the week of march 15-19, 2021
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Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
online theatre
Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [hieroglyph] starts streaming in an online co-production with San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Directed by Margo Hall and filmed onstage at SF Playhouse, the play follows a teenager involuntarily displaced in Chicago two months post-Katrina and will be available to watch until April 3rd.
Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play — featuring Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck, Alia Shawkat, and Bobby Cannavale — will livestream March 25th-29th. The reading is part of the Spotlight on Plays series to benefit the Actor’s Fund.
Colman Domingo’s A Boy and His Soul starts streaming at Round House Theatre on March 22nd. The production is directed by Craig Wallace.
MJ Kaufman’s GALATEA will livestream on March 22nd at 7:30 PM EST as a benefit reading for Red Bull Theater. Directed by Will Davis and presented in collaboration with WP Theater, the play is “a trans love story set against the backdrop of a climate crisis.”
The Bengsons’ My Joy is Heavy! is now streaming as part of Arena Stage’s newly commissioned filmed music series, Arena Riffs. The 27-minute piece is self-filmed and captures their experiences of dealing with chronic pain and pregnancy loss during the lockdown.
Ada A.’s Tokens of Promise will stream on March 20th at 7PM CST as a part of Goodman Theatre’s Future Labs. Directed by Sydney Charles, the play is “a wicked satire about the modern-day job search and scarcity mentality.”
Syracuse Stage’s Cold Read Festival of New Plays streams March 26 -28. Works include Evan Starling-Davis’ Madness, In The Clearing of Blue (directed by Rufus Bonds); Chesney Snow’s work-in-progress Aquaplane; Kyle Bass’ The Cutaneous Rabbit Illusion (directed by Robert Hupp); Kate Hamill’s The Piper (directed by Meredith McDonough); and Madhuri Shekar’s Queen (directed by Kareem Fahmy).
Melisa Tien’s song cycle Swell streams from March 17-21 for HERE Arts Center. Directed by Elena Araoz with over 30 collaborating artists, Swell “weaves together 10 original, new music compositions by 10 composers drawing from their personal histories as immigrants and children of immigrants.”
in-person theatre
Sonia Friedman Productions announced three new works to premiere in-person in the West End. The socially-distanced RE:EMERGE season starts this May and includes Amy Berryman’s Walden, directed by Ian Rickson; Yasmin Joseph’s J'Ouvert, directed by Rebekah Murrell; and Joseph Charlton’s Anna X, directed by Daniel Raggett.
The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park will return this summer with Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Saheem Ali will direct the outdoor production.
the great american AD shuffle
Ken-Matt Martin is the new artistic director of Victory Gardens. Martin has been serving as an associate producer at the Goodman Theatre. He spoke to American Theatre about his vision for the future of Victory Gardens, and how to rebuild the artistic and community relationships damaged by the company’s leadership announcement debacle last spring.
2021 seasons
Roundabout Theatre Company announced The Refocus Project, a multi-year initiative seeking to elevate and restore marginalized plays to the American canon. The project will encompass Broadway productions, play readings, resource libraries, and panel discussions. It will launch in April with a series of online readings by 20th-century Black writers.
Theatre Prometheus announced its 2021 season. The company will partner with DC Public Library on a virtual drama book club, as well as present In Limbo [working title], a devised collaboration between DC-based asylum seekers and theatre artists.
assorted news
The Lark announced its Venturous Playwright Fellows. The recipients are The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes by Vivian Barnes; Eternal Life, Part I by Nathan Alan Davis; and THE WOODS. by Jahna Ferron-Smith. The fellowship includes an award of $50,000 over two years and a Production Subsidy Grant of up to $50,000 to support a production of the play at a theater of the playwright’s choosing.
things I read this week
It’s infuriating that few media outlets are referring to the eight murders at Asian-owned businesses in Atlanta as a hate crime, and that local law enforcement is operating from a white supremacist playbook. Violence and dehumanization occurred at the intersection of multiple marginalizations here — it was a racist, misogynist, and anti-Asian act of hatred — and one doesn’t negate the other. Individual actions feel inherently insufficient right now but here are some resources that I’ve found helpful:
Ma-Yi Theatre Company linked to resources and action from Movement Hub and Stop AAPI Hate
Asian-Americans Advancing Justice is holding bystander intervention trainings
The Atlanta team of Asian-Americans Advancing Justice is collecting donations to directly benefit the victims and their families
Barnard Center for Research on Women’s compilation of resources, events, trainings, readings and organizations to support. (I donated to Asian Mental Health Collective and Red Canary Song.)
I’m about halfway through Jen Silverman’s new novel We Play Ourselves. I usually don’t endorse books until I finish them, but I’ll make an exception here because it’s so smart and sly and darkly funny about the volatility of success and ambition. The book delightfully skewers the theatre industry, but it also offers gorgeously articulated passages about the creation of art, capturing the intimacy of rehearsals and the experience of watching a play with a precision and accuracy I’ve never read in fiction. Here is one of my favorite bits:
When I’m in a theatre I feel held. I feel simultaneously very safe and like something very dangerous is about to happen, and that dangerous thing is the wall of my chest peeling back—slowly, so slowly, in time with the curtain rising. And if the play is my play, then everybody present can gather close and peer at my naked heart. And I won’t even try to guard myself, because I am being held by the architecture of the theatre, by every pair of arms in every seat, and I will sit still for a time between 75 and 120 minutes, and I will be naked, and I will be invisible, and I will be entirely seen. And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and find a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, and when I’m all alone that’s how I feel too. And even if nobody says those words out loud, right then, we will be feeling the same feelings so strongly that we will forget that we aren’t of one body, one mind, one tenuous heart. And if it isn’t my play, then I will still be part of that collective witnessing organism, still be a single cell within a warm and gazing animal. It’s the sort of feeling that becomes a constant longing. It’s the sort of longing upon which you build an entire life.
