the week of june 17-23, 2023

Jun 23, 2023

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love is now playing on Broadway. The the immersive disco pop musical based on the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos and the People Power Revolution of the Philippines is directed by Alex Timbers and choregraphed by Annie-B Parson.
Kristina Wong for Public Office runs June 24 & 25 at Long Wharf and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven. The solo performance “crosses the aesthetics of campaign rallies and church revivals to tell [Wong’s] unique journey from performance artist to public official.”
Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical Fun Home starts previews June 28th at Studio Theatre in DC. David Muse directs the “Tony Award-winning story of a daughter and father, of coming out and coming to terms with a life shaped by a family’s secrets.”

Velina Hasu Houston’s Tea will have a reading on June 26th as part of the Roundabout Refocus Project. Jess McLeod directs the 1987 work about four “Japanese wives of American servicemen who have come to America post-war with their new husbands, drawn together not by choice but by forced proximity and shared identity.” The Refocus Project is an initiative to “elevate and restore marginalized plays to the American canon”; this year’s series is highlighting Asian American and Pacific Islander playwrights.
Readings of a.k. payne’s Love I Awethu Further and Alex Lin’s Chinese Republicans run June 28 - July 1 at The O’Neill Playwrights Conference in Waterford, CT. Love I Awethu Further is “an adaptation of Julius Caesar about two sisters planning a revolt in the Antebellum South”; Chinese Republicans is about a high-flying finance It Girl who “embarks on a treacherous endeavor to make a worker's union out of her Republican work aunties after losing the promotion of a lifetime to a nepo baby co-worker.”

The final Ice Factory Festival runs June 28 - August 12 in a hybrid in-person and digital format. The seven new works are The Goat Exchange’s Deadclass, Ohio (direction by Mitchell Polonsky and Chloe Claudel); Saviana Stanescu’s Zebra 2.0 (directed by Jeremy Goren); PPL’s On The Cranial Nerves of Barbarians II: A Carp Sanctuary; Beth Golison’s here i fall up (directed by Annabel Heacock and Maiya Pascouche); Lydia Blaisdell’s gerstl took the easy way out (directed by Ashley Olive Teague); How I Disappeared; and Robert Lyons’s Ultra Left Violence (directed by Daniel Irizarry).

MCC Theater announced its 2023-24 season. The NYC company will present Zoe Sarnak and Rachel Bonds’ musical The Lonely Few (directed by Trip Cullman & Ellenore Scott) and three world premieres: Emma Horwitz’s Mary Gets Hers (directed by Josiah Davis) from company-in-residence Playwrights Realm, Gavin Creel’s Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice (directed by Linda Goodrich), and Jason Robert Brown and Jonathan Marc Sherman’s new musical The Connector (conceived and directed by Daisy Prince).
Ojai Playwrights Conference announced its upcoming August line-up. The first festival under the leadership of new producing artistic director Jeremy B. Cohen will include Mathilde Dratwa’s Dirty Laundry, Benjamin Benne’s and thou shalt be healed, Ngozi Anyanwu’s My… Name is Beatrice, Julia Izumi’s Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!), and Anne Washburn’s The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire. June Carryl, Madeline Sayet and DeLanna Studi will be writers-in-residence.

Tinashe Kajese-Bolden and Christopher Moses are the new co-artistic directors of Alliance Theatre. The two are the current interim leaders — and associate artistic directors — of Atlanta’s flagship theatre.
Kenn McLaughlin is retiring as artistic director of Stages Houston. He will step down from the theatre in June 2024 after twenty-five seasons.

Triad Stage in Greensboro, NC is closing after 20 years. The theatre had already suspended its current season back in March; the permanent closure was attributed to “financial stresses that began before the pandemic”, including a 1.5 million deficit. (It’s also worth noting that in November 2020, then-artistic director Preston Lane was accused of sexual misconduct and resigned.) After the theatre reopened post-shutdown, “houses averaging less than half full over the course of the first two mainstage productions, significantly reduced levels of contributed revenue, staff downsizing, and increased costs of production” exacerbated the crisis.
Westport Country Playhouse announced an emergency campaign to raise $2 million by July 30th. The Connecticut theatre canceled its upcoming production of Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls, reducing its current season to only two productions, and recently made “substantial staff cuts”, in addition to artistic director Mark Lamos’ upcoming departure.

Nothing for the Group