the week of march 29 - april 2, 2021
The North remembers (the terrible finale of Game of Thrones)
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Identity design by Elizabeth Haley Morton.
online theatre
Keli Goff’s The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks, and Curls is now streaming at Baltimore Center Stage. The filmed world premiere production — a collection of monologues and scenes exploring the complex relationship Black women have with their hair — is directed by Bianca LaVerne Jones.
Rhiana Yazzie’s Nancy will stream as part of the Playwrights’ Center’s Ruth Easton New Play Series on April 7th at 7 PM CDT. The reading will be directed by Ken-Matt Martin.
Don X. Nguyen’s Man. Kind. and Jiehae Park’s To Steve Wozniak, On His 67th Birthday start streaming April 9th at the Alley Theatre. The two short plays, directed by Brandon Weinbrenner and Mekeva McNeil respectively, are part of the Alley All New series.
Audio versions of Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue and Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here are now available on Audible from Williamstown Theatre Festival. Paradise Blue, which premiered at WTF in 2015, is directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, wile Wish You Were Here is directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch.
Hilton Als Presents: Portrait of Jason is now available from New York Theatre Workshop. Als' audio adaptation of Shirley Clarke's 1967 Portrait of Jason is one of NYTW’s Artistic Instigator projects.
Liza Birkenmeier’s Honestly Sincere is now streaming for Theater in Quarantine. The new play follows the wild and secret hopes of a teen girl after she acquires a supernatural Nokia phone and is directed by Joshua William Gelb.
Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind is now streaming through April 4th as part of A.C.T.’s Out Loud series. The filmed reading, directed by Awoye Timpo, features David Harbour (one of my favorite tortured-but-wholly-decent-and-real-hot-even-though-he’s-playing-a-cop television dads) and is part of ACT’s new play series “featuring enduring works by some of the greatest minds of generations past.”
season updates
New York Theatre Workshop announced its 2021 Artistic Instigator projects. The line-up includes Aleshea Harris' Brother, Brother (directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury); Kristina Wong's Sweatshop Overload; and Hilton Als Presents: Selections from Tennessee Williams.
Berkshire Theatre Group announced its 2021 summer outdoor season. (One of the early issues of this newsletter covered the theatre’s outdoor production of Godspell last summer.) The season includes The Importance of Being Earnest (directed by David Auburn), Christina Ham’s Nina Simone: Four Women (directed by Gerry McIntyre), and The Wizard of Oz.
Pioneer Theatre Company in Utah announced its in-person 2021-22 season. Performances start September 10th and the line-up includes a concert production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, the world premiere of Ellen Simon’s play Ass, Jeff Talbot’s new play The Messenger (inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People), and the musicals Something Rotten! and Hello, Dolly!.
assorted news
The Drama League Awards announced the 2021 nominees and special recognition recipients. The organization created five new categories this year to recognize digital theatre, audio plays, virtual concerts, and socially-distanced theatrical productions.
A stage production of Games of Thrones is in the works for a 2023 debut. The theatrical adaptation will be written by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke. (Do we really need to re-animate this corpse after its spectacularly bad finale — preceded by two seasons of slapdash, vacant storytelling — essentially invalidated its years of praise? Of course not, but it was inevitable: commercial theatre producers love throwing cash at fantasy epics, hoping for a success like Harry Potter rather than the large-scale failure of the Lord of the Rings musical.)
Chicago’s Stage 773 is being repurposed into a “a Willy Wonka meets Burning Man immersive experience”, a description which made me contort into a full body cringe. Anyone citing Willy Wonka as an inspiration for their “art playground” is full-on telling on themselves. Don’t compare your Meow Wolf rip-off to the Wonka factory unless you also plan on endangering children in elaborate death traps!
