the week of march 22-26, 2021
the american theatre is not built for us
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Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
online theatre
Javaad Alipoor’s Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran starts streaming April 1st at Woolly Mammoth. Co-created with director/dramaturg Kirsty Housley, the play is “a darkly comedic virtual experience about entitlement, consumption, and digital technology through the lens of Iran’s elite.”
Isaac Gómez’s El Chucho Town Forever and Chisa Hutchinson’s Choosing Love start streaming April 2nd at the Alley Theatre. The two short plays, directed by Laura Moreno and Christopher Windham respectively, are part of the Alley All New series.
Secret Admirer, a collaboration between Danielle Mohlman and Dacha Theatre, is streaming now through April 4th. The interactive digital play, set at a virtual sleepover between grown-up middle school best friends, features “reunions, well-loved board games and 90s kid nostalgia” which I hope means plenty of Dream Phone and Mall Madness references.
Trish Harnetiaux’s six-part narrative podcast The MS Phoenix Rising is now available from Playwrights Horizons. Directed by Katie Brook, the series follows a newly relaunched cruise ship’s staff as they “decide to revolutionize the concept of on-board entertainment by premiering an avant-garde theater production of Ionesco’s The Chairs.”
Mike Bartlett’s Cock starts streaming March 26th at Studio Theatre. The production is a video remake of the theatre’s 2014 production, also directed by David Muse. (I sent a lot of all-staff emails when Studio originally produced this play about the importance of italicizing play titles. I had to write a special style guide addendum when the production was extended. Sometimes institutional dramaturgy means writing elegantly constructed dick jokes.)
in-person theatre
Taylor Mac’s Joy and Pandemic will premiere at the Magic Theatre this September. The play, surprisingly commissioned before our current public health nightmare, is set “in Philadelphia in September 1918, at the tail end of World War I, on the day of the huge Liberty Loan Parade that became an infamous super-spreader event.” I have no desire to consume art about this pandemic anytime soon, so I’m fine with 1918 influenza reckonings. Let climate change-ravaged playwrights in 100 years write about coronavirus when audiences need a break from the Thunderdome.
this week in inevitable outcomes
One week after announcing their reopening plans, Park Avenue Armory postponed its first indoor performances of Afterwardsness after members of the Bill. T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company tested positive for COVID-19. (The affected artists are "feeling well", per the company.)
season updates
American Conservatory Theater announced its 2022 in-person season. The line-up includes Freestyle Love Supreme, María Irene Fornés’ Fefu and Her Friends (directed by Pam MacKinnon), Ben Power’s adaptation of The Lehman Trilogy (directed by Sam Mendes), and Dominique Morisseau’s world premiere musical Soul Train (directed by Kamilah Forbes).
The National Theatre in London is set to re-open in June. The first two productions will be a Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (with additional material by Siân Owen, directed by Lyndsey Turner) and Jack Thorne’s adaptation of After Life (directed by Jeremy Herrin in a co-pro with Headlong)
assorted news
Michael R. Jackson and Nathan Alan Davis won the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prizes for Drama. Each winner will receive a $165,000 unrestricted grant to support their continued writing.
Ma-Yi Theater Company announced a new microgrant program open to NYC-based BIPOC, trans, and disabled artists and creatives. Ten recipients will each receive $500 and the application window is March 29th - April 9th.
Emily Simoness will step down as Executive Director of SPACE on Ryder Farm. The co-founder has led the residency program for 11 years.
things I read this week
Monty Cole’s “The American Theatre is Not Built for Us” (ReScripted) It’s tempting to quote this entire towering achievement of an essay, which traces the economic history and capitalist origins of the American theatre and the built-in unsustainability of the regional theatre model. He’s asking all of the right, necessary questions for this moment. Here’s a bit from the intro:
“The American Theatre exists under the umbrella of American Capitalism. Its survival has always depended on ticket sales and various forms of investment from the upper class. With the relatively recent advent of the non-profit theatre, we’ve convinced ourselves that the non-profit and the commercial worlds are separate when, ultimately, they abide by the same rules of capitalism. We’ve convinced ourselves that the non-profit is a safe space for the artistic, the creative, the developmental, but the systems in place were never built to support the artist or the financial failure that can come with further exploring the New…On the precipice of societal change, now is the time for artists to look back at history, question our models, examine the possibilities, and imagine a new future.”
Michael Paulson and Katy Lemieux on the actors challenging Equity over the union’s restrictive safety requirements for reopening (The New York Times):
“The union’s leadership, while proud of its performance during the pandemic, is acknowledging the concerns [while defending its] intensive focus on health…But with film and television production underway, vaccine distribution speeding up, and gathering places from schools to restaurants to sports arenas opening, many performers and producers say the union has been too slow to adapt.”
Jackson McHenry on what the hell is happening with the 2020 Tony Awards (Vulture):
“The idea of holding a celebratory event around a tiny, commercialized silver of this larger world seems especially frivolous right now. Most of the theater industry has evaporated, despite various stabs at remote productions; some smaller New York venues may be able to reopen soon, but the financial impacts will continue to resonate. The fact that these awards are being positioned the way they are says a lot about Broadway’s priorities.”