the week of november 1-7, 2024
the week of november 1-7, 2024
robots, werewolves, artemisia gentileschi
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Graphic Design: Elizabeth Morton | Editorial Support: Ryan Adelsheim
world premieres
Ethan Lipton’s We Are Your Robots runs November 7 - December 8 in a co-production between Rattlestick Theater and Theatre for a New Audience in NYC. Leigh Silverman directs the new musical that “looks at brain mapping, consciousness, violence, surveillance, and the problem better known as being human.”
Olivia Haller’s Loneliness Was a Pandemic starts performances November 1st at Theaterlab in NYC. The science fiction drama about “an isolated and imprisoned surviving painter forced to teach a robot how to create real art” is directed by Alex Kopnick.
Hanna Kime’s Dogs runs November 1-24 at Red Theater in Chicago. Set at a women’s hot dog eating contest, the “dizzying, anti-plot, high-intensity exploration of capitalism, competition, and consumption” is directed by Becca Holloway.
productions
Murmuration's Summertime and Brú Theatre’s Ar Aís Arís run November 1-17 in a double billing from DC’s Solas Nua in partnership with Eaton House. John King directs Summertime, a “live performance enhanced through headphones in an intimate, storytelling experience.” The Galway-based Brú Theatre’s latest work “combines Irish language, literature, and visual poetry to create three unique 180° films, immersing audiences in a fusion of movement, text, music, and Connemara landscape through the use of VR headsets.” (I’ll be there tonight!)
Elevator Repair Service’s GATZ starts performances November 1st at The Public Theater. The final New York City encore of the acclaimed 6.5-hour enactment of The Great Gatsby is directed by John Collins.
Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi) runs November 2 - December 15 at NYC’s Primary Stages in association with Chautauqua Theater Company. Jade King Carroll directs the “magnetic and empowering tapestry of art, ambition, rage, and resilience” on how the Renaissance painter “transcended trauma to become one of the most successful artists of her time and an inspiration for women throughout the ages.”
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot starts performances November 6th at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The “timeless and multi-layered tragi-comic masterpiece” is produced in association with Gare St Lazare Ireland and directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett.
Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play runs November 7-17 at Oklahoma City Rep. Alice Reagan directs “the wickedly funny satire about a troupe of terminally woke teaching artists scrambling to create a pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month.”
Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman, and Hugh Wheeler’s Pacific Overtures starts performances November 7th at East West Players in Los Angeles. Tim Dang directs the Kabuki-infused musical exploration of “the intersection of Western and Eastern cultures during the pivotal moment in Japan's history when it was opened to the West, through the lens of two friends caught in the change.”
Michael Quinn’s Get It Together runs November 7-17 at The Flea in NYC. Quinn also directs his comedy “set across two nights two years apart that follows an aspiring poet and her [confounding] paramour through heartbreak, grief, and anxious desire.”
Bob Bartlett’s Lýkos Ánthrōpos is now running through November 24th at the Historic Congressional Cemetery in DC. The site-specific werewolf play is directed by Alex Levy.
Eugène Ionesco’s Exit the King is now playing through November 24th at Undermain Theatre in Dallas, TX. Tim Johnson directs the “absurdist comedy set in the crumbling throne-room of the palace in an unnamed country where King Berenger the First has only the duration of the play to live.”
workshops & readings
Aya Ogawa’s Meat Suit, or the Shitshow of Motherhood will have readings November 3 & 4 at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. The new work is “an unapologetic collage of vignettes and songs that captures the chaos, absurdity, and heartbreak of motherhood.”
R. Eric Thomas’ Glitter in the Glass will have a reading on November 4th at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. Gerrad Alex Taylor directs the darkly comic drama about “a Black mid-career artist facing a creative block as she attempts to replace a Confederate monument in Baltimore with her artwork.”
Michael Patrick & Oisín Kearney’s The Alternative will have a reading on November 4th as part of Irish Repertory Theatre’s New Works Fall Festival. Nicola Murphy Dubey directs the political satire set on the eve of the 2019 referendum “with the threat of chaos in the streets and personal conflict behind the scenes, the final debate is set to begin at BBC Dublin: Should Ireland leave the UK?”
2025-26 (!) season updates
La Jolla Playhouse announced its 2025-26 season. The line-up includes Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (directed by Whitney White) and five world premieres: Eliana Theologides Rodriguez’s Indian Princesses (directed by Miranda Cornell); Noah Diaz’s All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me (directed by Kat Yen); Claudia Shear’s A New Play About Julia Child (Title TBA, directed by Lisa Peterson); Kait Kerrigan, Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath’s musical The Heart (directed by Christopher Ashley); and Theresa Rebeck and Cyndi Lauper’s musical adaptation of Working Girl (directed by Christopher Ashley).
The Tank announced its Spring 2025 Core Productions. The NYC-based company will present Peregrination: A Masked Show About People and Borders (co-pro with Dutch Kills and Long Story Short); Lori Goodman’s Touch (directed by Janice L. Goldberg); The Goat Exchange’s Deadclass, Ohio (original text by Eliya Smith, directed by Mitchell Polonsky and Chloe Claudel); Johnny G. Lloyd’s birthday birthday birthday (directed by Will Steinberger), Heloise Wilson’s Astronauts Wanted (directed by Saki Kawamura), and Kallan Dana’s Lobster (directed by Hanna Yurfest).
the regional theatre game of thrones
Ian Belknap is the new artistic director of New York Stage & Film. Belknap, who has spent the last few years developing film and television work, is a former artistic director of The Acting Company. NYSF also announced that producing associate Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens has been promoted to associate artistic director.
call for submissions
The November session of Judson Arts’ Big Bang: Works in Progress at Judson Memorial Church in NYC is accepting submissions through November 6th. The monthly cold reading series for actors, writers, and musicians features five excerpts of works-in-progress read in a salon-style setting. For the November 13th session, artists can submit 10 pages of writing or songs to: judsonwednesdays@gmail.com by November 6th. Actors can arrive at the session and will be cast on a first-come basis.
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.)
Producing Assistant at Goodspeed Opera House: $15.69 - $17/hour, or $32,635.20 - $35,360 (Full-Time Non-Exempt)
Living Wage for Middlesex County, CT: $52,299
Weekly Overtime Hours Needed to Reach Living Wage: 14-16 hours
Revenue (2022): $12.5 million / Net Income: $1.16 million
Executive Compensation:
Assistant Production Manager & Company Manager at Round House Theatre: $45,000 - $48,000 (Full-Time, Exempt Status Unknown)
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $60,281
Revenue (2023): $6.76 million / Net Income: -$1.3 million
Executive Compensation: