the week of june 20-24, 2022

the LPTW is girlbossing too close to the sun

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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton | Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim

in-person theatre

• Britta Johnson’s Life After is now playing at the Goodman Theatre through July 17th. Annie Tippe directs the Canadian chamber musical about a young woman reckoning with her father’s sudden death.

• Eboni Booth’s Paris is now playing at Chicago’s Steep Theatre through July 23rd. The Vermont-set dramedy about the barely muffled anguish and casual racism among department store workers is directed by Jonathan Berry. (The entire run is currently sold out, but there’s a waitlist.)

• The world premiere of Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s It Came From Outer Space is now playing through July 24th at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The musical comedy adapted from the 1950s cult classic sci-fi film is directed by Laura Braza.

• Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Emma is now playing through August 21st at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Meredith McDonough directs the world premiere reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s classic novel about the romantic misadventures and meddling of the titular wannabe matchmaker.

• Buffalo’s Shakespeare in Delaware Park kicks off June 23rd. The free outdoor summer festival will present As You Like It and A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

• The co-world premiere of Candrice Jones’ Flex runs June 29 - July 17 at Arkansas’ TheatreSquared. Set in 1997, the play tells the story of a girls’ high school basketball team navigating the pressures of being young, Black, and female in rural Arkansas. (It will also debut at Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit in September.)

• Gina Femia’s The Violet Sisters runs June 30 - July 2 at Cape Cod Theatre Project. Taylor Reynolds directs the two-hander about a fraught post-Hurricane Sandy reunion between two offbeat sisters.

• Madeleine George’s Hurricane Diane is running through June 26th at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca. Rebecca Bradshaw directs the “perfect storm of timely tragicomedy, [with] the whirls of ancient myth, ecological revenge and an ecstatic awakening for the ages.”

• Fausto Avendaño’s El Corrido de California receives the final reading in Roundabout’s Refocus Project on June 27th. Galia Backal directs the bilingual play dramatizing the turbulent start of the Mexican-American War.

• JuCoby Johnson’s 5 and Neena Beber’s Kate Suspended have public readings this week at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. 5 “examines a friendship tested by money, race, and family secrets brought to light”, while Beber’s comedy follows a journalist grappling with “saying goodbye to her father, her younger self, and the alternate paths she might have taken.”

digital theatre

• The National Asian American Theater Festival’s Virtual Showcase is streaming through June 30th. The line-up features the work of nine theater artists and companies from Hawaiʻi, Guåhan, and the continental US: Keola Simpson, Breaking Wave Theatre Company, Susan Lieu, Jason Bayani, Kristina Wong, Aya Aziz, Melisa Orozco Vargas, and Anida Yoeu Ali.

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2022-23 season updates

• Soho Rep announced its 2022-23 season. The line-up includes three world premieres: Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s Public Obscenities, Kate Tarker’s Montag (directed by Dustin Wills), Jillian Walker’s The Whitney Album (directed by Jenny Koons).

• Center Theatre Group announced its 2022-23 season. The LA theatre will produce two world premieres — Larissa FastHorse's Fake It Until You Make It and Joey Soloway, MJ Kaufman, and Faith Soloway’s A Transparent Musical (directed by Tina Landau and based on the Amazon series) — as well as the US premiere of Danny Robbins’ 2:22 - A Ghost Story (directed by Matthew Dunster, Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (starring Cecily Strong and directed by Leigh Silverman), Lynn Nottage's Clyde's (directed by Kate Whoriskey, co-pro with the Goodman), Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, Dominique Morisseau's Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations (directed by Des McAnuff), Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play (directed by Kenny Leon), and A.R.T. and Roundabout Theatre Company's 1776 revival (directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus).

• George Street Playhouse announced its upcoming season. The New Jersey theatre will present Mfoniso Udofia’s Her Portmanteau (directed by Laiona Michelle), Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (directed by Colin Hanlon), and two world premieres: Steve Guttenberg's autobiographical comedy Tales From the Guttenberg Bible (directed by David Saint) and Ken Davenport and AnnMarie Milazzo’s musical Joy (directed by Casey Hushion).

• The Kitchen Theatre announced its 2022-23 season. The Ithaca company’s line-up includes Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger? and Naomi Wallace’s And I and Silence (both directed by Rebecca Bradshaw), A. Rey Pamatmat’s Edith Can Shoot Things And Hit Them (directed by Tyler Struble), and Nilaja Sun’s No Child… (directed by Pascale Florestal).

• Writers Theatre announced its 2022-23 season. The Glencoe, IL theatre will produce Mike Lew’s Tiger Style! (directed by Brian Balcom), the musical Once (directed & choreographed by Katie Spelman), A Distinct Society (written & directed by Kareem Fahmy), and Manuel Cinema’s Christmas Carol.

• Detroit Public Theatre announced its upcoming season. The line-up includes Dominique Morisseau's Mud Row (directed by Lamar Perry), Heather Raffo’s Noura (directed by Mike Mosallam), Liza Jessie Peterson’s The Peculiar Patriot (directed by Talvin Wilks), and Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s Passing Strange (directed by John Sloan III).

• Potomac Theatre Project announced its 35th season. The NYC-based company will present two bills of one-act plays: Sex, Grift, and Death (Steven Berkoff’s Lunch and Caryl Churchill’s Hot Fudge and Here We Go), and Reverse Transcription (Robert Chesley’s Dog Plays and Jim Petosa and Jonathan Adler’s A Variant Strain).

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the regional theatre game of thrones

• Utah Shakespeare Festival announced Derek Charles Livingston as its interim artistic director. The appointment comes one month after artistic director Brian Vaughn abruptly resigned weeks before the start of the festival’s season. (The company didn’t provide a reason for Vaughn’s departure, except “the Festival cannot comment on the specifics of individual personnel matters.”) Livingston originally joined the company as the director of new play development in March 2021.

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that’s not a living wage

Here is this week’s featured underpaid job listing, 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.)

• Administrative Director, The League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW): $40,000 (“plus stipend for health insurance”)

  • Living Wage for New York, NY: $56,718

Love when an organization states its mission as “championing women in theatre and advocating for increased equity and access for all” but offers a comically depressing salary, especially when one of the position’s assigned responsibilities is conducting a field-wide wage study.

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things I read this week when I wasn’t watching love island*

• Alexis Soloski’s NYT interview with Deirdre O’Connell on the days after her Tony win. (I want to know the name of every designer that declined to dress Deirdre for the ceremony so I can hold a grudge that I will pass down to my descendants.)

*You can’t shame me about watching Love Island because I have no shame: there is no greater serotonin boost than watching those beautiful dummies in day-glo fast fashion squabble by the pool, underscored by generic house music because the show can’t afford licensing rights to The Weeknd, all while I try to decipher the intricacies of British regional snobbery. The highest of arts! The smoothest of brains!