the week of may 2-6, 2022

can you pay my biiiiiiills

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new feature & call for submissions: bills, bills, bills

I’m delighted to introduce a new upcoming feature that will be available to all subscribers — Bills, Bills, Bills: a series of anonymous money diaries from theatre workers, curated and edited by Jenna Clark Embrey.

Jenna is a brilliant dramaturg, creator of the crowd-sourced Theatre Salaries Spreadsheet, and my comrade in pay equity and transparency. This feature is 100% her brainchild and it’s modeled on the popular Money Diaries series at Refinery 29. I’m thrilled to host it within the newsletter, as it complements That’s Not a Living Wage and my own desire to demystify compensation structures and struggles in hopes of building a more equitable industry.

Here’s where you come in: we’re looking for theatre workers interested in anonymously sharing their monthly budgets and writing a seven-day diary tracking how they spend their money. Jenna is committed to showcasing a wide cross-section of stories and experiences. (I would personally love to hear how freelance designers, two-theatre parent households, or people living outside the major theater markets make their budgets work!)

Relevant details:

• Selected participants will receive a $50 honorarium.

• All diaries will be edited for clarity and anonymity, and any identifying personal details will be obscured. Contributors will have the opportunity to review their edited diary before publication.

If you’d like to be considered, please fill out this form by May 20th. Selected participants will be notified and receive additional details by email. We’ll be publishing a new diary on the first Wednesday of every month for the next five months. (If it’s a success, we’ll do more!)

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in-person theatre

• Inda Craig-Galván’s Black Super Hero Magic Mama is now playing at Boston’s Company One. Monica White Ndounou directs “the powerful refutation of the disproportionate expectations placed on Black mothers and their sons” with dramaturgy by Ilana M. Brownstein and Regine Vital.

• The world premiere of Liz Duffy Adams’ Born with Teeth is now playing at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Rob Melrose directs the comic imagining of Marlowe and Shakespeare “meeting in the back room of a pub to collaborate on a history play cycle, navigating the perils of art under a totalitarian regime, and flirting like young men with everything to lose.”

• Joshua Harmon, Sarah Silverman, and Adam Schlesinger’s The Bedwetter is now playing at the Atlantic. Anne Kauffman directs the new musical based on Silverman’s memoir and featuring the late Schlesinger’s final score.

• Liz Morgan’s Deliver: Letters to the Motherland from a Foreign Body will have a reading with the Fled Collective on May 7th. Zoey Martinson directs the developmental workshop of the “poetic homage to immigrants”, which is the the first staged program The Fled is producing as the Flea’s Key Resident Company.

• Awa Sal Secka and Dani Stoller’s The Joy That Carries You runs May 11 - June 12 at Olney Theater Center. The world premiere about “an interracial couple in crisis” is directed by Jason Loewith and Kevin McAllister.

• Alanna Mitchell’s Sea Sick plays May 11 - 22 at ArtsEmerson in Boston. Based on her best-selling book, the Canadian science journalist’s solo performance tells the story of her “grand adventure into the ocean to learn its secrets, face its demons, and come to grips with the devastating implications of climate change that threaten our world.”

• Donja R. Love’s soft starts performances May 12th at MCC Theater. Whitney White directs the world premiere about a devoted teacher at a correctional boarding school and his response to one of his students dying by suicide.

• James Ijames’ Fat Ham begins May 12th at the Public Theater. Saheem Ali directs the comic reinvention of Hamlet centering a Black, queer discovery of self, softness, and resilience at a cookout in the South.

• Nambi E. Kelley’s RE/MEMORI (Of Hair Land & Sea) runs May 12-14 as part of WP Theater’s 2022 Pipeline Festival. Machel Ross directs the one-woman show described as “a meditation on how dreams affect consciousness, agency, and personal power in the construction of a Black woman’s understanding of her connection to her ancestors through time.”

• Mansa Ra’s …what the end will be premieres May 12th at Roundabout. The commissioned work about “three generations of men live under one roof and grapple with their own truths of what it means to be Black and gay” is directed by Margot Bordelon.

• Zoe Kazan’s After the Blast runs May 13 - June 11 at Chicago’s Broken Nose Theatre. JD Caudill directs the post-environmental disaster drama, following two aspiring parents in a world where fertility is regulated, experience is simulated and the human population has retreated underground.

• Justine Gelfman's In Sisters We Trust, or My Fucked Up American Girl Doll Play will have a reading May 12-13 as part of the Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation’s Playwrights Program. Susanna Wolk directs the work that “brings together the American Girl Dolls, all grown up, in a televised reunion that glitches, throwing them into a glossy feminist workplace.”

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digital theatre

• María Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends is available to stream on demand from ACT through May 8th. Pam Mackinnon directs the “unconventional tale of eight women gathering at a New England country home in 1935” that utilizes “the multi-storied, multi-roomed Strand Theater as non-traditional theater space [breaking up audiences] into four groups that independently tour Fefu’s home.”

• Haruna Lee & Jen Goma’s Plural (Love) streams on demand May 5-8 as part of WP Theater’s 2022 Pipeline Festival. Sophiyaa Nayar directs the short film that “layers political, cultural, and social theory with [the creators’] own autobiographical stories, and their own experiences of desire and being desired.”

• The Playwrights’ Center’s Playlabs Festival streams online May 6-13. Projects include Mathilde Dratwa’s Dirty Laundry (directed by Brian Roff), Darren Canady’s The Percy Meacham Dance Experience (directed by Eric Avery), and Stacey Rose’s Trapt (beats and lyrics by Zion “No!z” Rose and directed by Ken-Matt Martin).

• Dmitry Krymov’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard is available to stream on demand from the Wilma Theater through May 15th. The Russian director collaborated with the Wilma’s HotHouse Acting Company to reimagine one of Chekhov’s masterworks.

• Bullshit premieres in-person and online at Ars Nova on May 13th. The experimental cabaret is curated by Machel Ross and written and performed by Hannah Kallenbach and Paris.

• Tyrell Williams’ Red Pitch streams on demand May 9-14 from the Bush Theatre. Daniel Bailey directs the fast-paced and sharp-edged drama about three young, football-obsessed friends “planning their futures in a fast-changing neighbourhood, one eye on family responsibilities and the other on romance.”

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2022-23 season updates

• Woolly Mammoth announced its 2022-23 season. The season includes Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ (directed by Lili-Anne Brown; in association with Baltimore Center Stage), Tina Satter’s Is This A Room, Jasmine Lee-Jones’ Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner (directed by Millie Vhatia), The Jungle (co-pro with Shakespeare Theatre Company), Aya Ogawa’s The Nosebleed, and the world premiere of Dave Harris’ Incendiary (directed by Monty Cole).

• Repertory Theater of St. Louis announced its 2022-23 season. The line-up includes Madhuri Shekar’s House of Joy, Dominique Morisseau’s Confederates, Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together, Noël Coward’s Private Lives, Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, and Michael Wilson’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

• Olney Theatre Center announced its 2022-23 season. Projects include Clare Barron’s Dance Nation (directed by Jenna Place), a return engagement of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge), Kinky Boots (directed by Jason King Jones), Ali Viterbi’s In Every Generation (directed by Place), Kander and Ebb’s The World Goes ‘Round (directed by Kevin McAllister), Madhuri Shekar’s A Nice Indian Boy, and a co-production with Round House of Fela! (directed by Lili-Anne Brown).

• Ma-Yi Theater Company announced additional upcoming programming. The theater will present the world premiere of Daniel K. Isaac’s ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME, the documentary film The First Twenty: 20 Years of Asian American Playwriting, and a digital rebroadcast of Ralph B. Peña’s Vancouver.

• Second Stage Uptown announced two upcoming world premieres. The company will present Steph Del Rosso’s 53% Of (directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene) and Johnny G. Lloyd's Patience (directed by Zhailon Levingston).

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the regional theatre game of thrones

• Chiara Klein and Amrita Ramanan are the newest leaders at the Public Theater. Klein returns as the new Director of Producing and Artistic Planning after a three-year stint at Baltimore Center Stage. Ramanan joins as the Director of New Work Development after five seasons at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

• Lynde Rosario is the new Director of Fellowships at the Playwrights Center. Rosario is the current Impact Assessment Director for the National New Play Network and the incoming President of The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.

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award season

• The 2022 Lucille Lortel Awards were announced. Kimberly Akimbo and Oratorio for Living Things tied for most wins with three each and Deirdre O’Connell received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Aleshea Harris and Virginia Grise won Herb Alpert Awards. The prize for mid-career artists comes with $75,000 and a residency at California Institute of the Arts.

• Ryan Nicole Austin is the 2022 recipient of the Rainin Fellowship for Theatre. The annual award, established to support visionary Bay Area artists working in various disciplines, comes with an unrestricted grant of $100,000.

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what I read this week besides emily st. john mandel’s sea of tranquility

• Francisco Mendoza’s comprehensive investigation into the demise of The Lark, challenging the official COVID-and-finances narrative and exploring the underlying systemic issues, board tensions, opaque communication, massive staff turnover and burnout, and some messy details about an NDA. The Lark staff went through it. (American Theatre)

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that’s not a living wage

Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area and the most recently available 990 data. (You can read more about the methodology here.)

Apprenticeships, Walnut Street Theatre: $350/week ($18,200 annual) ¹
Living Wage for Philadelphia, PA: $39,560
Total Expenses (2020): $12.4 million / Executive Compensation: $533,259 (President/Producing Artistic Director) ²

1. WST Apprenticeship contracts vary between 6-12 months depending on the position. No housing or health benefits provided, but apprentices receive “a full scholarship” (Not totally sure what that means! But it sounds like the classic apprenticeship narrative: spinning the program as an “educational opportunity” when it’s really just an underpaid full-time job.)

2. This remains the wildest AD salary in America.