo.”
festivals
Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel runs June 21 - July 1 at The Wild Project as part of ClubbedThumb’s Summerworks. Tara Ahmadinejad directs the new play about “Aunt Bobbi trying to make everyone feel better, even though her parties are cursed.”
The Alley All New Festival runs June 16-25 in Houston. Readings and workshops include Katie Bender’s Instructions for a Séance (directed by Lily Wolff), Hilary Bettis’ Untitled Horse Play (directed by May Adrales), Chisa Hutchinson’s The Bleeding Class (directed by Jade King Carroll), Marisela Treviño Orta’s December (directed by Marcela Lorca), Anna Ziegler’s The Janeiad (directed by Rob Melrose), and Afsaneh Aayani and Mark Shanahan’s The Painter and the Wild Swans.
The 2023 Arkansas New Play Festival at TheatreSquared runs June 18-25. This year’s staged readings are Iraisa Ann Reilly’s Saturday Mourning Cartoons, Rhiana Yazzie’s Nancy (directed by Ken-Matt Martin); Jonathan Norton’s I Am Delivered’t, Robert Ford’s The Grove of Forgetting (directed by Damon Kiely), and LatinX Theatre Project’s Raices|Roots.
Irish Repertory Theatre’s inaugural New Works Summer Festival runs June 20-24. Nicola Murphy Dubey and Colm Summers will direct five readings of plays by LGBTQ+ artists: Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s Irishtown, John King’s ERIS, Karen Cogan’s Drip Feed, May Treuhaft-Ali’s Motherland, and Phillip McMahon’s Once Before I Go.
digital/streaming
Dave Harris’ FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM ET CETERA is now available to stream from Playwright Horizons’ Soundstage. Taylor Reynolds directs the dark comedy about ancestors and artists for PH’s anthological scripted fiction podcast.
The National Women’s Theatre Festival runs in-person (at NC State University in Raleigh) and online June 21-July 1. The two main programs of the hybrid festival are WTFringe, a performance festival of experimental, innovative, and collaborative works that push boundaries and embrace parity, and WTFCon, an annual symposium of workshops, panel discussions, and keynote speeches. (The festival, whose partners include the Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL), is also incredibly parent-inclusive, with extensive family programming and accessibility options.)
2023-24 season updates
Signature Theatre in NYC announced its winter/spring 2024 season. The three-play line-up includes Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby (directed by Steve H. Broadnax III), Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando (starring Taylor Mac and directed by Will Davis), and the world premiere of Dave Malloy’s new musical Three Houses (directed by Annie Tippe).
The Atlantic announced two productions in its 2023-24 season. The Off Broadway company will produce the world premieres of Annie Baker’s Infinite Life (co-pro with The National in London and directed by James Macdonald) and Marco Ramirez’s musical Buena Vista Social Club (directed by Saheem Ali)
The National in London announced its 2023-24 season. The theatre will produce the aforementioned Infinite Life, Coriolanus (directed by Lyndsey Turner), Tim Price's Nye (directed by Rufus Norris), Gecko and Amit Lahav’s Kin, Alexander Zeldin's The Confessions, Alice Birch's adaptation of Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba (directed by Rebecca Frecknall), Dodie Smith's Dear Octopus (directed by Emily Burns), Beth Steel's Till the Stars Come Down (directed by Bijan Sheibani), Sarah Gordon's Underdog: The Other Other Brontë (directed by Natalie Ibu), Roy Williams’ Death of England: Closing Time (directed by Clint Dyer), Katori Hall's The Hot Wing King (directed by Roy Alexander Weise), Jack Thorne's The Motive and the Cue (directed by Sam Mendes), and the world premiere of Ben Power’s London Tide, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend with original songs by Power and PJ Harvey (directed by Ian Rickson).
Second Stage announced three upcoming productions. On Broadway, the theatre will produce Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate (directed by Lila Neugebauer) and a not-yet-titled new play by Paula Vogel (directed by Tina Landau), as well as an Off-Broadway production of Jen Silverman’s Spain (directed by Tyne Rafaeli).
Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR announced its 2023-24 season. The first season programmed by new artistic director Jeanette Harrison includes Dillon Christopher Chitto’s Pueblo Revolt, Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King, and two world premieres: Blossom Johnson’s A Boarding School Play and Diana Burbano’s Sapience.
The Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) announced its first season. The line-up of dance, opera, music, and theater at the World Trade Center site includes the world premiere of Bill T. Jones, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Tamar-kali’s Watch Night; David Henry Hwang and Huang Ruo’s opera An American Soldier; Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet's The Following Evening; the world premiere of Laurence Fishburne's solo play Like They Do in The Movies; and a ballroom culture-inspired reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch).
this week in our field-wide existential crisis
Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles is laying off 10% of its full-time staff and pausing all programming in the Mark Taper Forum. The theatre has a “budget deficit in the millions of dollars and audiences are still not returning at anywhere near pre-pandemic levels.” (CTG’s newly announced artistic director, Snehal Desai, starts next month.) The world premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s Fake It Until You Make It, originally scheduled for an August opening, is now postponed indefinitely.
award season
If you’re looking for a robust recap of the Tony Awards, per usual I am not your girl, but I like Jackson McHenry’s round-up of highs, lows, and whoas at Vulture. I only saw one show in New York this season — Sidney Brustein at BAM — so I was thrilled that Miriam Silverman won for that flawless performance. (I spent a decade cramming five plays into weekend work trips that on my last two NYC visits I’ve just really loved never leaving Brooklyn and planning my life around my friends’ toddlers’ nap schedules instead of curtain times.)
