the week of march 22-28, 2024
natasha & pierre, sally & tom, leroy & lucy
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Note: I scheduled this email on Wednesday morning because I’m currently on a short break visiting two of Nothing for the Group’s most loyal readers (my parents). If anything major happened in the last two days and it’s not reflected here, it’s because I’m too busy delighting in niche retirement community gossip.
icymi
On Tuesday, paid subscribers got a little treat: I wrote about the emerging patterns and trends in a few recent season announcements (The Alley, The Guthrie, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, City Theatre, Warehouse Theatre, Roundabout, and La Jolla Playhouse) with more round-ups to come over the next several weeks.
season planning futures: 2024-25 (#1)
As always, if you want to read these very in-the-weeds observations but can’t afford/don’t want a paid subscription — just email me and I’ll forward it to you. Paid subscribers sustain this project and I’m very grateful for their generosity.
world premieres
David Yazbek, Erik Della Penna, and Itamar Moses’ Dead Outlaw is now playing through April 7th in an Audible production at the Minetta Lane Theater. David Cromer directs the new musical telling the “unbelievable true story of Elmer McCurdy, a man who had twice as many adventures in death as in life, and whose long, strange odyssey spanned a continent and a century.”
Susan H. Pak’s adaptation of Yangsook Choi’s The Name Jar starts performances March 22nd in a collaboration between Minneapolis’ Theater Mu and Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins, MN. Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan directs the spin on the children’s book about a young Korean girl debating if she needs a new first name after moving to America.
Don X. Nguyen’s The World Is Not Silent runs March 22 - April 14 at The Alley Theatre in Houston. Performed in English, Vietnamese, American Sign Language, and Vietnamese Sign Language, the “multilingual play that explores how language simultaneously divides and unites us” is directed by Marya Mazor.
Kairos Looney’s House of Telescopes starts performances March 22nd at A.R.T./NY from Pipeline Theatre Company. The “coming of age transgender fantasia featuring a cast of 16 predominantly trans or non-binary performers” is directed by Lyam B. Gabel with original music by Aya Aziz.
Jesús I. Valles' BATHHOUSE.PPTX is now playing through April 22nd at NYC’s The Flea. The “group project for perverts, somewhere between lecture, re-enactment, and cruising ground…a meditation on queer longing, queer grief, and all our queer worlds that will come to pass, that will come to be” is directed by Chay Yew.
Sharyn Rothstein and Joel Waggoner’s Hester Street starts performances March 27th at DC’s Theater J. Oliver Butler directs the adaptation of Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 film about the “the humor, heartbreak and hope essential to the Jewish immigrant experience.”
Dave Osmundsen’s More of a Heart runs March 28 - April 21 at BLUEBARN Theatre in Omaha, NE. The drama about an “Autistic teenager coming of age in a world that rewards him for neurotypical behavior as he begins to question his feelings about his upbringing” is directed by Allen MacLeod.
productions
Lisa Wolpe’s Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender starts performances March 21st at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Laurie Woolery directs the “lyrical, fearless, and deeply personal one-person show weaving Shakespeare’s monologues with stories of her family’s traumatic past into a quest for gender equality and women’s rights.”
Rodney Gardiner’s Smote This, A Comedy About God... and Other Serious $H*T runs March 22-May 12 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The “one-man comedy about Gardiner trying to abandon God despite his deeply Christian roots” is directed by Raz Golden.
James Ijames’ Fat Ham starts performances March 27th at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The Pulitzer-winning riff on Hamlet is directed by Sideeq Heard.
Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis’ Mrs. Krishnan's Party runs March 27 - April 22 at ArtsEmerson in Boston. Presented by New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company, the semi-improvised interactive event where audience members are served dahl as “actors juggle cooking, music, and guests in an unfolding drama where no two nights are the same” is directed by Lewis.
Oya Mae Dxtchxss-Davis’ Packages O’ the Things We Deliver will have a public presentation March 27-31 at NYC’s The Chelsea Factory from National Black Theatre. Daniel Boisrond directs the new work about “brotherhood, redemption, and the threat that police violence has in the black community.”
Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish starts performances March 27th at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR in a co-pro with Stages Houston. The Art Basel-set “part caper comedy and part telenovela” is directed by Rebecca Rivas.
Suzan-Lori Parks’ Sally & Tom runs March 28 - May 5 at The Public Theater in NYC. Steve H. Broadnax III directs the “edgy dramedy that celebrates the craft of theater while taking a hard look at history.”
Rhiana Yazzie’s Nancy starts performances March 28th at DC’s Mosaic Theater Company. Produced in partnership with New Native Theatre, Ken-Matt Martin directs the DC-set collision of “strange political history and 80s nostalgia in this epic story that cuts through the veneer of shoulder pads, neon, and Van Halen with irreverent heart and deep empathy.”
workshops & readings
Madison Fiedler’s This is What the Days Are will have a reading on March 25th as part of Bedlam’s Do More: New Plays series. Francesca Sabel directs the new work set in a “back-to-the-land community of grievers as they plant perennials and slaughter pigs and face the task of living as the left-behind.”
a.k. payne’s Furlough's Paradise will have a reading on March 25th as part of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Ted Snowdon Reading Series. Ibi Owolabi directs the new work about two cousins (one currently incarcerated) returning to their hometown for a family funeral as they “try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship as time ticks towards the correctional officer’s arrival.”
the regional theatre game of thrones
Sara Bruner is the next producing artistic director of Idaho Shakespeare Festival. Bruner will lead three organizations in her new role: Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland, and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Incline Village, NV. A former company member at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Bruner has has acted in and directed productions at all three companies and previously served as an artistic associate before becoming associate artistic director.
2024-25 season updates
Steppenwolf announced its upcoming 2024-25 season. The Chicago ensemble theatre will produce Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (directed by Anna D. Shapiro, co-pro with Geffen Playhouse), Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love (directed by Jeremy Herrin), Suzan-Lori Parks’ The Book of Grace (directed by Steve H. Broadnax III), Noah Diaz’s You Will Get Sick (directed by Audrey Francis), and the world premiere of Ngozi Anyanwu’s Leroy and Lucy (directed by Awoye Timpo).
The Geffen Playhouse announced its 2024-25 season. Artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney’s inaugural line-up at the L.A. theatre includes a 20th anniversary staging of his play The Brothers Size (directed by Bijan Sheibani, co-pro with The Shed), Sara Porkalob’s Dragon Lady (directed by Andrew Russell), Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett in association with Gare St Lazare Ireland), Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (directed by Anna D. Shapiro, co-pro with Steppenwolf), a.k. payne’s Furlough’s Paradise (directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden), and the world premiere of Jake Brasch’s The Reservoir (directed by Shelley Butler, co-pro with The Denver Center and Alliance Theatre).
The Huntington announced its 2024-25 season. The Boston theatre announced five of seven plays: Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt (directed by Carey Perloff, in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company), Ricardo Pérez González’s Don’t Eat the Mangos (directed by David Mendizábal), Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s musical The Light in the Piazza (directed by Loretta Greco), and the first two plays of Mfoniso Udofia’s epic nine-play Ufot Family Cycle: Sojourners (directed by Dawn M. Simmons) and The Grove (directed by Awoye Timpo).
Writers Theatre announced its 2024-25 season. The Glencoe, IL theatre’s line-up includes Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 (directed and choreographed by Katie Spelman); Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s Every Brilliant Thing (directed by Kimberly Senior); Vanessa Severo’s Frida…A Self Portrait (directed by Joanie Schultz); Brian Friel’s Translations (directed by Braden Abraham); and Madhuri Shekar’s Dhaba on Devon Avenue (directed by Chay Yew, co-pro with TimeLine Theatre Company).
TheatreSquared announced its 2024-25 season. The Fayetteville, AR company will produce Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (directed by Dexter J. Singleton), Tony Meneses’ twenty50, Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, Alison Carey’s modern verse translation of Twelfth Night (in partnership with National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) and Play On Shakespeare), Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak’s musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (co-directed by Amy Herzberg and James Taylor Odom), the world premiere of Robert Ford’s In the Grove of Forgetting, and the Arkansas New Play Festival.
application time
The 2024-25 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab is now accepting applications through April 15. The program for NYC-based (or those who can be NYC-based) generative artists “supports four collaborative teams as they develop their projects over 12 months, culminating in work-in-progress presentations that are free and open to the public.”
